Students who attend Auraria campus may have noticed an abundance of suspicious construction, signs written in old German, tall fences blocking off restricted areas, and uniformed guards patrolling the gates. Though it may seem familiar; it is not the end of days. It is the Christkindlmarket! 

For 25 years, the Christkindlmarket has been a staple of Denver’s holiday season, containing vendors with handmade items, authentic German food, and most notably a 110-foot-tall hollow Christmas tree that visitors can go inside of. The market has made its home in several different locations over the years; its most recent conquest is our very own Auraria campus. Now occupying the entirety of the Tivoli Quad, the Christkindlmarket has morphed from a fun holiday outing to an involuntary undertaking which students must traverse to make their daily commute. It seems that Christmas is in the air and, for the thousands of students on the Auraria campus, it is becoming a deep hindrance in their day-to-day life.  

The Christkindlmarket is admittedly beautiful: The fairy lights twinkle, and Christmas music envelops visitors as they meander from booth to booth, each filled with homemade goods and knickknacks. With the glowing tree towering over the festivities as a beacon of holiday cheer, one can almost forget they’re on campus. After speaking with two vendors of the Market, they stated in no uncertain terms that this is one of the best locations they’ve had. The Tivoli quad’s oval shape makes it the perfect experience for guests. There are smaller lines, and more space for customers to spread out compared to Civic Center Park, which, while being bigger, is narrower and has a square shape because of limitations from the park’s construction. One vendor has spent 14 years with the market and has seen it through 4 different moves. “At Civic Center Park, you could be elbow to elbow with people, here you can walk around. It’s much more spread out.” Another vendor said the surrounding area of Civic Center could be sketchy, and after ten days at the new location, most of the vendors were finding it to be the perfect fit. What customers did not find to be perfect was the parking situation.  

In March, Auraria campus announced they were increasing night and weekend rates for all parking areas: Changing the Tivoli garage from $25 to $30, and other garages and surface lots from $20 to $25. While students can register their car for a discount, many have problems with the system actually giving them the reduced rate. One UCD student, Cyleigh Knight, complained that despite her car’s registration, she often gets charged the full amount, and must reach out to Auraria Higher Education Center (AHEC) to get discount codes. Despite frequent complaints from students and faculty about high parking costs and constant parking tickets, the rates only continue to go up. Visitors to the market seemed to have a similar opinion. Within the first two weeks of the event, the internet became outraged at the high parking costs they had to deal with. In response to the indignation, AHEC reduced the weekend rate by almost 50%, changing it to 15 dollars a day in surface lots for the remainder of the market. Upon hearing the news, CU Denver student AJ Parr said, “It’s just sketchy. And just so annoying that they’re willing to do all that stuff for the paying customers, but not for the paying students who actually go here.” 

  According to a study in 2019, 53% of Auraria’s commuter students drive to campus. At the beginning of the fall semester, all students received an email that instructed commuters to get to school before 7:30am in order to get a parking spot. Now, parking has become even more competitive; with students needing to maneuver around tourists and their vehicles flocking to the Christkindlmarket. The market expected to get around 300,000 visitors during its 33-day run last year. That’s an average of 9000 people a day. Cyleigh Knight spoke to the situation, “Well, there’s already no parking on a regular daily basis, and so now the parking situation is just 10 times worse.” As a board member for a CU Denver student organization, she says it’s more difficult to stay after class for club meetings and events. “And it especially sucks whenever I’m trying to get here for an event that’s midday, or one of our after-school events. There’s literally no available parking because of stuff like this. It also keeps people who want to come to our events from being able to, because there’s no parking available for them.”  

The Christkindlmarket is not just taking up the entire Tivoli quad, which is a main walkway for students getting to class, it’s also cutting into the surrounding sidewalks and roads, having shut down Walnut Street and making all street parking on 11th for vendors only. These closures further eliminate parking and transportation options for students. Walnut Street normally connects the west side of campus with the east; students could walk, bike, or drive from the Seventh St. parking garage all the way to the City Heights dorms. Now if they’re driving, they have to divert to either Colfax or Auraria Parkway (both of which are often congested with traffic) and go all the way around to get back onto campus. 

Last year, Auraria made 12 million dollars in revenue from parking fees alone. Students at CU Denver contribute 135 dollars of their tuition towards Auraria campus fees, and in total AHEC makes 23 million dollars a year from these fees. Students are in turn disregarded, and blindsided by these events that they have no say in. Christkindlmarket isn’t the first event to rent out Auraria campus and impede students, and it certainly won’t be the last. Unfortunately, this year, the Christkindlmarket merely serves as a reminder that Auraria seems much more focused on the money it can make from parking and event sales than bettering the lives of the students it’s supposed to serve.