Dawn Bookhardt

Building Colorado Communities One Deal at a Time

Dawn Bookhardt’s legacy is rich with professional accomplishment and virtuous philanthropy, which has created a lasting impact in Colorado communities. For several decades, her contributions to the city of Denver have helped create a stronger infrastructure while improving vital facilities to support its rapidly growing population. Today, she is one of the most distinguished attorneys in the state, navigating legal matters for public and governmental sectors and providing executive leadership for several nonprofit organizations.

The Bookhardt Family Legacy

After high school graduation, Bookhardt chose to follow in her family’s footsteps, attending the alma mater of her grandmother, father, uncles and aunts, Oakwood College (now Oakwood University), in Huntsville, Alabama. Unlike her father and several members of her family who studied medicine or education and went on to become doctors or teachers, she chose to pursue a career in law.

“I’ve always wanted to be a lawyer, but I never thought I would have the bravery or the courage to just look my parents in the eye and say, ‘I’m gonna be a lawyer,’ but I did,” she says. “After all was said and done, they were so happy!”

After earning a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English and Communications, she returned to Colorado and earned a Juris Doctorate Degree from the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law.

Today, Bookhardt represents Butler Snow, LLP, a law firm that provides a full range of business and litigation services to international clients. She is part of the Denver branch’s Public Finance, Tax Incentives and Credit Markets Group, working in public and governmental finance sectors as well as providing representation for public-private partnerships and public facilities. She is also a member of Butler Snow’s Diversity and Inclusivity, and Associates Review Committees.

Adding to her impressive professional resume, in 2021 Bookhardt was inducted into the American College of Bond Counsel, a prestigious group of attorneys recognized by their peers for their legal expertise and work on major projects.

The Redevelopment of Denver

Throughout her career, Bookhardt has represented public and private land and commercial developers, oversight committees and municipalities for several major projects throughout the city of Denver and around the country.

In 1998, three years after Stapleton International Airport closed, and operations commenced at the new Denver International Airport, she served as counsel to Forest City (or Brookfield Development) for the redevelopment of the area. “I loved it,” she recalls. “It was such a fun undertaking.”

Renamed Central Park in 2020, the decommissioned 4,700-acre space was filled with 3.9 million square feet of retail space, more than 10 million square feet of office space, industrial buildings, more than 12,000 residential units, over 1,100 acres of parks and open space, swimming pools and schools. The $3.4 billion redevelopment brought over 30,000 new residents to Denver, with 13,000 added jobs, and earned national recognition from the Urban Land Institute, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Environmental Protection Agency and the United Nations Council on Sustainable Development (RenewDenver.org).

In addition to representing the City of Denver in the formation of a new governance entity for the National Western Stock Show, Bookhardt worked on the expansion of the Denver Convention Center. The $300 million expansion project, facilitated during the administration of former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, included the addition of a 1,100-room hotel that would serve convention goers and elevate the city’s ranking for corporate events.

“Denver is such an incredible place,” Bookhardt praises. “But we had a low tierage in terms of convention goers and convention planners, and we weren’t on one of the top tiers. I remember going to Mayor Webb saying, ‘We really do need a convention center hotel so that we can raise our rankings.”

“So we went on this wonderful adventure of building the hotel with tax exempt bonds for financing, and putting together a wonderful hotel that actually brought our city up from a tier-3 to a tier-2. Now, meeting planners come to the city and they go, ‘Oh, this is incredible!’”

Another monumental project which thrived with Bookhardt’s representation, was the redevelopment of Denver Union Station.

Representing the Denver Union Station Executive Oversight Committee and the Denver Union Station Project Authority, she aided in the tremendous success of the project. The iconic landmark was transformed from a singular-use railroad station into a multi-modal transportation hub filled with restaurants, bars, retail space, the stunning Crawford Hotel, a bus transfer station and an open-air train hall for Amtrak and the Regional Transportation District (RTD).

“That was one of the most fulfilling projects that I worked on with a great team,” Bookhardt exclaims. “A metropolitan district was formed for the purposes of capturing tax revenues on the private side. It was such a fabulous project.”

The $500 million project, developed through the direction of an equal partnership between East West Partners and Continuum Partners, brought a fresh new energy to the Lower Downtown (LoDo) district, winning an Urban Land Institute (ULI) Global Award for Excellence in 2015. The newly created 14-block neighborhood surrounding Denver Union Station generated an initial impact of $3.8 billion, with an ongoing annual impact of an additional $2.9 billion (EWPartners.com). 

Bookhardt is most proud of the city’s ability to refinance the project in order to pay off huge federal loans from the Federal Department of Transportation. Nearly $2 billion in Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) and Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing (RRIF) loan funds were retired in 2017, 27 years ahead of schedule.

In addition to these and other projects in Denver, Bookhardt has represented municipalities for the development of several commercial projects in Omaha, Nebraska; Baltimore, Maryland; and Austin Texas. She has also facilitated negotiations in the residential and commercial development of off-shore properties for an island improvement venture.

During the administration of former Mayor Michael Hancock, she helped close a deal between the Denver Housing Authority and the City and County of Denver, structuring an agreement for the creation of new affordable housing units.

Along with her induction into the American College of Bond Counsel, Bookhardt has received numerous awards. Denver Urban Spectrum recognized her as a “Timeless Legend” in 2012, acknowledging her vast and praiseworthy good deeds.  

In 2002, she received the National Republican Congressional Committee’s Business Advisory Council’s “National Leadership Award” and the “Women of Excellence Award.” In 2013, she was named one of the Colorado Women’s Chamber of Commerce’s “Top 25 Most Powerful Women,” and in 2015 she received the Urban League of Colorado’s “Chairman’s

Award.” In 2019, she was named one of Law Week Colorado’s Lawyers of the Year, and was recognized by former Denver Mayor Michael Hancock as one an African American civic and business leader during a Black History Month ceremony. She has also received the “Corporate Business Award” from Colorado Black Women for Political Action.

From Boardroom to Board Leadership

Along with a plethora of professional honors, a great deal of Bookhardt’s recognition can be attributed to her legacy of benevolence and philanthropy.

Denver Botanic Gardens, one of the city’s most beautiful outdoor cultural arts spaces, has flourished in recent years with the addition of the 100,000 square foot Freyer-Newman Center, which features art galleries, classrooms, a library, an auditorium, research labs and more. Bookhardt served as the facility’s board secretary; and though she recently completed her term, she still enjoys the garden and urges Denver residents and visitors to do the same.

“I would advise everyone to take a trip to the Gardens if you haven’t been there recently,” she says. “I used to love to go early in the morning; and I still do when the weather is good. I go to the Scripture Garden. It’s just beautiful. You can meditate; you can just hear the sounds of nature. It is absolutely wonderful.”

Bookhardt also serves as Chair of the Urban Land Conservancy (ULC) Board of Directors. “It is all about preservation of urban lands. It’s about affordable housing and creating spaces for startup micro companies. I love the work that I do on that board,” she says, commending the enormous work being done in Metro Denver communities.

In 2023, Bookhardt made an immensely generous $1 million gift to support the educational efforts of college students at one of Denver’s most popular institutions.

Serving as Chair of the Metropolitan State University (MSU) Denver Foundation, she conducts the receipt, investment and administration of private monetary support, facilitating the university’s efficiency and overall success. Her gift was intended to be used toward the construction of a new, 70,000 square foot health education building that will allow all of MSU’s Health Institute departments to operate under one roof.

“I figured since I wasn’t going to be a doctor, I could do other things to make my family proud,” she laughs.

The new Health Institute building has been named the Bookhardt Family Speech, Learning and Hearing Center.

For Bookhardt, who noticed a downward trend in the nursing industry after the COVID pandemic, the addition of the Health Institute on the MSU Denver campus will support students who are poised and ready to enter the nursing field. “MSU is going to stand there at the ready, preparing these future nurses to get out there and hit the ground running. It’s amazing. I’m so proud of that university.”

Further, her benevolence will directly assist in the diversification of the speech, hearing and language workforce.

In an announcement about Bookhardt’s donation, the MSU Denver website refers to a 2019 report from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, which reveals that an overwhelming 92% of its speech-language pathologists are white. MSU Denver is a non-residential commuter campus which hosts an incredibly diverse student body, with students of color making up 54% of attendees. Bookhardt’s gift will increase the university’s capacity to serve students in the Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences program while diversifying the associated industries.

The final executive board supported by Bookhardt is her most recent philanthropic leadership endeavor at the Women’s Foundation of Colorado (WFOC), where she serves as a trustee. “Lauren Casteel is currently the Executive Director, and I joined that organization because of her. She is incredible,” she adulates. 

WFOC is a statewide, community-funded foundation that advances and accelerates economic opportunities for Colorado women and families. By supporting legislation and public policy that protects gender, racial and economic equity, the foundation impacts 2.85 million women and girls with grant funding and support for local outreach organizations and initiatives. As a trustee, Bookhardt leverages her strengths, talents and resources as a legal expert to further WFOC’s mission.

A Life Well Lived

While she doesn’t have much free time these days, Bookhardt enjoys spending time with her family – her daughter, Dawn Patrice Bookhardt Jr., her sisters and her 95-year old mother, along with two rambunctious Yorkiepoos.

Though the prospect of retirement is not appealing to her, she would love to get a degree or certificate in culinary arts which would allow her to explore exciting new vegetarian recipes in the future.

Along with other hobbies and interests, golf was one of her favorite pastimes, but after a long and arduous fight against a rare illness, she was forced to overcome challenges in order to return to the game she loves.

In 2015, Bookhardt developed acanthamoeba, resulting in 17 surgeries to repair damage to her eyes. She overcame the illness, but not after suffering great damage to her eyesight. Despite the impediment, she takes it all in stride, saying, “You know, I do like to walk around with my dark glasses, because they do look cool…but it has been a really interesting road.”

Challenging herself to revisit golf, she attended the annual Epworth Foundation Golf Tournament hosted by King Harris, Chairman of the Foundation for Sustainable Urban Communities, and decided to try to hit a ball or two.

“I went and he said, ‘Are you going to hit a ball this year?’ And I said, ‘I’m going to try, King,’ nervously. I didn’t know if I could connect with the ball. I had tried a couple of years ago to swing, and it didn’t work so well.”

“This is how God works – I’m riding around with a friend of mine, Robbie Jones, who said, ‘I’ll caddy you. You can do this.” She was driving the cart, and we were waiting in line to hit a ball and the golf Marshall was sitting there in his little golf cart, and he said, ‘So what are you ladies up to?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m just out here today trying to see if I’m going to hit a ball. But I’m really scared. I lost my vision and I don’t know.’ He said, ‘Well, how blind are you?’ And I said, ‘I’m B4 and that means –,’ and he said, ‘I know what B4 is. I was an occupational therapist for blind veterans.’”

Amazed, she recalls the Marshall explaining that he taught all of his patients how to golf – blind. He gave her advice and guided her through the process, and she started hitting the balls.

Bookhardt’s resilience in the face of a life-changing obstacle is a testament to her strong character and inner confidence. “We can’t be defined by our limitations, can we?” she asks. “Once we learn that, and we grab ahold of that, we get that inward confidence.”

Excellence Exemplified

Denver has experienced a great deal of change in the last half-century, prompting the need for significant improvements in infrastructure and public facilities. The phenomenal contributions made by members of Denver’s Black community to support the city’s changing needs are evident, with several development projects commissioned by two long-serving Black mayors and a number of hard working professionals. Bookhardt, along with her colleagues and peers, picked up the torch and catapulted Denver into a world-class city that is home to millions.

The pathways being created by city leaders are essential to the continued advancement of Colorado’s communities of color, providing positive examples of city stewardship for the next generations.

For Bookhardt, who serves as Vice Chair of the General Law and Diversity Committees of the National Association of Bond Lawyers in addition to her membership on Butler Snow’s Diversity and Inclusivity Committee, racial, health and economic equity are crucial components of a well-functioning society. 

In 2020, a rash of social injustice swept the country, leading to protective diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives created to establish more equitable environments in every aspect of life. However, dissenting opinions surrounding the necessity of these initiatives have since led to anti-diversity legislation in cities and states across the country. Thankfully, Colorado citizens have not been directly impacted by the passage of restrictive laws in opposition to diversity-building programs, but despite the regressive nature of anti-diversity efforts, Bookhardt says she is not discouraged.

“What I know is that we’ll find a way. We are a brilliant people.”

With years of experience under her belt, she advises young people who wish to follow in her footsteps to start preparing for a law career as early as possible. “Keep your grades up. Even in high school, discipline yourself. Take that extra hour, and rather than hanging out with friends or something, do a little extra reading. Take that extra step; go that extra mile; and make it count.”

She says that by establishing good habits in high school, academic success will come much easier in college. “Then you can get to law school easily. If your college grades are wonderful and you’re thinking law school is super expensive (which it is), get a scholarship!”

“Then, when you’re ready to start practicing, know that there is not a deal in the world that has ever been done with one person. There’s always at least two. So relationships, relationships, relationships,” she advises. “Build them. Know your trade; know your craft; be good at what you do…but always be good to people; and stay in touch, because they’re going to be your lifeline, ultimately.”

Bookhardt is an inspirational leader in both the legal industry and the nonprofit sector. Her precedent-setting legal representation has been an asset to the City of Denver, an example of ethical competence and a benefit to the many people and institutions she has served throughout her career. Her generosity and charitable giving have improved the lives of Colorado residents, with an enduring positive impact that will be felt for years to come.