Lyons Family Opens Creative Grounds Art Center Honoring Christian Glass

“It’s about love,” Sally Glass said, her voice steady but heavy with a grief that three years couldn’t fully dry up. She stood behind the counter of a newly installed café, staring at a pastel drawing of two lions nuzzling into each other. “There was no love the night Christian was murdered,” she continued, her face darkening as she spoke. “There was no compassion. No one said, ‘you’re scared, you’re really scared, let us help you.’”

The building where she stood had a complicated past. It used to be the Diner Bar, a bright-pink, retro-themed restaurant connected to a Western gallery. But on September 16, it opens as Creative Grounds, a nonprofit community art center and café created specifically for teens and young adults. The pink exterior is now a warm blue. The graffiti that once covered the walls — graffiti Sally once interpreted as angels — is gone. In its place, muralist Android Jones painted three massive, kaleidoscopic lions. They were inspired directly by Christian’s own artwork.

Christian Glass was 22 when he died in June 2022. He had called 911 just before midnight after his car got stuck near Silver Plume, west of Denver. It was the last call he would ever make. The Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Office initially claimed he was “argumentative and uncooperative.” That narrative crumbled months later when his family’s attorney released body-camera footage. It showed Christian making a heart shape with his hands from inside his car before deputies broke the window. They shot him six times with beanbag rounds, tased him multiple times, and finally fired his head five times with a handgun.

The fight for justice was exhausting. Sally and Simon Glass spent years driving down the mountain to courtrooms, battling bureaucracy and public perception. During that time, they bought a cabin above Lyons, a place Sally still calls “the retreat.” It was during one of those grueling commutes that she first saw the building for sale. She didn’t buy it immediately. She watched it. She looked at the graffiti. She saw the potential.

The Glass family received a $19 million settlement, the largest police settlement in Colorado history. But money didn’t fix the hole left by his absence. Creative Grounds is their attempt to fill it. It’s not just a café. It’s a gathering space in the courtyard, a place where kids who might feel invisible in the broader community can find a voice. The mural of the lion looms over the entrance, a silent guardian.

Sally stepped outside again, pointing at the mural. “He’s got wings,” she said.

It’s a small detail. A brushstroke. But stand there long enough and you realize it’s the whole point. The lion doesn’t just sit on the wall. It rises. And in Lyons, on a Tuesday morning, that’s enough.