When the Colorado Symphony hosted a community concert at the May Bonfils Stanton Theater at Loretto Heights in 2018, Margaret Brugger walked up to Mark Witkiewicz and told him point-blank that she wanted to build a community center on the historic campus, which had a long, storied past starting in 1864 as a boarding school for girls, followed by incarnations as various colleges, a high school, a nursing school and a military training ground.
At the time, Brugger was a mental health professional with what was then the Mental Health Center of Denver (now WellPower), and she lived — and still does — within a mile of the campus. Witkiewicz was — and still is — principal of Westside Investment Partners, which had purchased the former Loretto Heights College campus in 2017.
“I didn’t have a nonprofit,” Brugger says. “I didn’t have one dollar to the project.”
But she knew…
