An Aspen Park landmark – the Coney Island hot dog stand – is scheduled to roll down the road within a month.
But the new owners are in a bit of a pickle. It seems there’s neither a commercial water well nor highway access at the proposed site for the super-sized wienie wagon, meaning the deal to relocate 10 miles south on U.S. 285 may go south.
“I never thought I’d have a 14-ton hot dog on my hands and not know what I’m going to do with it,” Ron Aigner said Tuesday.
Aigner and Diane Wisecamp bought the 42-foot-long red hot dog stand embraced by a 34-foot-long beige bun, and promised to keep the stucco structure on U.S. 285. The popular stand has been an Aspen Park fixture for 35 years.
The Morrison couple has been working to buy a site near Pine Junction, where Reggie’s Restaurant operated for decades. But the restaurant owners never got a commercial well permit. Aigner said getting one could take more time than the March 22 deadline to move the Coney. He said the Realtor listed that the property has a private well, and he didn’t know a commercial well was needed.
Future widening of U.S. 285 could mean shelling out $60,000 for engineering and building a deceleration lane for the big dog, Aigner said.
“This might put us in the embarrassing situation of parking the Coney in a storage lot,” Aigner said. “We made a promise to keep it on 285, but we’re running out of options. … It was supposed to be a slam dunk.”
Staff writer Ann Schrader can be reached at 303-278-3217 or aschrader@denverpost.com.
