Aurora
Few developing properties in Colorado have more hope and despair tied to them than the land surrounding the old Fitzsimons Army hospital.
The 578-acre Fitzsimons site is undergoing a $4.3-billion makeover into a medical and bioscience hub.
Outside the campus, developers see a rich future, but those changes will involve displacing hundreds of people in mobile home parks, cheap motels and low-income apartments.
In March, Donn Eley became the first to issue eviction notices, telling residents of his Dutch Mill Mobile Home Park they had until Nov. 1. to leave.
Eley, 61, is converting the park into a development that will have housing for recovering hospital patients, specifically for children with cancer.
Nevertheless, to some residents, the circumstances are unfair – no matter how the property will be used.
“They’re stealing my house,” said James Syze, who’s owned his 1964 single-wide trailer for 11 years. “They consider us trailer trash. … But we own this boxcar, and we’re being thrown out.”
Eley’s project is the first residential area in the Fitzsimons boundary to be redeveloped, but it’s not the last. Four other mobile home parks with about 500 spaces and a dozen motels with 550 units either have been bought or are for sale.
In 1999, Aurora’s City Council declared the area blighted, banning new mobile home parks and thereby alerting the residents that their time was limited.
“It’s difficult telling people who have lived here for a long time that they’ve got to move,” Eley said. “That’s just the hard facts of redevelopment.”
Eley, co-founder and vice chairman of Village Homes, has spent a career putting people in better places – whether it’s in award-winning homes or giving temporary housing to cancer patients and their families.
In 1997, Eley founded Brent’s Place, a hospitality house for children recovering from cancer treatment.
He converted an apartment complex near Denver’s Children’s Hospital and named it after his son, Brent Dawson Eley, who died in 1988 at age 14 of rhabdomyosarcoma – an aggressive cancer.
During their son’s treatment in Iowa City, Iowa, Donn and Linda Eley rented an apartment near the hospital where their son could recuperate from a bone marrow transplant.
“We were there 120 days,” Eley said. “We came home without Brent. … We came back from that experience and wanted to do something positive.”
About 65 families stay in the 13 apartments at Brent’s Place every year. Now, with Children’s Hospital moving to Fitzsimons, Eley wants Brent’s Place nearby.
The Dutch Mill Mobile Home Park is only a block from Fitzsimons, with a park in between.
Today, 42 trailers fill the park’s 69 spaces. Most of the trailers aren’t roadworthy. Only 11 are owner-occupied. The other trailers are rented.
On a recent day, workers used sledgehammers to demolish one trailer. Two other trailers were waiting to be shipped to a South Dakota Indian reservation, where they’ll be reconditioned.
Syze, 65, is disabled and lives with his wife, Charlie. They’re among nine owners who must abandon their trailers because city law forbids moving older mobile homes.
The Syzes pay $425 a month rent for the space. Adams County says the trailer is worth $5,020.
“Give me the amount I’ve been taxed on and I’ll be quiet,” said Charlie Syze. “I understand the fact that families need a place to stay with sick kids, but we’re not asking for the moon.”
Eley offers a month’s rent in exchange for trailer titles. He’s also willing to set people up in nearby apartments that he owns.
Also, the city’s Community Development Division has held meetings with the residents, offering to help get them new homes. One program provides up to $10,000 for a down payment on a new home; another helps with new rentals.
Trailer renter Rick Westman, 62, is using one of the programs to buy his first home. He calls the redevelopment a godsend.
“A lot of people want to sit around and moan and groan about it,” he said. “But I’m doing something about it.”
Staff writer Jeremy P. Meyer may be reached at 303-820-1175 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com.
