It’s a sordid tale … but then again it is about city government.
It’s the story of S.R. DeBoer’s property on East Iliff Avenue in south Denver.
It’s about a government appointee involved in a barefaced conflict of interest.
And worse, it’s about how Denver’s bureaucracy – with the help of a high- powered law firm – can crush you.
If you haven’t heard of him, S.R. DeBoer was an esteemed Denverite. I’m positive because he has a city park named after him.
Once I investigate further, I learn that DeBoer was also a famous city planner, one of the authors of Denver’s original zoning code (for which he is forgiven) and an influential landscape architect.
For all his success, DeBoer was not wealthy. Elizabeth Potts, DeBoer’s granddaughter, recently wrote a letter to the City Council about how her grandfather “struggled financially all of his life.”
So when DeBoer’s daughter died in 2005, the grandkids – Elizabeth and her brothers, Tom and Larry – decided that they could no longer properly maintain DeBoer’s property in their advanced age.
They found a “green” builder, McStain Neighborhoods, and reached an agreement to sell the property for $1.9 million.
Their land. Paid for. Simple enough.
Well, you can imagine everyone’s shock when David Potts, Elizabeth’s husband, found out while surfing the Internet one night that an application had been filed to turn their property into the “S.R. DeBoer Historic District.”
A few neighbors, behind the backs of the DeBoer family, formed a citizens committee and enlisted a fledgling little law firm named Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck to help them out.
“We were immediately convinced – and with good reason – that their true intentions were not the legacy or memory of DeBoer,” David Potts said. “They are using this as a device to make sure that nothing changes in the properties adjacent to theirs. They want to control the property.”
Enter the Denver Landmark Preservation Commission – the four scariest words any sane Denver property owner could ever hear.
McStain, perhaps unwilling to ask permission every time they wanted to install a toilet seat, dropped out of the contract.
David Potts tells me that DeBoer’s legacy can be seen in places like Washington Park, City Park and Denver Botanic Gardens. His own house? Not so much.
If you saw the property, you’d agree.
Initially, so did the Landmark Preservation Commission, which stated that the proposed historic district met only one of the 10 necessary criteria in the Denver municipal code for a historic district.
Later they voted for a reduced district.
Commission member Elizabeth Schlosser – who recused herself from the final vote but attended all the meetings – had a better idea. She contacted the Pottses’ broker and offered a million dollars below the McStain price for DeBoer’s property.
Schlosser doesn’t think she did anything wrong. But … holy conflict of interest.
The family turned her down, of course.
Then the Denver Planning Board voted 6-2 to recommend to the City Council that it reject landmark designation for a “S.R. DeBoer Historic District.”
It didn’t matter. The City Council’s Blueprint Denver Committee moved the original plan to council anyway. Yes, the same plan that the Denver Planning Board and Landmark Preservation Commission had already recommended be rejected.
Why? Perhaps Councilwoman Kathleen MacKenzie, who though not a member of Blueprint Denver was there prodding the members to move it out of committee, will have an answer.
MacKenzie, the council member for the district, can’t speak about it now because this is a “quasi-judicial” issue.
I know, it’s confusing
Hopefully, Elizabeth, Tom and Larry, in debt now to the tune of $100,000, will ultimately find out that they, not their meddlesome neighbors or the city, own the DeBoer property.
That such a question is even up for debate tells us there is something unjust and rotten going on in Denver.
David Harsanyi’s column appears Monday and Thursday.
He can be reached at 303-954-1255 or dharsanyi@denverpost.com.
