It happened during dinner.
Between the time we set the table and the time we cleared it one evening, the swatch of sky from our kitchen windows disappeared as construction workers put up the walls of a McMansion two doors down.
The scrape-off was a bigger blow for our next-door neighbor.
Down went the maple tree that shaded her garden. Gone went her southern exposure. Lost went the view of the moon she had enjoyed since the lunar landings.
The 6,684-square-foot faux Denver Square has a waterfall in the master bath and a closet bigger than a garage. It takes up nearly every buildable inch of the city lot — a house with no sense of its own space.
The only remnant of the widow’s home razed to make room for it is a lilac bush her late husband had planted that crept beyond the fence line and crept back 20 years later.
The Gen-Y developer who apparently told the city he was building for his own family peeved neighbors by referring to the property as “infill.” It didn’t help that his kids let on that their dad meant to flip it. Nor that he let his sod die months after having it planted. Nor that he stripped out fixtures and appliances, loaded up his Escalade and hit the road just over a year after moving in.
The house went into foreclosure and now is owned by a bank that sends someone occasionally to check on it. It has sat empty for months and isn’t exactly flying off the market at an asking price that’s higher than what many Denverites will earn in their lifetimes.
The broker who answered the hotline listed out front seemed crazy excited to get a call about the listing.
“Oh,” her voice deflated when she realized I had no intention to buy.
Even empty, the house is the topic of much chatter.
Some in the neighborhood are counting on it to raise their property values. The guy across the street even put his own would-be scrape-off up for sale with a sign reading “Development Property Available,” complete with a giant rendering of a copycat mini- mansion.
Some annoyed longtimers see the monolith as a monument to the housing bubble and unregulated banking system, and view its foreclosure as a rare mark of good chi in a bad economy. Some blame Denver’s Landmark Commission for approving a design two to five times bigger than other houses on a block where the rest of us, by code, aren’t allowed even to replace our old windows.
Many curse the builder-owner who left just like he came — without a hello or goodbye.
“Arrogant jerk,” says my moonless neighbor, left hosing down the plants outside a house whose own spigot has been turned off. “It’s ironic that they’re gone and we’re still all sitting here with this monstrosity.”
“There’s something scary about that place,” adds my 3-year-old, who isn’t the only kid on the block creeped out by its sudden emptiness.
It’s the nature of Denver’s market that certain houses will be scraped, bigger ones built and some owners forced to foreclose, many due to circumstances beyond their control.
Such isn’t the case with Mr. Infill, who showed no regard for the differences between commodification and the concept of home. Beware the next neighbors he leaves living in his oversized shadow.
Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com.
