Denver Councilman Charlie Brown is right: The city’s historic preservation ordinance is being abused in a case involving an old, abandoned warehouse west of Coors Field whose owners have plans to replace it with five-story apartments.
“It makes a mockery of our historic-preservation rules,” Brown said. “This is not why we created the historic-preservation ordinance. We will have to make changes to the ordinance to prevent something like this happening in the future.”
There’s nothing terribly distinctive about the former Mine and Smelter Supply Co. warehouse, which is already partly torn down, except that it’s a century old.
Does the building have more “character” than the apartments that its owner would replace it with? No doubt it does in the view of neighbors who are seeking landmark status for the building in order to stop the development. They’d rather gaze out on the old brick façade, and who can blame them?
So even though they don’t own the property, two neighbors filed a $250 application for a landmark designation and essentially managed to put the development on hold.
That’s permissible in Denver, thanks to a 2006 ordinance that was itself an overreaction to “scrape-offs” that had generated growing controversy. So people with no resources on the line (other than a minor application fee) can thwart the plans of those who not only own a site but also have invested many hours of time and a great deal of money creating plans to make it economically viable.
It wasn’t that many years ago when the Prospect district west of Coors Field was like much of the rest of the Central Platte Valley, notable mainly for run-down warehouses, factories and rail yards — and not much else.
The blight provoked much handwringing and concern. However, thanks to the vision and commitment of investors and urban developers, as well as the desire of many hundreds of homebuyers and renters to live close to Denver’s central amenities, the entire area has largely been transformed.
In the process, thankfully, a number of the old buildings have been preserved. But not all were, and not all of the remaining ones necessarily can or should be.
One of the neighbors who filed the application maintains the warehouse is “distinctive and representative of that era. This building could become something akin to the Pike Place Market in Seattle. We don’t have anything that has the historic significance like this.”
He also claims, according to a Denver Post story by Jeremy P. Meyer, that “he has found two buyers who would be interested in buying the building if it is preserved.”
Good for him. Maybe it’s too bad he doesn’t own the place. But he doesn’t. And those who do have other plans, like them or not.
