Four-and-a-half years after neighbors withdrew an effort to preserve a small condominium building off Speer Boulevard in Denver, the vacant structure’s days are numbered.
Fencing has gone up around the Carmen Court building at 900 E. 1st Ave., and a banner touts the services of American Demolition.
“I can confirm that demolition is imminent,” said Marisa Monte, a spokeswoman for Hines, the Houston-based development firm that owns the property.
The adobe-style building was the subject of a preservation fight in 2020. That spring, with Hines under contract to purchase the property, the company applied to Denver for a certificate of demolition eligibility, a designation that would make it easy to demolish the structure in the near future.
In response, some neighbors asked the city to instead name the structure a city landmark, a status that effectively prevents demolition.
The individual owners of Carmen Court’s six units, meanwhile, opposed landmark status and felt caught “in purgatory,” unsure whether their deals to sell to Hines would actually close.
That October, feeling unsure if their landmark application had the necessary support from the Denver City Council, the neighbors withdrew it. Hines purchased the property in December, paying $1 million for each of the units, and another $2.8 million for additional homes to the south.
In the years since, Carmen Court has sat unoccupied and become overgrown.
When the neighbors withdrew the application, they said Hines had agreed to not demolish the structure until the company is ready to begin constructing its new project — a five-story senior living facility.
The thought was that arrangement would avoid a situation in which Hines demolished Carmen Court but ended up not building the senior living complex. And it left open the possibility that someone else might step in to buy the structure and keep its current use.
“Every day a building stands is another day that it stands,” Sarah McCarthy, a leader of “Friends of Carmen Court,” told BusinessDen in October 2020.
City records indicate a demolition permit for Carmen Court was approved in January.
Hines does appear to be operating under something of a deadline. When the landmark application was withdrawn in 2020, Hines did get the certificate of demolition eligibility certificate it had been originally seeking.
The certificate is good for five years, and expires this October. After that, demolition of the structure would still be possible, but the approval process would be more burdensome.
Hines’ development portfolio in Denver includes the 40-story office tower at 1144 15th St.
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