But Harris says that's not the whole story. He used to be happily ensconced in a different building up the street, he says--but the city asked him to move so it could pursue other development plans for that site. After MOED sweetened the deal by offering him a loan, he says, he agreed. A key inducement, though, was that MOED was helping another entrepreneur open a supermarket a few doors down from his new space, Harris says. When that market went out of business, Harris was stranded with a high loan payment and not enough traffic flow. Without the reduction in his loan payment, Harris says, he might have gone under. "The rent is still a little high," Harris says, "but I think I can survive."
Manuel Fernandez, owner of the Mammoth Events Center, did not return repeated phone calls, so it's not clear whether the center's cash flow problems are serious enough to endanger its $180,000 MOED loan.
But MOED seems as aggressive as ever as it tries to revitalize East Colfax. MOED loaned concert promoter Doug Kauffman $200,000 so he could buy and refurbish the Ogden Theatre, which, since it opened in September 1993, has become a successful concert venue. "Their [MOED's] help was invaluable to me," Kauffman says. "Not just the money--their advice and everything. It would have been really hard to do it without them."
Just last year, the Bluebird Theater opened its doors at 3317 East Colfax as a combination concert hall and movie house, thanks in part to a $220,000 renovation loan from MOED. Theater co-owner Evan Dechtman says MOED was anything but lax about making the loan, thoroughly scrutinizing the viability of the project before handing over the money. "They put us through the wringer," Dechtman says. "They're not just out there to give taxpayer money away."
And even if the Mammoth should fold in the future, critics shouldn't be "too quick to say that's a boondoggle," says Dave Walstrom, executive director of the Colfax on the Hill neighborhood association. Without the city's assistance, he says, the Mammoth might well have been vacant for the past several years. An empty building "breeds crime, it breeds drug dealing, it breeds prostitution," Walstrom says. Having the Mammoth open for business has been "worth a lot to the neighborhood," he says.
Walstrom's support for MOED isn't surprising; after all, Colfax on the Hill is itself a beneficiary of the agency's largess. A few years ago the group borrowed almost $350,000 from the city to buy and demolish the old Clarko Hotel, a longtime eyesore adjacent to the Mammoth. The neighborhood group services that loan by leasing the now-vacant lot to the events center as a sort of entrance plaza, Walstrom says.
Walstrom acknowledges that the neighborhood group's MOED loan may be somewhat precarious: Paying it back depends on a steady stream of rent from the Mammoth. If the Mammoth ever failed, the nonprofit's own income from the property would immediately dry up--and the city might stop receiving payments on its loan as well. But that, says Walstrom, is a risk worth taking. "These are fragile inner-city tundras," he says. "They need some help.
