An Urban Explorer Gone

Cherokee Denver estimates that the environmental cleanup of the entire site will cost $24.5 million, with demolition running about $10.5 million. But then it envisions creating a $1 billion development that will function as a new mini-downtown. To accomplish this, it was granted a special "Transit Mixed-Use" zoning by the Denver City Council in 2003. According to design guidelines published for the site, this zoning designation allows for multiple buildings as tall as twelve stories surrounded by public walkways and parks. To finance the project, including necessary remediation work and then installation of the infrastructure, Cherokee was also granted $126 million in tax-increment financing subsidies by the city: The Denver Urban Renewal Authority is issuing bonds that it will repay from sales and property taxes generated by the development in future years.

Cherokee is functioning as the master developer of the project, dubbed Metropolitan Gardens. After it remediates the site and installs the infrastructure, it will hand off parcels to "vertical developers" that will actually design and construct the buildings. The Chicago firm of Joseph Freed and Associates will develop the majority of the property, Trammel Crow Residential the rest.

But first, the site must be cleared and cleaned. This fall, everything west of the rail tracks — including former warehouse buildings and bulk oil-storage tanks — was knocked apart and hauled off by demolition subcontractor Fiore & Sons. Units 10 and 41 are still undergoing asbestos abatement. Cherokee has yet to file demolition permits on those structures.

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Johnny could squeeze your hand. He could give kisses. He could smile. But that was all. The tracheotomy prevented him from talking. His spine was broken, and he had sustained significant internal injuries, including a lacerated liver.

During visiting hours, his room in the ICU was always packed with friends, family and the random people Johnny had befriended. The same guy who'd given all these people bone-crushing bear hugs — in what became known as a "Johnny hug," he'd lift you off the floor and squeeze you with abandon — might never sit up again. His sisters plastered the walls and ceiling with pictures of flowers. They played songs by Johnny Cash. His mother, Donna, a registered nurse, could barely stand seeing her boy in that condition. He tried to cheer her up by making faces.

Johnny developed an infection and underwent several surgeries to fix liver abscesses and other procedures to repair his spine. They were planning to move him from Denver Health to Craig, where he'd start the long process of rehabilitation. One day, Johnny's parents noted with glee that a Stargazer Lily had suddenly sprouted and flowered in the family garden. It was unheard of this late in the season; it seemed like a sign. Johnny smiled when he heard the news.

After three and a half weeks in the hospital, he underwent a seventh surgery to repair another abscess. The procedure was only supposed to last an hour, but something went wrong. Johnny stopped breathing.

The doctors were sobbing when they came out to tell the family that he was gone.

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It won't be long before Gates, too, is gone.

In late spring or early summer, Cherokee Denver will begin demolition on the remaining Gates buildings, the ones that everyone recognizes, the ones that fascinate explorers. Ferd Belz says the company hopes to preserve some of the facades and integrate them into future projects. "We're working with the state and historic folks at the city in terms of analyzing what we'll physically be able to save and what we can't," he notes.

But first the company has to figure out how to remove the stuff lurking beneath those buildings. "The challenge is that the site is pretty significantly environmentally contaminated," Belz says, "and a lot of it is in the soil and the groundwater under the buildings."

Some of it has even flowed off-site. In 2002, two employees of a drilling subcontractor working on a section of T-Rex directly north of the site became ill when they struck groundwater contaminated with trichloroethylene (TCE), an industrial solvent that's considered toxic to humans and was used to clean machinery in several Gates buildings over the years. Subsequent groundwater tests by the Environmental Protection Agency revealed that two underground plumes of the stuff had traveled below homes in West Washington Park. With heavy oversight by neighborhood groups and such organizations as the Campaign for Responsible Development, Cherokee Denver and the Gates Corporation embarked on a program of testing and mitigation that eventually reduced TCE in the area to allowable standards.