If a team of urban explorers set out to gauge the health of neighborhoods in central Denver, they could do worse than to start with the 700 block of Clarkson Street. It's a great vantage point for studying the city's rich history, its triumphs and mistakes, its awkward efforts to build and preserve communities while simultaneously messing with them.
Mark Manger
740 Clarkson
Mark Manger
David Warren, director of Open Door Ministries, hopes to operate a program for recovering addicts at 740 Clarkson.
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Over the years, this strip of Clarkson has been home to the gentry and the disenfranchised, artists and felons, moguls and mystics. Like much of Capitol Hill, the block is a mélange of grand turn-of-the century homes and less distinguished apartment houses dating from more recent periods of economic upheaval. To the north of Eighth Avenue, as you draw ever closer to Colfax, hulking, multi-unit dwellings and old Denver squares chopped into apartments dominate; to the south, single-family residences prevail. But the 700 block of Clarkson Street seems to offer an uneasy balance between the two.
On three corners, the block is anchored by apartments or condos. The fourth is occupied by the Zang Mansion, built for brewing and mining tycoon Adolph Zang in 1905. Most of the rest of the block is taken up by imposing brick homes from the same period, with bold dormers, inviting porches, elaborate woodwork and even a few neoclassic pillars that mirror Zang's monument to himself. Many of the homes have been lovingly renovated by families that have moved into the area over the past two decades, in the wake of the 1992 designation of the Seventh Avenue Historic District and a subsequent jolt in property values.
Several homes sport bronzed address signs and plaques announcing their pedigree — built such-and-such date, National Register of Historic Places this, landmark status that. But in recent months, the block has sprouted more unsettling signs. There are yellow placards in windows opposing the "commercial use" of 740 and 750 Clarkson; a huge blue sign in the middle of the block announcing a Board of Adjustment hearing for a zoning appeal; yet another sign notifying residents of the soon-to-expire comment period for a transitional-housing permit. These days Clarkson has the feel of a neighborhood under siege.
Much of the battle is focused on the house at 740 Clarkson, also known as the Bennett-Field house. Last spring, neighbors were alarmed to learn that the 6,700-square-foot behemoth in the heart of the block had been purchased by Open Door Ministries, which planned to operate a group home and faith-based treatment program called LightHouse, geared to recovering male addicts and alcoholics. The men arrived shortly thereafter — some employed, some not, some recently homeless or just released from prison.
"We see them in the alley a lot," says Doug Goldman, who lives two doors down from 740. "They enter through the alley — I don't think they give them keys. There's already some animosity, somebody standing in the alley and refusing to get out of the way of your car. There's a little bit of that going on."
"I think the neighbors ought to mind their own business," says Jamie, a bearded, bandanna-wearing LightHouse member who just moved into 740 Clarkson. "We're not troublemakers."
Capitol Hill isn't exactly known for NIMBY-ism, but the proliferation of group homes for "special populations" in the area has prompted some blowback. Last year, Open Door Ministries looked into purchasing the sprawling Croke-Patterson mansion on 11th Avenue for its LightHouse program, only to meet strong opposition from neighbors there. The move to 740 Clarkson then triggered a lawsuit from next-door neighbor and attorney Jesse Lipschuetz, who contends that ODM obtained a boardinghouse permit for 740 Clarkson under false pretenses, when the organization actually intended to operate a "large residential care use" facility at the property.
A city ordinance requires that such facilities be at least 2,000 feet from each other and that no more than two can exist within a 4,000-foot radius of any newcomer. There are already three such facilities less than 4,000 feet from 740 Clarkson.
ODM executive director David Warren says he was misinformed by zoning officials when he sought a "large residential care use" permit for the Croke-Patterson property — and misinformed again when he obtained a boardinghouse permit for Clarkson. Responding to Lipschuetz's complaint, a judge has ordered that ODM can't operate its full treatment program under a boardinghouse permit, so Warren has now applied for a transitional-housing permit.
"I wish we would have been able to do this before we purchased the house," Warren says, "but we just didn't have the correct information from zoning."
LightHouse opponents are also pointing fingers at the zoning code — which, despite the major overhaul completed last summer, continues to offer a large and bewildering menu of options and loopholes. Residents claim that city officials are so eager to pursue competing agendas, such as developing transitional housing for the homeless and transit-friendly infill projects, that they've faltered in their commitment to preserve the character of historic neighborhoods and protect property values.
"Not only have we have had no cooperation from the city, they've been downright obstructionist," says Nancy Chapin, the wife of plaintiff Lipschuetz. "The city has reneged on its promise to us, those of us who have lived in the neighborhood for years and have been fixing things up and making nice. They told us they wouldn't put these group homes within 2,000 feet of each other. But in some parts of Capitol Hill, you can hardly swing a dead cat without running into a residential-care facility."
