Pascal Humbert, the bassist for local band 16 Horsepower lives here. So does Gene Bass, an aging jazz drummer who still plays gigs around town. On the third floor, in a large studio, is sculptor and photographer David Zimmer's home. Steel artist and photographer Jeff Ball lives down the hall. The first floor is filled with several locally owned retail shops: a bookstore that specializes in rare reads, a design studio, a print shop, and a photography studio/gift shop owned by Walter Wedgeworth, father of Denver City Councilwoman Elbra Wedgeworth.
But in many other ways, 1234 East Colfax is remarkable: "I haven't locked my door in two and half years," Ball says. "We all have keys to each other's places. We borrow each other's tools, watch each other's pets when we go on vacation." Adds Linda Lebsack, who has managed the building for twenty years and owns Lebsack's Books below, "Everything here is done on sort of a gentleman's agreement. If you're late with a month's rent, we're not coming after you; we work with you. We're not in it to squeeze the last nickel out of everybody. We're not that kind of landlord."
Not that it matters anymore.
Late last year, a rumor hit the apartment building like a wrecking ball: Triton Investment Company was interested in buying the property from its longtime out-of-state owners, John and Marilyn Weiker. The name Triton shot fear into the tenants, who have watched the company consume aging buildings in Capitol Hill, force the occupants to leave, and turn the units into high-priced condos or slick business centers.
Last January, for instance, a company owned by Triton purchased the well-worn building directly across the street, at 1245 East Colfax, and quickly served notice to several nonprofit agencies, many of them serving homeless and economically disadvantaged people who shuffle through the Hill ("No Lease on Life," February 25, 1999). The building is now called the Upper Colfax Business Centre. Other recent purchases include the buildings on either side of 1234 East Colfax, now called the Colonnade Lofts and the Alta Court offices, respectively, and Bourbon Square, a row of retail shops and one restaurant next door to the Upper Colfax Business Centre.
The spruce-up has pleased some business owners and residents who want East Colfax to grow out of its gritty reputation, but it has angered others who believe that Triton's efforts are white-washing the character and diversity right out of the neighborhood. "They're creating a suburbia in the city," Ball says. "All of the artists are being pushed out. Everyone who made Capitol Hill what it is is being forced to leave it."
So when they heard about Triton's interest in their homes, Ball and the other ten or so tenants talked about raising money to buy the building themselves. After all, Ball alone had put more than two years' worth of sweat equity into it; using his talent as an artist, he'd refurbished all of the building's woodwork, including everyone's doors and floors and the banister that corkscrews up three flights of stairs. Even his bear-claw bathtub is decorated in a meticulous mosaic that he tiled himself.
But by the time the residents rallied, negotiations between Roenstock Place LLC, which is owned by Triton, and the Weikers, who live in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, were too far along to stop. As a last resort, manager Lebsack relayed her tenants' fears to the owners, whom she describes as great landlords. The Weikers responded with a generous offer, she says: They agreed to insert a special clause into the contract that would forbid Triton from evicting any of the tenants for six months.
On June 15, the deal closed for $870,000. But animosity between at least one tenant and the new landlord peaked immediately. The day after the purchase was announced, a brass logo for Triton Properties (Triton Investment's management arm) was drilled into the wall above the mailboxes in the lobby. By the following afternoon, the logo had been stolen. The new owners also locked an access door to the roof and hallway closet doors that stored tools, Ball says. Tenants who wanted to fetch a drill on the fly or climb outside for a summertime smoke in the evening, as they always had, were shut out, denied, angered.
Hoping to ease the tension, Ball scheduled a meeting with Triton property director B.J. Diggs. But according to the artist, at the June 30 meeting he became the first person to get his notice to vacate the premises. He had sixty days to get out. Ball says he didn't mention the six-month clause, but he did make a case for the building, explaining that the tenants loved their home and wanted to work with their new landlords. "She just said, 'I don't know where you're coming from, but this is the way business is done.'"
After the meeting, Ball told Lebsack what had happened, and she quickly phoned the owners' lawyer, who read the signed contract aloud and, according to Lebsack, was just as surprised to learn that the contract said nothing about residential tenants. All it said was that no retail tenants would be asked to leave for six months.
The next day, the rest of the tenants, all of whom had month-to-month rent agreements, received their notices to vacate.
Lebsack says the owners felt so bad about the confusion, they offered to refund three and a half months' rent to everyone in the building once they've moved out. Although nothing was put in writing, Lebsack says she told everyone about the refund. The Weikers couldn't be reached for comment. Meanwhile, retail tenants like Wedgeworth, who has manned his store, W.W. Photo Studio and Gift Shop, for nearly ten years, expects the same fate in six months. "Well, they [Triton] have been doing it to everyone else, so we expect to get it, too," he says.
Councilwoman Wedgeworth, whose district doesn't include her father's business, says she's hesitant to comment on the issue as a councilwoman -- but as a daughter, she's concerned for her father's future. "Triton does have this reputation, so my father knew it was a decision he was going to be facing," she says. "And I've told [Triton] that they need to be not only corporate-responsible, but work with the community as well."
Triton's Diggs refuses to discuss the purchase of the building, the evictions or the future plans for 1234 East Colfax. "We feel that Westword has not fairly and accurately -- with an emphasis on "accurately" -- portrayed issues in the past," she says. "So we have no comment. But we thank you for your interest."
In a July 6 faxed letter to Westword, Paul Allen, vice president of operations for Triton Properties, wrote, "We caution you against printing any story regarding the sale or renovation of the property which is not absolutely fair in its presentation and accurate in its recitation of the facts." However, Allen added that neither Roenstock Place nor Triton would provide those facts or have any further comment. "As [sic] such time as the new owner has completed its plans for renovation of the property, a press release announcing those plans will be issued to appropriate media representatives," he wrote.
By the time Triton makes its announcement, Ball and the other tenants should be long gone, but as of yet, Ball hasn't started searching for a new apartment; he says he's still in "the mode of denial." He'd like to stay in Capitol Hill near his 1,000-square-foot, $175-per-month studio, but since it's located behind the print shop in the apartment building, if the retail tenants are also forced to leave, he will lose his studio, too. And since he was handed his notice, he says, he can't walk outside his apartment without getting emotional.
"Everywhere I look, there's a piece of me, something that I've done. Now it's all for the benefit of someone else."
