There’s a certain civic comfort in believing that if you just chase out the “wrong” kind of businesses, the “right” kind will magically show up with exotic succulents, sourdough starters and a line of Labradoodles out the door.
Aurora is flirting with that idea again.
City lawmakers are considering a plan to limit “concentrations” of vape shops, liquor stores, pawn shops and check-cashing outlets across town, but especially in supposedly sketchy parts of Aurora. It’s the usual suspects in the lineup of what polite company calls “unsavory.”
Say it with a deep and throating North Carolina accent. It’s fun.
The theory is that fewer of these businesses will mean less crime, better neighborhoods and, voila, urban renewal.
If that sounds familiar, it should. Aurora, especially along East Colfax Avenue, has been down this road so many times it should install a roundabout.
For years, policymakers have tried some version of “blame-it-on-the-pawn-shops” zoning.
The results? Let’s just say East Colfax is still East Colfax. It’s a complicated, gritty, economically diverse corridor that also has killer restaurants, fun pubs and some of the best theater in the metro area.
It has, for decades, many decades, stubbornly refused to be fixed by ordinance.
The current proposal leans on something called “risk terrain modeling,” which suggests certain types of businesses attract crime.
Maybe they do. Maybe they don’t.
But here’s the problem, which comes from Reporting 101: Correlation is not causation, and the science here is about as sturdy as a folding chair at day care.
Yes, police get called to strip malls with liquor stores and vape shops. They also get called to places where people gather, park, loiter and, occasionally, make bad decisions. That’s not exactly a revelation.
You know where else crime happens? Dark parking lots. Late-night bars. Poorly lit transit stops. In other words, environments, not just storefront signage.
Experience with urban renewal shows the tentative problem behind being certain about the chicken and the egg. In reality, businesses that cater to the whims and needs of poor and poorer people, who are more likely to smoke, go to check cashing stores and pawn shops, don’t create poor people and poor neighborhoods. They open up in poor neighborhoods to meet market demand.
Honest.
If you really want to reduce crime, start with increased and very, very visible police patrol, lighting, design and consistent enforcement.
It won’t get you your own TED Talk, but it provably works.
What hasn’t worked is pretending that banning your way to a better neighborhood is a substitute for investing in one.
There is solid science behind urban renewal. It’s just not cheap and doesn’t fit neatly into a zoning crackdown.
Look at Edgewater. Or Olde Town Arvada. Or even Aurora’s own Gardens on Havana. Those places didn’t transform because someone drew a 300-foot buffer around a vape shop. Those once-super-sketchy places changed because cities and developers created incentives, improved infrastructure, supported mixed-use development and made it worthwhile for the “desirable” businesses to accept tax and other incentives, and invest.
After sitting through a lifetime of marathon urban renewal authority meetings, I can safely say that in the case of carrots versus sticks, places like The Stanley, Old Gaylord Street and even Cherry Creek weren’t the result of sticks from city hall.
If you want better retail, make it easier and more profitable to open better retail. Offer tax incentives. Help property owners renovate aging strip centers. Improve streetscapes so people actually want to walk there. Partner with small businesses instead of quietly trying to regulate them out of existence.
This isn’t zoning. It’s a way for the government to put a heavy thumb on the scale of the free market without calling it that.
It comes with consequences.
Councilmember Gianina Horton is right to worry about displacement and gentrification. When you start deciding which businesses are acceptable and which aren’t, you’re also deciding who gets to make a living, and who doesn’t.
Today it’s vape shops. Yesterday it was car dealerships along Havana.
Really.
Once the black sheep of Havana Street, noisy, gangly and totally not boutique-friendly, they now coexist just fine with a revitalized and successful business district.
Sure, there’s a whiff of “broken windows” theory in all this, the very real philosophy that visible disorder and chaos breeds more of it.
A neglected property invites trouble. A well-maintained one discourages it.
But that’s not what this proposal targets.
Cities are messy ecosystems, and Aurora’s is especially weird.
Communities don’t thrive because every business fits a curated vision of artisanal perfection. They thrive because they’re diverse, adaptable and, yes, sometimes a little rough around the edges, especially the edges of northwest Aurora.
The city doesn’t need another experiment in zoning alchemy. It needs sustained investment and the wisdom to admit that there are no shortcuts to revitalization.
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Valid points. But lets be completely honest. Colfax will never thrive so long as there is nothing to draw people from afar to it with unique experiences. Liquor stores and pawn shops generally don’t have a strong regional draw.
Now consider the counterfactual history where over the last four decades, the City of Aurora collected and invested the smallest of sales taxes in Aurora’s culture and nightlife — instead of subsidizing Denver’s cultural gluttony as has been the case with the Denver SCFD. No doubt Colfax would be much stronger today. Havana too.
Turning Colfax around requires that we elect leaders with political courage. Instead we elect people who will convince us that Colfax will never be worthy of serious investment– as they shower Denver’s culture with praise and our tax money.
Its probably not a formal plank in either major party’s state platform but keeping Aurora a sh_hole sure seems to be a shared goal. You can’t drive by the Fox and then honestly say our elected leaders are nuturing a vibrant city — no matter how many times they say it.
The housing stock in the area is substandard by today’s standards and expectations. The stock was built, primarily, to cater to returning WWII vets. That was a long time ago and the single family homes are tired, old, dilapidated and far too small by today’s standards and similar problems exist in the multifamily units. Nobody but the poor choose to live there. The poor come with their challenges and the businesses seeking to cater to them are different from the businesses seeking to cater to the Tallyn’s Reach crowd. If one wants to change Colfax one needs to change the housing in the area. Other fixes, foot patrol, new lighting and street scapes, arts districts, concentrated enforcement actions, have all been tried ad nauseum. Time to discuss the definition of insanity, believing repeated failed efforts will this time yield a different outcome than all previous efforts which weere exactly the same..
As long as politicians are tasked with problem solving and despite their power for healthy things to happen does not mean any meaningful things will change. And the old Aurora east Colfax stands as a testament the source of this problematic area still exist and all the smoke and mirror city narratives and patchwork project that comes along, do-not-cut-it. The article is correct that crime by its own entropy takes on a leveling effect, it seeks equal application of misery where it is allowed to fester. Effective course correction will be difficult for any legit businesses on Colfax as politicians who are determined and feel a certain degree of crime is somewhat acceptable, “You know, it’s just the cost of doing business” officials like to say. Both, Walgreens and Walmart set up shop right in the middle of prime-crime territory. The reality that followed was predictable as in any other no-mans land city neighborhood. Unlike Aurora lawmakers, these businesses reject that thinking, it’s only some low-level crime… no worries. These two now boarded up large businesses, it was adios rather than deal with the everyday criminal behavior hassle. Then the MLK public library on Colfax, crime and homelessness has created its own danger zone. (See news link.) https://www.denver7.com/news/local-news/auroras-martin-luther-king-jr-library-employees-see-increase-in-homeless-people-living-outside-front-doors
Like presto, six on the new council now feel it necessary and will be most helpful for city policy to overturn the city code armed with teeth to hold chaos created by squatters to a minimum. The council’s new game-plan will otherwise reject any enforcement progress. We did previously have in place, a reasonable way to deal with hap-hazard settlements showing up on our city streets. The East Colfax history has shown us a steady picture of the backward slide away from social order. It’s been the most well-recognized area of general social collapse in Aurora. The city management should get a prize, a council patch, for stepping up the skid- row district on Colfax because that’s what they focused on and set out to do.