Aurora closes notorious ‘Edge at Lowry’ apartments after months of controversy

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been corrected to reflect a statement from the city clarifying the building was empty of tenants since last weekend, and without any residents on Tuesday.

AURORA | The infamous Edge at Lowry apartments that started a national conversation about Venezuelan gangs in Aurora is finally closed. 

Aurora officials said they finally shuttered the last building after the final residents were forced to leave last weekend. Aurora city officials held a press conference in one of the units Wednesday afternoon. 

“The people that were here were treated fairly,” Police Chief Todd Chamberlain said. “They were given a new opportunity to move out of this blight-ridden location to another venue, somewhere in Aurora. Again, we have hundreds of complexes, apartment complexes in Aurora. This is the only one that has caused the major commotion and the major problems and the major crime that we are dealing with.”

The city closed another nearby complex last year, but cited unlivable conditions as the reason for virtually seizing it from the same company that owns the Edge at Lowry.

The six-building Edge at Lowry complex first attracted attention from the national media and the Trump presidential campaign last year after armed alleged members of a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, were caught on security video entering an apartment unit last summer. Aurora city officials outlined their plan to close down the Edge at Lowry apartment complex, citing ongoing criminal activity, including a recent “torture” situation, and poor property management as the driving factors behind the decision.

The emergency closure was approved by an Aurora Municipal Court order Jan. 10, citing the buildings as “an immediate threat to public safety and welfare,” according to a statement by the city. Property Solutions Colorado was hired by the city to oversee tenant relocation, which posted closure notices that tenants had to vacate the property by 8 a.m. on Feb. 18, with those remaining subject to trespassing charges.

A temporary building administrator has been working at the complex for weeks, since the end of January, according to city officials. The administrator reported relocating 85 people from 23 units in the complex.The last residents were relocated last week, and the building was empty of tenants when it was closed Tuesday.

Finding homes for people still inside the ramshackle apartment complex was difficult and filled with controversy to the last minute, according to city officials.

Chamberlain said that when the police department and the city arrived to assist people with housing options, resources and assistance, local activists from different groups caused “moral hysteria,” making it difficult to work with residents and assist them. He said the group tried to dissuade residents from working with the city for fear of deportation. 

“They were trying to sow distrust in people who are living here,” city spokesperson, Ryan Luby said about the activists. “Our property administrator and her people had to come in and build rapport with folks to say, ‘look, we can work with you but you have to be able to work with us too at the same time.’”

V Reeves, the spokesperson for Housekeys Action Network Denver, said that there was a lot of frustration with the city because they and a local group assisting residents at the location, East Colfax Community Collective, asked the city for help. 

The city said they were able to relocate 85 residents across 23 apartment units by Tuesday, assisting them with a total of $94,375 in direct assistance via Property Solutions Colorado. City officials said they were prepared to assist residents across all 50 apartment units who appeared to still be occupied as apartments when the complex was shuttered. 

City spokesperson Ryan Luby said the funding spent on residents differed for each person. Some was for plane tickets to send people to live with friends, and some was spent on relocating somewhere else in Aurora or Colorado. 

Reeves said the organizations, along with East Colfax Community Collective, worked to relocate 127 residents with a $50,000 grant from the Colorado Health Foundation and an additional $26,000 from a GoFundMe, where they detailed the amount of money the organization has spent relocating residents from each property previously owned by CBZ Management. 

HAND spent $47,176 on 24 families at the Edge of Lowry, HAND officials said, offering to allow the Sentinel to review expenses and books. Reeves said there are still families displaced from the closure of all three previously owned CBZ buildings. 

“We estimate at least 40 people from Dallas Street (26 adults, 14 children), but also 44 from Helena St. aka Whispering Pines (24 adults, 19 children, one pregnant woman) and 20 from Nome St. (11 adults, nine children),” Reeves wrote in a text. “These numbers are just from the folks who have made contact with us about it.”

The one thing city officials, police and local housing activists agree on was what they say is an unfair and cruel treatment of residents by landlords CBZ Management after they abandoned the residents to live in squalor.

CBZ did not immediately return requests for comment.

“Condemning these buildings prematurely without enough time or resources to help these families has launched a number of them into a cycle of poverty, so we are still supporting at-risk folks from that time, and the anti-migrant rhetoric perpetuated by this slumlord has only worsened the situation and resulted in many people losing their stability,” Reeves said. 

City spokespersons Luby and Joe Rubino said the funding for relocating residents, along with somewhere between $300,000 to $500,000 in resources the city has spent on CBZ-owned properties, will be billed back to the company through building leans. 

The city will continue to provide security at the Edge at Lowry apartments to ensure no one tries to break into the building as squatters, and that expense will also be added to a building lien for CBZ Management.