AURORA | Other than their sprawling size, not much stands out about two southeast Aurora homes on South Coolidge Way and South Quemoy Court.
From the curb, the homes look like everything else in these tony southeast Aurora neighborhoods, with multi-car garages and gray or beige siding.
But police and city officials say these two homes — one at 6262 S. Quemoy Court and one at 7850 S. Coolidge Way — are regularly home to large-scale marijuana grows that violate the law and are becoming a nuisance for neighbors.
The two homes have become regular stops for the narcotics Aurora officers tasked with cracking down on grow houses.
“They are well versed in those residences,” Aurora police spokesman Officer Kenneth Forrest said of the department’s Marijuana Enforcement Team.
In the past two years, MET has made eight felony arrests at the two homes and issued four more citations. In addition to illegally grown pot, police say they have seized methamphetamines and guns.
According to Arapahoe County records, the homes are owned by the same man: Grover Mohinder. The home on Quemoy is valued at $619,700 and the Coolidge home at $560,400, according to property records.
Forrest said the homes are being rented and so far, investigators believe it is the tenants who are responsible for the grow operations. Police have not been able to connect the owner to the grow operations, he said, and he has not been charged.
At the Coolidge address, police received a tip about a possible illegal grow in May 2016 and later searched the home. There, police found several Florida residents with a large-scale grow operation. In all, police seized 112 plants and 65 pounds of dried marijuana. The pot was valued at $204,000 in Colorado but more than $500,000 in Florida, according to a presentation police gave at the community meeting last week.
In another bust involving four different Florida residents at the same address later that year, police seized 23 pounds of pot and issued four municipal citations.
In all, across the two addresses over the past two years, police seized 1,460 plants and a total of 379 pounds of pot valued at more than $830,000.
Attempts to reach Mohinder this week were unsuccessful. A man who answered the door at the Quemoy house said Mohinder was not there and may be out of the country.
Aurora Congressman Mike Coffman wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney Robert Troyer urging his office to investigate and see whether any federal crimes are being committed by the homeowner.
“I do not think it is a coincidence that two properties owned by the same individual have had multiple drug raids in the past three years,” Coffman wrote.
Last week several Aurora police officials along with city council members attended a community meeting in Saddle Rock where several neighbors sounded off with complaints about the two homes.
While several of the growers are facing drug or weapons charges, city officials are looking for ways to crackdown on the owner as well.
Old Aurora ordinances created in the 1980s as a way to clean up a very different type of Aurora neighborhood may be helpful, officials say.
Deputy City Attorney Nancy Rodgers said the city is using the same city laws they’ve used to crackdown on seedy East Colfax Avenue motels and ‘crack houses’ against the home’s owner.
Rodgers said the city is treating the home as a “specified crime property.” A notice signed by police Chief Nick Metz was sent to the owner Feb. 21 and served on the property, she said.
The owner then has a chance to respond and work out an agreement with the city, she said.
A lawyer for the owner has started those discussions, but Rodgers said she couldn’t discuss details of ongoing negotiations.
Rodgers said city council has also started discussions on a new ordinance that could crackdown on these sorts of grow houses, but those are in the early phases.