AURORA | Nothing at the old Fan Fare site at East First Avenue and Havana Street has ever moved with any notable pace.
For decades, the dilapidated old Fan Fare building sat vacant, a hulking and bizarre structure that irked generations of city leaders.
And after the wrecking ball finally tore through those gray-ivory covered slabs and the strange bulbous roof in 2014, not a whole lot has changed at the site since. Dust to dust.
But now, local leaders say new life to the dirt lot is coming — albeit slowly.
Finally, after a few misses on the city’s initial request for development plans at the site, a developer is working with the city to turn the sprawling field into something cool.
“It’s probably not going to be until late 2018 or 2019 when we see things happening,” said Gayle Jetchick, executive director of the Havana Business Improvement District.
Jetchick said the development will likely include townhouses for sale and some rental apartments. The project will also include some retail and office space, she said.
For now, she said, crews have been at the site taking soil samples, and city officials are working to rezone the area so the project can get rolling.
Andrea Amonick, manager of the city’s Development Services Division, said the city has a “pre-development” agreement in place with Dillon Place Development Group. That January deal between Dillon Place and the Aurora urban Renewal Authority allows the developer 120 days to conduct due diligence for the Fan Fare redevelopment.
“During this time, AURA staff has worked with the developer and reviewed preliminary financial feasibility. The proposed project meets the goals of the Havana North Urban Renewal Plan, and if it is determined that the project is financially feasible, staff will initiate negotiations for a purchase and redevelopment agreement,” Amonick said in a statement.
The proposal as it stands now calls for 207 mid-rise multifamily rental units, 86 for-sale townhomes, 19,700 square feet of retail and commercial space and a 14,000 square foot mixed-use building, she said.
The site has long been a troubled one for Aurora leaders.
Built in 1961, Fan Fare was originally a sprawling indoor discount market. Some documents say the original spelling of the building was “Fan Fair,” though city documents in recent years spell it Fan Fare or Fanfare.
After just four years in business — years marked by what was reportedly a massive grand opening and one of the first large-scale shopping centers open on Sundays in metro Denver — the business went under in 1965 and Western Electric moved in, using the building for training purposes.
In the mid-1980s Western Electric left, and for two decades the building has been fenced off with weeds poking up from every crack in the asphalt.
In 2004, the building’s owners filed plans with the city to tear down Fan Fare and build two high-rise condominiums on the site. The building would have been the largest in the city, and officials said they could help turn that stretch of Havana Street into a posh, upscale neighborhood.
But the developers needed some incentives from the city to pull off the project and as those negotiations dragged on, the plan fizzled.
After that, the owners briefly floated an idea to clean up the building and use it as a storage facility until they could get the tower project moving again. But that idea flopped, too.
There were later rumors of smaller condos on the site but that idea, like seemingly everything with Fan Fare over the years, went nowhere.
Along the way, Fan Fare found some supporters, including the Aurora Historic Preservation Commission, who in 2010 launched an effort to save the building. The building was one of the first large-scale shopping centers in the area, and the commission pointed to its unique architectural design that used exterior supports instead of interior columns to prop-up the ceiling as a reason to save it. But their efforts didn’t go far and eventually the city stepped in.
In late 2014, after the land was purchased through Aurora Urban Renewal Authority — the city’s de facto organ for urban renewal projects — and the building had been demolished, AURA put out a request for plans to redevelop the area. Just two developers presented projects, and neither fit the city’s requirements for the sort of mixed-use development that could revitalize the neighborhood.