As Aurora’s resident dinosaur, I am compelled to point out the folly in this week’s episode of The Aurora City Council’s Been There, Done That.
Granted, I’m gray and grumpy, but this installment of “I’ve got an idea” just keeps coming around every few years.
Aurora, like just about every berg and community across the country, wages a never-ending battle with urban blight, suburban decay or whatever euphemism you want to give Skid Row.
Aurora is no stranger to this obsession.
The Colfax/Downtown/Original Aurora turnaround plans fill numerous shelves in the Sentinel newsroom.
One of the common themes among these well-considered and sometimes well-funded schemes is the idea that if you ban or limit certain businesses commonly found in communities on the other side of tracks, the neighborhood will become a better place.
For decades, Aurora has envied communities in the metro area that have gone from rags to riches, in an urban renewal kind of way. Old Town Arvada, a once rapidly declining wasteland of old warehouses, gas stations and motels is now a bustling center of commerce — and retail tax revenue — for that city.
Denver’s Lower Downtown and River North neighborhoods have long been the holy grail for redevelopment disciples here in the metro area. Once a wasteland of unwanted buildings and virtual landfills, RiNo is now the place to live and hang out. Apartments there collect about $2,100 a month for a 1-bedroom apartment, according to RentCafe.
Aurora lawmakers have returned to looking hard at the city’s sprawling northwest community, which continues to struggle with the same challenges it’s dealt with for decades: higher crime, lower property values and a lot of people just busting their humps every day just trying to get by.
The city is pitching a new plan to create a type of special district, mostly along the East Colfax Avenue corridor, that will focus on the area’s troubles, not unlike previous groups and districts have. That’s not a bad thing. Past efforts resulted in victories and changes that really did help move the needle in the RiNo direction.
The community boasts the Downtown Aurora Visual Arts project, which for years has worked with generations of kids to provide cool culture for themselves and the entire community. Past rehab efforts landed the amazing MLK Junior Library, a host of city annex offices, the People’s Building and the metro-jewel, the Fox Arts Center.
The area has for years boasted cool places like La Cueva Mexican restaurant and Mango House.
But it’s never been enough to turn the Colfax strip and surrounding neighborhoods into the next Denver LoHi.
Even after the dream-come-true addition of the Anschutz Medical Campus at Fitzsimons plopped the medical school and three massive hospitals onto the scene, the neighborhood continues to struggle with the same issues it has for decades.
So in this Groundhog Day scenario of chicken-or-the-egg science experiment, Aurora lawmakers now think that if they just restrict certain businesses in the region, the neighborhoods will turn around.
On what will soon become a new “naughty” list of business types will be “unsavory” enterprises that thrive on people who live in poor, run-down parts of towns. Think vape and smoke shops, paycheck cashing and lending stores, pawn shops and plasma centers.
City lawmakers last month ditched a bill that would ban new vape stores in the city for six months until council members could come up with a comprehensive plan to limit these and other businesses in some or all Aurora neighborhoods. Despite avoiding a ban, the city still wants to come up with a plan for restrictions.
You can see where this is going. Do multiple vape shops draw poor, struggling people to live in a community? Or do vape shops pop up all over the place because neighborhoods with lots of poor people demand them?
I can promise you, because I’m old and have seen this play out several times: both and neither.
It is mostly true that pawn shops and check cashing stores and vape shops like opening in poor parts of town because there are so many potential customers living nearby.
I doubt anyone sees a vape shop on the bus home from work and thinks, “I should start vaping.”
But it’s equally true that many of the people who live in northwest Aurora like to vape and sell what they can at a pawn shop to help make rent.
I can promise you that if you closed every pawn shop, payday loan center and smoke shop in Original Aurora, it wouldn’t change much of anything. Almost every strip mall from Longmont to Castle Rock sports at least one.
There are vape stores all over the metro area right now. Just around the building from the Sentinel newsroom is a pawn shop, sitting behind pretty swank houses in the Eastridge neighborhood.
I’m absolutely no libertarian, but I’ve watched them closely long enough to know they’re not smoking crack or vaping when they insist that the market, in a market-economy, will make sure there aren’t door-to-door vape shops lining East Colfax Avenue.
And I know for certain there’s real danger in letting the government decide what residents want and need in their lives.
I think that vaping is a ludicrous habit that creates real health concerns and is a fabulous waste of money, money that poor people don’t have to waste. But I also know that banning or limiting vape shops on Colfax won’t stop anyone from vaping, and those empty storefronts will not be taken over by a yoga parlor or a chic French patisserie.
What will make a difference, just like it has in the past, is plenty of parking and beefing up police patrols in the area. The now long-gone Colfax foot and bike patrols made a real difference to business owners and residents alike. The high visibility of officers creates confidence, especially in business patrons from outside the area. The foot patrol was a band of amiable and helpful cops who were expert at enforcing laws without bullying or harassing anyone.
And if you want businesses to take a chance on opening a restaurant or hair salon on Montview or Colfax, offer tax or other incentives to the types of businesses everyone can agree to grow an inviting and sustainable urban neighborhood.
But focusing on banning one type of business over another won’t turn northwest Aurora into the next LoDo.
Why?
It’s because vape shops, payday loan sharks and smoke shops are the symptom, not the problem.
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Councilwoman Jurinsky finds bars she owns savory, marijuana dispensaries suppling tax dollars savory, advertizing her candidacy at gambling establishments like arapahoe park savory, and apparently challenging citizens to fist fights for charity and berating fellow Councilmembers with profanity savory. Vape shops, not so much. This makes me wonder whether she is in a position to legislate on the matter.
Dave, you state. “I think that vaping is a ludicrous habit that creates real health concerns and is a fabulous waste of money, money that poor people don’t have to waste.” We agree. Did you read your article a few days earlier? https://sentinelcolorado.com/metro/aurora-vape-shops-under-scrutiny-for-suspicious-grocery-ebt-sales/ “money that poor people don’t have to waste” Really? Several of these vape shops according to your article look like their organizations to launder taxpayer money. You know SNAP – EBT programs are designed only for food. But now some that relied on this largess are spending theirs on vapes. That’s out-right fraud. These poor people are not wasting their money… its yours their squandering Dave. I’d like to see you dig into that – that’s a local expose’ by itself. It might even educate some of these politicians that control the votes.