Aurora’s troubled Edge of Lowry apartments — site of viral video — set to close in owner’s settlement with city

Aurora’s dilapidated Edge of Lowry apartments, which earned international infamy and the attention of Donald Trump after a video of armed men in its hallways went viral, are set to close in the coming months as part of a deal reached between city officials and the apartments’ owners.

The proposed settlement was described in Aurora municipal court Thursday, after an attorney who represents the apartment owner agreed not to contest city officials’ efforts to close the troubled property.

Exact details — including when the 60-unit complex will be closed and what happens to the people living in its five buildings — remain unclear. City attorneys and the lawyer for the apartment owner will be in court again in mid-January.

Though the timeline is uncertain, the apartments’ closure is unlikely before mid-February at the earliest. Peter Schulte, Aurora’s city attorney, told The Denver Post after the hearing that residents would be given at least 30 days’ notice before the building is closed.

He said the city would work with tenants to rehouse them and would charge the property owners for any costs incurred in helping residents.

The deal was reached to resolve the city’s efforts to have the apartments labeled a criminal nuisance and force their closure. Under the proposed settlement, Edge of Lowry would be shuttered for a year while the city repairs the myriad issues there. The property would then be turned back over to Five Dallas Partners, the company that formally owns the property and an offshoot of CBZ Management.

CBZ has overseen the property’s descent into dilapidation in the five years since CBZ’s owners, Shmaryahu and Zev Baumgarten, purchased it.

Schulte said the city would place a lien against the property to recoup any costs it incurs for fixing it up, including for rehousing current residents.

“We’re not admitting or denying any of the facts set forth in the (criminal nuisance complaint), but we do agree that the property should be closed,” Walter Slatkin, the lawyer who represents the apartments and the Baumgartens, told Judge Shawn Day.

Slatkin declined to comment after the hearing.

Nate Kassa, an organizer with the East Colfax Community Collective, which has worked with CBZ’s tenants, said it was a “positive step” that the city was intervening, given CBZ’s extensive history of poor housing conditions.

“But I am very concerned, as someone who’s been advocating for and with the tenants, that when the building closes — where will the tenants go?” he said. He estimated that between 120 and 200 people live in the Edge of Lowry.

“I think there needs to be a priority and a demand and an obligation on CBZ Management that they do provide alternative housing before the building is closed,” Kassa said, “so that the transition is smooth for the tenants living at those properties.”

Six months ago, CBZ operated four apartment complexes in Aurora. But the Edge of Lowry’s closure would mean an end to its presence as an active landlord in the city. In August, Aurora officials ordered one CBZ property — at 1568 Nome St. — to be closed because it was uninhabitable.

Two more CBZ properties, including a building that’s part of the broader Edge of Lowry complex, have been turned over to a court-appointed caretaker because the Baumgartens defaulted on loans that were secured by the buildings.

The latest proposed closure would end the city’s yearslong effort to bring the Edge of Lowry into compliance with its safe-housing codes. The property, like several others owned by the Baumgartens in Denver and Aurora, has for years been the subject of tenant complaints and municipal investigations for a battery of issues related to its living conditions: Hot water and heat have routinely gone out, while mold and pest infestations are common. Security has lapsed, and tenants said CBZ was slow to respond to complaints; often, managers didn’t respond at all.

The apartments’ imminent closure would also end what has become an extended attempt by the Baumgartens and CBZ to blame its apartments’ conditions on a gang that they claim has taken over the property. Aurora Police have repeatedly said that a Venezuelan gang was present at the Edge of Lowry and at other buildings owned by CBZ, and a video taken by a tenant earlier this year showed several armed men in the building’s hallways.

The release of the video — coupled with CBZ’s claims and the support of an Aurora city councilwoman — helped draw Trump to Aurora for a rally in October. The former president was elected again by voters last month.

But city officials have denied that the apartments were ever overtaken by gangs. They’ve instead said that the Baumgartens, together with their lawyers and a Florida-based PR firm, have sought to shift blame away from their years of mismanagement and toward more recent criminal activity and violence.

“Their position is it’s been taken over by gangs. Our position is — the gangs came in after it was dilapidated and (CBZ) had abandoned the property,” Schulte said in the Post interview. “Regardless, there was criminal activity there.”

Schulte said CBZ essentially wanted the city to close the Edge of Lowry, as Aurora officials had done to the property on Nome Street, because it was easier and wouldn’t require lengthy legal battles. Loans secured by the Edge of Lowry have also not been repaid, and a lawyer for the bank that holds those loans was present in court Thursday.

The closure of the Edge of Lowry also does not end CBZ’s myriad legal woes.

The Colorado Attorney General’s Office has opened a sprawling investigation into the company and its properties in several Colorado cities. CBZ is also the subject of multiple active lawsuits brought by former tenants from at least three different properties, and it owes tens of thousands of dollars in fines in Denver and Aurora over the condition of its buildings.

Another of the Baumgartens’ off-shoot companies, which owns apartments in Denver’s Uptown neighborhood, is also due in court later this month over its litany of substandard conditions.

Zev Baumgarten failed to show up for a separate Aurora court hearing earlier in the day Thursday. He faces seven code violation summonses related to his management of the company’s Aurora apartments. Aurora municipal judges have twice given the city more time to locate Baumgarten but have not been able to do so.

He owns a home in Lone Tree, though not the one that city officials said they visited last month.

Judge Billy Stiggers told lawyers for the city that it appeared that Baumgarten was trying to evade his summonses. Stiggers gave the city until Feb. 14 — when Zev Baumgarten has yet another court hearing in the city — to find him. Stiggers also wondered if the city would pursue a “probable cause warrant” against Baumgarten.

Julie Heckman, a chief deputy city attorney, declined to discuss the possibility of a warrant against Baumgarten, and she also refused to describe what a “probable cause warrant” is when asked by a reporter after the hearing.

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