The Edge at Lowry Apartmets in Aurora, Colorado. Credit: Colorado Sun

The infamous Edge at Lowry apartments that started a nationwide conversation about Venezuelan gangs in Aurora has finally been shut down.

Early this year, the city hired Property Solutions Colorado to serve as a temporary property administrator and lead the closure process. They completed substantial repairs to the buildings to make them habitable while connecting qualified residents to relocation resources.

Residents were required to provide their names and contact information. They were also required to provide a form of identification so Property Solutions Colorado could perform background checks and assist residents with housing applications and potential employment.

In the end, 85 residents across 23 apartment units received a total of $94,375 in direct assistance.

Aurora Police Chief Todd Chamberlain said that the city of Aurora had put the final nail in the coffin of the troubled Edge at Lowry apartment complex.

“We have turned the corner,” Chamberlain said during a news conference in one of the units.

The media field trip to a third-floor apartment — Chamberlain said — was to show the utter squalor Venezuelan immigrants had been living in.

“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.

Aurora Police Chief Todd Chamberlain reads a prepared statement as he announces the closure of The Edge of Lowry apartments in Aurora, Colorado. Credit: Denver Gazzete

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 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 finally closed.

Finding homes for people still inside the ramshackle apartment complex was difficult and filled with controversy to the last minute, according to city officials. According to the city, residents who received assistance were Haitian, Venezuelan, Colombian, Mexican nationals and U.S. citizens.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The next Aurora Municipal Court hearing on the Criminal Nuisance Action, the civil process that led to the Edge at Lowry’s closure, is scheduled for early March. The city has also filed seven criminal cases against CBZ’s principals for unresolved habitability problems, code violations and neglect.

The city will place a lien on the properties to recoup any costs associated with the closure and any assistance provided to qualified residents.