Posted on 08/04/2019 1:23:58 AM PDT by grundle
Denver NIMBYs are using historic preservation laws to stop a restaurant owner from selling his diner to a developer so he can retire.
Tom Messina owns a restaurant. Or at least he thought he did.
For the past 20 years, Messina has operated Tom's Diner on Colfax Avenue in downtown Denver, Colorado. Running the popular 24-hour restaurant—located just a few blocks from the Colorado state capital—is demanding work that Messina is looking to move on from as he nears retirement age.
"I'm a restaurateur who's worked his life flipping pancakes and selling eggs," says Messina. "I have a beautiful family I want to spend time with. I just turned 60 and I want to do something else."
Messina's plan had always been to finance his retirement by selling his restaurant. That dream looked like it would become a reality earlier this year when Alberta Company offered him $4.8 million for his property, which the Colorado-based developer plans to turn into an 8-story apartment building complete with shops on the ground floor.
The price was right for Messina and Alberta's plans fit perfectly with Denver's 2010 rezoning of the property, which marked it as part of an urban center neighborhood fit for denser, mixed-use development.
Everything was going swimmingly until Denver's historic preservationists got wind of Messina's evil plan to sell his property and retire after two decades of serving Denver residents in order for new business owners and residents to work and live where his diner currently sits.
When Alberta Company applied for what is known as a Certificate of Non-Historic Status, which would allow the building to be demolished and redeveloped, five community members assisted by the local preservationist nonprofit Historic Denver filed an application to designate Messina's restaurant a historic landmark. If granted, this landmark status would prevent the building's redevelopment into apartments, drastically reducing the value of Messina's property.
In their 30-plus page application to the city, these activists argued that Messina's restaurant—first built in 1967 as part of the now-extinct White Spots restaurant chain—is a classic example of mid-century Googie architecture and thus worthy of protection.
The same application notes that seven White Spot restaurants were built in the Denver-area in the 1960s. Three of them are still standing, including another one on the same avenue as Messina's restaurant. Nevertheless, these preservationists argue that Messina's building is a particularly good example of Googie tilted roofs and expansive glass windows.
These same activists note that a 2008/2009 survey marked Tom's Diner as eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places, and the Historic Denver Guidebook includes an entry on the building.
In a July 16 report, city planning staff recommended that Messina's building be given landmark status. The following week, the city's Landmark Preservation Commission, at a public hearing where Messina pleaded with them to leave his property alone, voted unanimously to recommend landmarking the restaurant. The landmark application now goes to the city council, which will make a final determination.
Messina describes that decision as "kick in the gut." The value he might lose from a landmark designation, he says, would jeopardize the retirement he's worked so hard for.
"I'm sure people can imagine how it would feel," he tells Reason. "You plan for something and you think it's yours to do as you wish and then this pops up."
In the run-up to the city council's decision, preservation activists have said they want to work out a mutually beneficial arrangement that will allow Messina to sell his building while saving the building aesthetic they value so much.
"We met with Tom today to present him with some creative and viable solutions. We know this is a life-changing opportunity for him, which is why our focus is on a solution that meets his needs and protects the identity and history of the Colfax corridor," Jessica Caouette, one of the five people who signed onto the landmarking application, said in a statement posted to her Facebook page last week.
Messina says that he's had several meetings with activists where they've presented him with alternate designs for his property that would have apartments go on the vacant parts of his lot while leaving the current restaurant structure intact.
But building only on the 60 percent of his land unoccupied by the diner, says Messina, would still greatly reduce its value. And that's assuming he could even find a developer who'd be willing to build what activists are looking for.
In addition to the personal cost this would visit on Messina, it would also deprive Denver—which is rapidly becoming one of the country's most expensive cities—of additional housing.
The city council is scheduled to discuss the landmark application for Messina's property next week and will vote on whether to grant it later in the month.
Using historic landmark designations to prevent unwanted development is not uncommon, and is often done over the objections of the property owner in question. Similar cases include the Strand bookstore in New York City and the fight over the Showbox concert venue in Seattle.
For Messina, the issue boils down to the fact that this is his building, and he should get to decide what happens to it, not a city council or neighborhood activists. He tells Reason "that something I've worked for my entire life could be decided this way is very unsettling."
There’s another Tom’s Diner?
Sounds like the fair market price is 4.8 million. The preservationists should have to pay full price, if they want it.
That’s evil! 1967 isn’t even old.
It sounds like some competing developer wants it.
It’s a commercial property, not his private property/residence.
And the developer plans to build what exactly, section 8 housing? Urbanize an otherwise pleasant area? Just asking...
I have no problem with the so-called “activism” — the “capitalistic” developer shouldn’t dictate the quality of the environment the surrounding taxpayers have been supporting.
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Let’s not forget the average Libertarian considers abortion an “independent” choice. So don’t expect an article from Reason to be necessarily rational.
Shutdown the diner and turn it into a Trump 2020 Victory location and see how quickly its historical status is changed.
LOL!!! How TRUE!!
Not section 8. 8 story apartment. It is the only way to make housing affordable. Housing cost is a real problem for younger folks.
I’m okay with historic preservation for some buildings from the 1800s and before, but 1970? For a diner? This is typical leftists running the world and making sure other people pay for their frivolous demands. If they want the building to stay the same, they should buy it - at fair market value (as determined by the existing offer).
Slip him an extra million for the physical building, and then move it to a new location if they want it that bad.
Gotta come to Jersey. We’ve got the real deal here. Actually diners in the style of the late forties and fifties. Not many left but we’ve got them.
It would create construction jobs, and jobs to run the shops on the ground floor. It would also generate additional taxes for the city of Denver.
I would be shocked if the Denver city council voted against Mr. Messina and the Alberta Company.
Either way, I fully expect a law suit to be filed.
In America, if it’s older than the Mustang it’s “historic.”
Europeans laugh at this.
I hate a damed activist no matter
What his beef is. it
I’m rather proud of this bit of writing, and thought it good enough to share.
I had just read a short article about Europeans and their collective opinion of us (US). I was struck by this line:
“...[Europeans regard Americans as] upstarts who have little history, experience or wisdom...”
Which led me to write the following:
All my time in Europe (mostly Germany) I came up against this assumption. What they entirely failed to realize, and often failed to recognize as true even after I told them, was that we are them. + We are that part of them that had the ambition to pack what we could carry, leave our homes in Bavaria and Sachsen-Anhalt and Alsace-Lorraine and Calabria and Norway and a myriad others, to make a new life in the New World, before and after its incorporation as a nation.
+ We are the second sons of the ruling houses who, disinherited by primogeniture and/or bankruptcy, left the palaces, manors and stately homes to seek our fortunes in honest labor.
+ We are the political and religious dissidents, and not a few rascals and cads, who were transported against our will to the American Colonies before the British discovered Australia.
Their history is ours, tempered by the perspective of distance....
Their experience is ours, modified, enlarged, and improved by our own....
Their wisdom is ours, corrected by practical application to fresh circumstance....
They would do well to follow our example. This would become obvious if they would drop their pride long enough to witness how, in three hundred years (give or take), we have surpassed what they accomplished in three thousand.
Formatting slightly FUBAR. Sorry.
If this was New Jersey the place would burn to the ground one night when nobody was there ... and the deal with the developer would go through. The developer might even consider donating a new fire truck to the city. :-P
Lefists are truly evil. Evil, ugly and evil. Ver, very evil.
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