Denver Central Market, other RiNo tenants press landlord on security

The privately owned alley outside Gerard’s Pool Hall in RiNo. (Thomas Gounley/BusinessDen)

Shortly before close one night in mid-November, Kim Danner, manager of Gerard’s Pool Hall in RiNo, stepped outside the business to make a call.

She didn’t see anyone when she looked around. But within a minute, Danner said, a man approached her as she sat on a ledge.

“I could tell pretty quickly he was mentally ill, but that’s a super common occurrence, so I didn’t run away,” Danner told BusinessDen. “I just figured I wouldn’t interact with him.”

The man, Danner said, crouched down in front of her — “his face was about an inch from mine” — and yelled at her to “get the f*** out of my space.”

“I said, ‘Guy, I’m just sitting here. I’m just sitting here by myself,’” Danner recalled in early December. 

“Then he punched me, closed fist.”

The incident happened in an alley that is owned, like the pool hall’s building and most others around it, by Edens, a national landlord specializing in retail real estate. The firm has spent $100 million in the last five years on properties within a handful of blocks in RiNo. It plans to embark on a major redevelopment in the near future.

But some of Edens’ tenants say the property has become less safe and are disappointed by what they see as the company’s lack of effort to address it.

Kate Kaufman

“Being RiNo, or anywhere in the city, there’s a pretty high rate of homeless and there’s a small percentage of that population that can cause security issues — thefts, threats, behavior that makes it very difficult to run a business,” said Kate Kaufman, co-operations director of Denver Central Market.

“I put myself in harm’s way frequently,” she said.

Edens executives did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.

The concerns are not new. Kaufman told BusinessDen she and a handful of other tenants attended a meeting with Edens executives in late 2022.

“They said we’re going to do a security assessment and then we’re going to present it to you along with a plan for what we’re going to do,” she said.

A year later, Kaufman and others have not seen the results of that assessment. In a Nov. 20 email to numerous tenants obtained by BusinessDen, Edens executive Jeffrey Pransky wrote that the company did have a third party conduct a security assessment for “several properties,” but that the company wouldn’t be sharing.

“This was done to gain insight, as the owner, into the overall operation of our places,” Pransky emailed. “We do not, as a matter of course, provide third-party reports or assessments to people outside of the company.”

That frustrates people like Chris Parker, owner of Lustre Pearl, a bar that leases from Edens.

“As a landlord, if you go out and get that info, why wouldn’t you share that with your tenants?” Parker said.

Parker said Lustre Pearl has been broken into four times, apparently by the same individual, over the past two years. The crook shatters a window or door, slips in and grabs a bottle or two of alcohol before departing quickly as alarms sound.

His son Preston Parker, who has managed the business since 2020, said the repair costs add up

“Each window has been a couple thousand dollars,” Preston Parker said. “The front door was twice that.”

Edens contracts with local private security firm Front Range Patrol, but security staff aren’t stationed at the site, instead stopping by occasionally or responding to calls, the tenants said. Denver Central Market’s Kaufman said that means there’s security “in theory” and Front Range is “not effective when they do respond.”

Front Range Patrol didn’t respond to a request for comment. In a Nov. 17 email to tenants, Edens executive Tav Ortiz said the company had met that week “with a new potential security vendor.”

Danner, the pool hall manager, said Front Range was nearby when she was assaulted. But she said the guard indicated he couldn’t do anything when the individual crossed the street and was no longer on Edens property.

Danner later emailed Edens’ Ortiz about the incident. He requested she report it to the police. But she and Kaufman said calling Denver police about something like that would be pointless.

“I know from experience the cops don’t care,” Danner said. “They’re not going to show up.”

“It’s real easy to say, when you live in Dallas and don’t have the same police force, to say call the police,” said Kaufman, referencing the city where Ortiz is based.

Both Denver Central Market and Gerard’s are owned in part by Ken Wolf, a prominent RiNo figure who redeveloped and sold Edens much of the local real estate it now owns, for tens of millions. Wolf has clashed with Edens before, on several occasions installing signs at Denver Central Market and his other businesses telling Edens staff they were not allowed to enter.

Wolf said those situations, and the latest one, are not solely about him, noting others have ownership stakes in his businesses and the security situation affects all who lease from Edens. He said he specifically didn’t attend the late 2022 meeting to show he wasn’t the only one concerned.

“I’m the squeaky wheel, but it’s not for my benefit,” Wolf said. “It’s for all the RiNo tenants.”

The Denver Central Market food hall at 2669 Larimer St. (Thomas Gounley/BusinessDen)

Wolf said he can’t understand why Edens won’t share the assessment the company said it conducted.

“I think we all have a right to see the assessment,” Wolf said.

Danner, meanwhile, said she has one main ask. She’d like to see cameras installed in the private alley where she was punched.

“I don’t expect Edens to solve the problem of homelessness, but I think installing cameras would be a huge help,” Danner said. “I’m not sure why that’s not just a given for them.”

Danner has worked at Gerard’s since 2017, but previously worked on South Broadway and Colfax. RiNo, she said, is “turning a little bit more into LoDo in terms of the view of the bars down here.” 

“So we’re getting more of the aggressive bar crowd” she said.

Danner said she didn’t seek medical attention the night she was punched, but that the incident still lingers emotionally.

“Just talking about it gives me anxiety,” she said.