Is Colorado Springs being meanies to the greenies?

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Some think so after officials told Tim Keenan he had to move his mattress recycling business out of a warehouse behind his rental house on Costilla Street in the Hillside neighborhood east of downtown.

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Keenan thought he’d found a great new business opportunity when he started collecting old mattresses and stripped them for their metal springs, wood, fabric and foam.

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With scrap metal selling for $200 a pound, it would be easy to recycle. A recycler in Utah pays for foam. Wood is valuable as firewood. And fabric has a little bit of value.

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It was win-win. The city is overflowing with old mattresses, officials say. Landfills are overflowing, as well, and mattresses are a huge problem because they don’t compress well.

But Keenan ran into one small problem . . . his A Better Tomorrow Recycling business doesn’t mesh well in neighborhoods.

A homeowners association “got grumpy” when he started stripping mattresses in his garage.

So he moved to a house on Costilla, a busy commercial street east of downtown. The house included a large warehouse in back and seemed perfect for his business.

And everything was fine until his truck broke down and he needed his warehouse to work on the vehicle.

 Mattresses started piling up in the driveway off the alley.

 Neighbors complained. An officer from the city Code Enforcement Agency came out and found the mess.

She also discovered the recycling business operating in a commercial zone. Recycling is 0nly allowed in industrial zones. It had to go.

Keenan is frustrated. Everyone seems to agree there is a huge need for a mattress recycling business. He’s in a building that has housed businesses for years. It’s not a pristine neighborhood. His operation is off an alley and is surrounded by a locksmith, mini-warehouses, a roofing company and more.

But recycling just doesn’t fit, officials say. Keenan has until Nov. 15 to end his recycling activities. He hopes to move to a new warehouse at 2512 Weston Road, just off Delta Drive near Hancock Expressway on the southeast side of the city.

Tim Keenan describes how he strips mattresses, separating their metal springs from their wood frames, foam and fabric in this Oct. 29, 2010, photo

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MATTRESS RECYCLING FLOPS IN NEIGHBORHOOD is a post from: Side Streets

John Stevens, 42, is completing a triplex on Cucharras Street in the Hillside neighborhood east of downtown. He was inspired by a similar steel house built in 2004 by Bill and Paula Neal around the corner on Prospect Street.

A rusted tin building is news when it’s a brand, new building and represents the continuation of an architectural renaissance in a neighborhood once plagued by drug dealers, prostitutes and other criminals. 

The building is a triplex being constructed by John Stevens, a carpenter who believes the Hillside neighborhood east of downtown Colorado Springs is a bargain and ready to grow. 

Stevens hopes to have the triplex finished in a few weeks and ready to be rented. 

He was inspired to build the house after seeing the steel house built by Bill and Paula Neal around the corner on Prospect Street.

The rusting tin and corrugated metal camouflages a modern building that boasts 2-inch concrete floors with hot-water radiant heat, snow-melt sensors, tankless water heaters and more. 

Stevens has taken a rundown house that he bought out of foreclosure and invested hundreds of thousands creating three rental units that boast  mountain views, tw0-car garages and other amenities not common in Hillside. 

Most intriguing is how his architect, Jerry Burns of Architrilogy, re-oriented the building from a north-facing house to a structure that faces west, spanning the depth of the lot. 

The result is nice views of the mountains and city. 

Here’s a couple other views of Stevens’ triplex and a map of Hillside from FlashEarth.com.

Exposed steel beams, painted corrugated metal and rusted tin combine to give the triplex an industrial feel.

RUSTED TIN BUILDING IN HILLSIDE? IS THAT NEWS?!!? is a post from: Side Streets

Kristine Hembre

Loyal Side Streets readers — both of you — may have missed the headline recently involving would-be developer, allegery doctor Kristine Hembre.

You may remember Hembre. She’s the 50-year-old owner of Elle Development Co. She wanted to build a subdivision, called Horizon View, along Mesa Road north of Uintah Street.

She planned to remove an old, existing house and build five modern, two-story houses on the five-acre parcel.

Neighbors vehemently opposed her. They cherish the rural flavor of their tiny Rawles Open Space neighborhood, as it is known. They said the style of homes, density and even her plans for city water and sewer would ruin the character of the place.

Hembre spent three years and hundreds of thousands of dollars on her subdivision. She hired former City Councilman Bill Guman to plead her case before the City Council in April 2009. And she was frustrated and angry when the Council told her to go back and work with neighborhood opponents on a compromise.

A few months later, she dropped her plans.

Police say she found a new project for her property at 1635 Mesa Road.

On Oct. 2, Hembre and two men were arrested after 83 marijuana plants were discovered and seized during a police raid at the house. Detectives reported finding an “elaborate” marijuana growing operation in the basement.

Colorado Springs Police said they obtained a search warrant based on a tip about someone illegally growing marijuana. They also checked utility records and found spiking electrical use at the house.

In addition to the plants, police found 1 ounce of marijuana and a shotgun.

Police arrested Hembre and a man they described as her boyfriend, Jordan Liken, 25, on suspicion of cultivating marijuana.

In addition, police arrested Liken’s roommate, Aaron Cavanaugh, 28, on suspicion of sexual assault and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Cavanaugh allegedly gave marijuana to a 16-year-old girl. Police also say he had sex with the girl.

I asked Police Det. Jim Rodgers if this was just a case of tenants taking advantage of a landlord and maybe Hembre had no idea  there was a pot-growing operation at the house on Mesa.

“She was aware of what was there,” Rodgers said. “She lives at another address but she sometimes spent the night at the Mesa house.”

Rodgers said Liken tried to defend the operation as a legal medical marijuana production site.

“He didn’t have any of the paperwork necessary to show it was a legal operation,” Rodgers said.

Even if her boyfriend had a medical marijuana growing license, it would be illegal for Hembre to be involved, Rodgers said.

“State law prohibits it,” he said. “No physician can have a stake in a medical marijuana operation.”

He said Hembre was arrested at the scene with her boyfriend, his roommate and the juvenile.

A biography on the Pikes Peak Allergy & Asthma website describes Hembre as a board-certified allergist and immunologist. She also is certified in internal medicine.

I e-mailed Hembre to get her side of the pot bust story.

Here is her response received late Wednesday:

“I don’t like your reporting style. Sorry not interested.”

Ouch. I didn’t even know I had a style.

Here are links to a blog I wrote April 2009 when she went before the City Council and a follow-up blog in November 2009 when she dropped her project.

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WOULD-BE DEVELOPER MAKES NEW HEADLINES is a post from: Side Streets

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Robin McPeek  believes in giving back to her community.

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 She appreciates Colorado Springs and particularly enjoys walking her dog in Bonforte Park and along the Rock Island Trail.

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So when the Colorado Springs Parks Department announced in February it was pulling 396 garbage cans from 128 neighborhood parks as a cost-cutting measure, McPeek worried what would happen.

The Parks Department took them away to save $40,000 in liners, roll-off service costs, landfill fees and worker time.

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She feared the park and trail would become trashy places.

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That’s why McPeek volunteered when Springs resident Steve Immel created Proud of Our Parks to encourage people to adopt their neighborhood parks and collect the trash.

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McPeek thought it would be no big deal to picked up the trash bags  from Bonforte Park once a week.

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Six months later, she has had a change of heart.

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She still loves her park and trail.

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 But she issick of hauling garbage and feels unappreciated.

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McPeek is so burned out she says she will not continue collecting the garbage next summer.

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If the city doesn’t change its policy and start picking up the trash, Bonforte will again be a garbage orphan.

Not all the Proud of Our Parks volunteers who adopted parks are burned out. Of the 160 or so trash cans being patrolled by volunteers, about one-third are sponsored by businesses and the rest are mostly neighborhood groups, Immel said.

Sue Iverson, Tony Valdez, Bonnie Hansen, Mike Lucas and Mitch Lucas have shared the duty of taking out the trash at Broadmoor Glen park since March 2010.

Real estate agents have their smiling faces on many cans. Restaurants are frequent adoptees, too.

A typical neighborhood group is one organized by Sue Iverson to patrol Broadmoor Glen Park in the 211-home Reserve at Broadmoor Glen neighborhood.

Iverson said she rotates with three other families. They emtpy the garbage twice a week. They learned to use Bungee cords to secure the bags and everything has gone smoothly.

Iverson said one family used the trash can project as a chance to teach their son about giving back to his community. For her, it’s a chance for community service and to protect the property values in the neighborhood where she has lived 11 years.

Kurt Schroeder of the Parks Department applauded all the volunteers who have adopted parks.

He said the program worked well all summer. He said a few glitches involved garbage cans left unattended during volunteers’ vacations. But he said the program is a huge success.

Schroeder said it’s unknown if the City Council will approve money for trash removal in the 2011 budget.

Here’s an earlier column I wrote about Proud of Our Parks and my previous blog on the subject.

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BONFORTE COULD BECOME GARBAGE ORPHAN is a post from: Side Streets

The sounds of Christmas at your neighborhood lighting displays might include a distant “wop, wop, wop” mixed in with the gunning of engines from cars lined up and down the street.

Colorado Vertical, the helicopter tourist company based at Colorado Springs Airport, says the holiday lighting season is its busiest time of year.

But Will Sanders, who founded the company in 2006 with his wife, Kristen, promises not to disrupt neighborhoods with his flights.

“We try to be good neighbors,” Sanders said. “We’re not buzzing neighborhoods, that’s for sure.”

In fact, since moving the company to the Springs in August 2008, he’s only received one noise complaint despite averaging at least one flight a day.

“Our helicopter is smaller and newer and not a noisy helicopter,” Sanders said. “And when we’re en route to our sights, we’re going 120 mph.

“So we’re not over any neighborhood very long.”

There are exceptions. Once a month, Sanders conducts a “city prayer flight” in which he takes up a group of pastors, for free, to allow them to pray over their church and the city.

Those flights require hovering over a specific spot for a few minutes of prayer.

But then the bright blue metal bird is gone.

The rest of the time, Sanders’ helicopter is zipping to the Garden of the Gods, up Ute Pass to various sites on Pikes Peaks, down around Cheyenne Canon, The Broadmoor and other destinations.

It takes folks up for 12-minute flights, for sunrise and sunset, for longer loops and even 75-minute tours into the mountains.

In addition, the company does some freelance flying, for example, to take commercial photographers aloft.

Sanders said he also offers specialized mountain flying training for pilots. But he doesn’t have a full-fledge flight school.

I’ve had a few calls and e-mails about Colorado Vertical from people who didn’t know Colorado Springs had a tourist helicopter service. They were confused because they knew the police helicopters have been sold and they don’t live near a hospital with medical flights.

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TOURIST HELICOPTER VOWS TO BE GOOD NEIGHBOR is a post from: Side Streets

There’s a series of photos spreading across the Internet that purport to show a black bear taking a bath in a water barrel at a home in Colorado Springs.

Can it be true?

Anyone know the answer?

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BATHING BEAR — CAN IT REALLY BE COLORADO SPRINGS? is a post from: Side Streets

Do folks on Blazek Loop (seen in a map from FlashEarth.com) really hate Roberta and Darryl Watkins because they are black and Muslim?

Do they manipulate the irrigation system to ensure the grass around the Watkins’ townhome burns up and dies?

Did they plant trees behind their unit to obscure their view and hide them from the predominantly white neighborhood?

Did they vandalize lilac bushes the Watkins planted? Order the landscaping crew to ignore needles and leaves in the grass around their unit?

Do they warn new neighbors to avoid the Watkins due to their race and religion?

The Watkins sincerely believe neighbors have done all this and more. The believe they are victims of harassment, intimidation and retaliation. 

They believe their townhome was kicked out of a neighboring homeowners association in 2005 when the board learned a black family had purchased it.

The believe Colorado Springs Police won’t pursue a criminal complaint against their neighbors because they are protecting the Campus Commons Townhome Association and its president, a Colorado Springs firefighter.

And they believe the couple living next door to them in the same duplex, Charles and Carolyn Riggle, are the cause of all their problems.

The Riggles have lived in the left side of the townhouse since it was built in 1994. The Riggles live on the right side.

The Riggles say they welcomed the Watkins. They believe much of the animosity the Watkins feels toward them and the HOA is due to a misunderstanding about how the townhome works: everything outside the building is commonly owned property — not privately owned grass, landscaping and trees.

Charles Riggle said the trees are an example of the further misunderstanding. He said the trees were planted to create a buffer from adjacent Damon Drive and to stop neighboring townhome owners from driving across the grass  when moving in and out.

He said the burnt lawn is another misunderstanding. It’s true, he said, he turned the sprinklers on, manually, for a month or so when a problem developed with the automatic timer. And he did not turn on one sector near the Watkins’ unit.

But he explained that was only because the control valve is right next to their home. He didn’t want to upset them by walking up to their house and kneel next to their window to turn it on and off.

As for other complaints, the former president of the neighboring townhome HOA tells me the Watkins/Riggle building was never in their HOA and never removed because a black family moved in.

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BLACK MUSLIM FAMILY CLAIMS NEIGHBORS HATE THEM is a post from: Side Streets

I guess Fascinations, the new sex superstore scheduled to open Saturday, was inevitable. I mean, every product eventually will have it’s own superstore.

We’ve seen it with electronics. Home improvement products. Gourmet cooking devices. Bath products. Linens. Batteries. Light bulbs. Computers. Office supplies.

I guess I’m surprised it’s taken this long to get around to sex.

 And where else but on Academy Boulevard, for decades the pounding heartbeat of all things retail and super in Colorado Springs.

It will be the 17th store in the Chandler, Ariz.-based chain which started in 1981 with a single store in Tucson.

But I guess I am a bit surprised Fascinations chose to open in a strip mall (no pun intended) at Dublin Boulevard within about three miles of the headquarters of Focus on the Family, the Christian ministry, and New Life Church, the evangelical mega-church.

And I suppose I was a bit perplexed the company would choose Conservative Springs, given our reputation as the evangelical Christian Vatican City.

Granted, Fascinations is not a hard-core porn palace with peep shows and booths where who-knows-who does who-knows-what to whomever.

But it has a variety of products I wouldn’t mention in a family newspaper.

That’s why area resident Rita Dennis doesn’t want Fascinations in her neighborhood. She’s telling everyone, writing the City Council, calling people to see if it’s too late to stop Fascinations from opening in the vacant Hollywood Video storefront.

Fascinations spokesman, Micheal Ham, insists neighbors’ fears are unfounded. This is not some dingy, dirty smut parlor. In fact, it looks every bit like a modern retail store.

This is not a place where you park behind the place and sneak in the back door.

It’s a lot of lingerie, oils and lotions designed to attract women and couples and folks with disposable income.

Sure, Ham said, there are sex toys and devices you might not want your middle schooler stuffing in his backpack.

 But store policy prohibits anyone under 18 from even entering the place.

As for choosing Colorado Springs, Ham said it was a logical decision.

Fascination’s four stores in the Denver area attract so many people from our area that it made sense. This way, they won’t have to make the drive.

Maybe we’re not Conservatiave Springs after all.

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SEX SUPERSTORE HAS NEIGHBOR ALL WORKED UP is a post from: Side Streets

Just be glad you don’t live on Parker Street.

The next couple years, life is going to change and folks there may not like it too much.

It’s no fault of their own. They are just unlucky to live near a major traffic bottleneck where Fillmore Street intersects Chestnut and Interstate 25.

It’s a mess. You can see the intersection below on FlashEarth.com:

To address the nasty spider web of streets converging there, the city has conducted an extensive study of the corridor. Check it out at this link.

On the web site, you’ll find links to seven alternatives considered by Colorado Springs traffic engineers. They run the gamut from simply widening Fillmore to six lanes to closing Chestnut Street to building a bypass to loop Chestnut traffic around the intersection.

The engineers are leaning toward the design shown below in black. It is “Alternative 6″ and it involves building a bridge to carry Chestnut under Fillmore as well as a bypass over to Parker.

To get help in deciding, the city’s traffic engineers want your opinion. They have posted a survey online and want you to let them know your thoughts.

Here’s a link to the Fillmore Street Corridor Transit Study.

If enough millions can be found to build the project, it would begin soon.

Tim Roberts, senior transportation planner, said he hopes to have design work underway in 2011-12 and construction in 2013-14.

There’s a sense of urgency because the city hopes to finance the bulk of the project with its share of the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority sales tax revenue. The money the tax generates for capital improvements is scheduled to expire in 2014. The Fillmore project would be the last major project built with the funds.

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Aren’t You Glad You Don’t Live on Parker Street? is a post from: Side Streets