Side Streets ~ Neighborhood people and issues

Archive for the 'Golden Cycle Mill' Tag

100 EXOTIC BIRDS, FIVE AKITAS, TWO WOLF HYBRIDS and a patridge in a pear tree

January 5th, 2011, 1:59 pm by

Cynthia Van Wormer can’t understand why her neighbors care if she keeps 100 exotic birds, breeds them and sells them from her modest ranch home in Woodmoor, east of Monument.

She doesn’t understand why anyone thinks her Akita dogs were vicious or dangerous and had to be destroyed.

And she’s angry the county forced her to send her wolf-hybrids to a shelter in California.

She hopes her response to complaints will convince the El Paso County Commission to let her keep her menagerie. At least her birds and her business at her home.

“It’s really sad I can’t live and run a little business in my own home and be left alone,” Van Wormer said Wednesday.

She blames her neighbor, John Clark, for her problems. He has filed repeated complaints against Van Wormer over her animals. It goes back to 2002 when one of Van Wormer’s dogs, Kai, left her yard and attacked his golden retriever pups.

The humane society impounded Kai, held it 101 days before a judge released the dog and it returned home. A few months later, the dog died unexpectedly and Van Wormer blamed Clark.

Here is a look at the neighborhood from Google Earth:

Here is the packet of information prepared for El Paso County Commissioners by the code enforcement officers to be presented at Thursday’s meeting. Here is the second violation notice mailed in November.

Clark denies Van Wormer’s allegation that he poisoned Kai. And tests of the dog were inconclusive. She sued him anyway and won a small settlement.

Things intensified around 2009 when her bird collection grew to about 100, she got three new Akitas and two wolf-hybrids. She found herself facing complaints from Clark, other neighbors, the Woodmoor Improvement Association and the county.

In September, the three Akitas were destroyed after complaints about vicious fighting. And Van Wormer sent the wolf hybrids to a sanctuary in California a couple weeks ago after county complaints.

And she has sought a restraining order against Clark, accusing him of threatening her life.

He denies making any threats and cites her “erratic” behavior as the reason he’s thinking of moving. He said he is scared of her after a domestic dispute in her home in June 2000 led to her arrest for assault on a police officer. And he cited her use of a gun around 1999, shooting at someone in her home.

What about the shooting in 1999? She says an intruder threatened her life so she grabbed her husband’s gun and fired, being careful to aim about six inches to the side of the man’s head. The man fled and was not immediately caught.

Van Wormer said Thursday the man was caught, eventually, and is incarcerated. But she did not give his name and declined to answer any more questions from me about the incident.

What about that arrest back in June 2000? She said it happened after EL Paso County Sheriff’s deputies answered a call about a domestic dispute at the home. She wanted to throw her husband out of the house. She said he kicked the door in.

But when police arrived, she said one of the officers sexually assaulted her by placing both hands on her breasts and pushing her up against a wall to restrain her. She responded by slapping him. The slap was minor, she said, and didn’t even leave a red mark.

Here’s the police report of the incident. The arresting officers paint a much different, and darker, picture of events.

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JOSEPH O’BRIEN: BARON OF BLIGHT IN COLORADO SPRINGS

November 10th, 2010, 11:30 am by

How would you like to live across the street from this house?  

Joseph O'Brien's family home at 715 N. 24th St. has been condemned since 1973. Neighbors are sick of looking at it and suffering depressed property values due to it.

This house at 715 N. 24th St., on the corner of Dale Street on Colorado Springs‘ west side is owned by Joseph O’Brien of O’Brien Printing. It has been sitting and rotting since it was condemned since 1973.  

  

You read that correctly. The house was condemned when Richard Nixon was still in the White House. It has been a blight on the neighborhood ever since. That’s 37 years and counting.  

It was built in 1905 by O’Brien’s grandmother. His son, Glen, has promised the city repeatedly to repair the house. And he has done considerable work, at times, on the structure.  

In this photo, you can see the concrete basement he poured after jacking the structure up. Then he built a large addition on the back with the long, slanting roof that overhangs the original peak of the house.  

  

You can also see, through the shoulder-high weeds, the rusting scaffolding that has stood for a decade or more since activity lurched to a halt.  

For the past three years, neighbor Kevin Sutherland has had a front-porch view of the mess. He’s called the city, like many neighbors, wondering why something isn’t done to enforce the city’s 2006 blight ordinance and require O’Brien to repair the house.   

  

The south side of the house is not much different. A hand-built ladder leans against the wall.  

  

Inside the house, Glen O’Brien has amassed building materials such as doors and wood for his project. But mostly they’ve just sat, gathering dust. O’Brien did upgrade the electrical service to the house. But much more work remains.  

In 2005, the O’Brien house became “exhibit A” in efforts to get a blight ordinance written into city codes. Those efforts finally succeeded in 2006. 

 But Ken Lewis, code enforcement administrator, said he’s been frustrated in his efforts to get the courts to take seriously the criminal summons his officers write for blight violations. 

 

Lewis vows the O’Brien house is going to be repaired now, or else. He has given O’Brien until Friday to start actively repairing it or face a summons, fine and more aggressive action. 

The O’Briens are an old Colorado Springs family. Joseph O’Brien’s father,  William P. O’Brien, operated O’Brien Typesetting and Printing and amassed many properties in the city. 

His holdings included a 10-acre parcel he bought in 1962 on South 21st Street now known as the Gold Hill Mesa subdivision.

 The property included the old Golden Cycle Mill office building, the mill smokestack – a westside landmark – and a crusher building. 

The printing business is on 19th Street, not far from Uintah Gardens Shopping Center. It has suffered the same fate at the house on 24th Street. It is overgrown with weeds and its 10 acres or so includes a collection of junk cars and other things. 

   

If this house sounds familiar, you are a longtime Side Streets reader.

In fact, I featured this house in my very first Side Streets column on July 18, 2002. And I wrote about it again in 2006 as pressure mounted on the city to combat blight in neighborhoods.

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