Lease issues and lackluster City support spur Arvada move
By Pete Stidman
Wax Trax moved to 13th and Washington in 1977, my family bought into the business in 1978, and those who know the neighborhood can guess that we’ve seen a lot happen on the block. Over the years, the store has been hit by cars several times, we’ve been robbed, employee cars have been stolen, and–like many businesses around the city–we deal with mental health and addiction crises that drift into the shop. This is not to say that the neighborhood is unsafe, it’s still a strong community, and true violence is exceedingly rare. But being a small business owner when all this is going on ain’t easy.
So when a fellow small business owner on the block throws in the towel and moves their business out, as did our good friend Mike Martinez, owner of Benny Blancos (Slice o’ the Bronx) this week, we take note – and we try to understand what’s going on.
On a recent Monday evening a customer tried to pass a stolen credit card to Mike for an order, and when he seized the card, the customer got unruly, maced him, and hit him. As terrible as it was, this attack isn’t the reason Mike is leaving 13th, but it definitely confirmed his decision. In his words: “it made it a little easier to swallow, but by that time the wheels were already in motion.”
The real straw that broke the camel’s back was insecurity with his lease. He was getting signals from the landlord that didn’t give him 100% confidence that he’d be able to stay on with favorable terms. But also weighing down the camel’s back for a long time, according to Mike, was the fact the city seems to turn a cold shoulder to the businesses on 13th. Mike said that while Benny Blancos gets tons of support from its Denver customers, the City of Denver never did much to help out, so he’s moved Benny Blancos out to Arvada (10050 Rallston Rd), where he’s already getting a warm reception.
“Colfax gets all the banners and all the love for whatever reason,” he said. “13th Avenue is Denver’s forgotten stepchild… My light pole got knocked down 2 or 3 years ago and it’s still covered in Duct Tape… And that’s unfortunate because I love 13th. The craziness of the area is kind of the appeal you know, or the vibrancy I guess. There’s always something going on on the block.”
Mike’s words resonate with me (don’t worry, Wax Trax is staying put). Not only has one of the streetlights at our building also been out for years after being hit by a car that slid along the top of our raceway-like crashwall, he and I share the experience of trying to solve our block’s problems by organizing a business association. After a great deal of effort, we’re still striking out with a city bureaucracy that doesn’t seem to care whether we succeed or fail.
I first met Mike when I was trying to pull the shop out of the pandemic. We were doing curbside service while the unhoused were camping all over the block. As we reopened our doors to customers, the encampments were a threat to our foot-traffic. As much as I care about people having a place to live, I also had to make sure my customers felt safe coming in so that our employees and I could pay rent!
I found that I could call the city all day and not receive an iota of help. Of course I knew the city was busy at that crazy time, but I could also see several businesses closing their doors for good on Colfax near the store. I was worried, so I walked the block and talked to every business owner. Mike was one of many who said they’d help out, and he showed up to meetings to talk about how to fix things.
After much trial and error, we learned from a member of then-Mayor Michael Hancock’s office that we needed to flood the city with 311 reports to get action. So we set up a group text to make that happen when campers popped up. We also negotiated with Xcel to use the substation to hold the 13th Avenue Flea and a series of Sidewalk Shows every week in the summer. We had a lot of fun doing it, and a lot of vendors got to make a little cash.
As those problems wound down, we took on a new issue: speeding and parking, basically the design of 13th and a bit of side street stuff. 13th and Washington is a high crash location, and hard-to-find parking is one of the negative comments all of our businesses get on the regular. We thought we could fix it with the city’s help, but this is where we hit a brick wall.
Through several meetings over about three months the 13th Ave Biz Group hashed out a comprehensive parking plan that actually narrowed 13th west of Washington to two traffic lanes by adding a parking lane (to match 13th east of Washington) to slow down traffic. This would require removing the highway-like crash wall. We also asked for parking meters, loading zone adjustments and adding more 2-hour parking on the side streets (with residential permit parking).
Mike rides a bike, so he didn’t want a parking spot in front of his pizza shop as much as he wanted a little place where people could sit down and eat pizza in front of Benny Blancos. So we put that in the plan too.
We sent a letter in October last year, with every business from Washington to Pennsylvania signed on. It was unanimous. We expected that doing something as cool as a sidewalk cafe for 13th would be a tough ask, but what we didn’t expect was the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure’s (DOTI) response to be a hard “no” on everything we asked for.
And then, of course, as most of our readers know, this spring our weekly flea markets and free live shows on the block were closed down because of one complaint back in October 2022 and the city’s lawyers, who argued that hearsay evidence was a good reason to kill community events. That cancellation really impacted Sunday sales for all businesses on the block.
These sorts of failures by the city (and there are too many others to name here) can really wear on a small business owner, who has enough to handle inside their walls without having to also worry about the streets outside.
One of our presidential candidates recently said that “Small businesses are the backbone of our communities. They strengthen the middle class by creating jobs, advancing opportunity, and establishing pathways for Americans to build intergenerational wealth.” This is certainly true of Mike, whose stepson works in the shop, but I can’t honestly say if the city of Denver’s bureaucracy shares this same sentiment.
About a month or two ago, I cornered Mayor Johnston (a Wax Trax fan I’ve learned) and built a connection to his staff. By bandying his name around with the DOTI people that had previously said no to us on all our parking asks, I was able to finally get a group of them to come look at the situation last Monday. I thought maybe we had a breakthrough, but all I got from the DOTI folks on that walking tour were commitments on a few parking sign changes and a whole lot of ‘no can do’ on solving our bigger problems.
It still remains to be seen what the Mayor’s office is going to do about our street, or the bigger problem with Denver’s no-can-do DOTI. But it’s very clear to me that when small businesses aren’t valued by city staff, when their requests aren’t taken seriously, it has real consequences. Jobs are lost, neighborhoods change for the worse, and ultimately, the city could lose much of its character.
I have to believe there’s a chance that if Mike saw 13th Avenue changing for the better, or his streetlight being fixed, or even a small patio for his customers in his future–a neighborhood that was making real improvements– he might have worked it out with his landlord and stuck it out.
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