By Teague Bohlen, Westword | Sometime early on April 24, the Clocktower Cabaret experienced a literal shitshow. It wasn’t discovered until 9 a.m., when the venue manager arrived to receive liquor deliveries and found the basement-level establishment flooded with untreated city sewage.
The backup — which also flooded the boiler room for the entire D&F Tower at 1601 Arapahoe Street — was caused by an error on the part of PCL Construction, which had been awarded a $149 million contract for the 16th Street Mall Project…but didn’t realize that the building was tied to city systems. Local businesses have already been complaining about all the obstacles that the lengthy construction project has created, but this mess was particularly crappy.
“Supporting local businesses is a top priority for the city,” says Laura Swartz, communications director for the Denver Department of Finance, which is helping to oversee the 16th Street project. “We are committed to working closely with all businesses to ensure any issues caused by construction are mitigated quickly and efficiently.” After learning of the backup, she adds, the city filed an initial claim with Zurich Insurance within 24 hours of the incident.
The D&F Tower is divided into condominiums; the basement level is leased from the Larkin family by Selene and Jefferson Arca, who run it as the Clocktower Cabaret. While waiting for PCL and the city to cover the damages, the Arcas called HRS Restoration to clean the Clocktower Cabaret and canceled shows in the meantime.
“HRS Restoration did an amazing job,” says Selene Arca. “It was such a mess. Inches of standing raw sewage. Thousands of gallons of it, everywhere. Once they’d done their work cleaning everything — not just the floors, but every chair, every table, everything — we had to then replace pretty much anything that was fabric. We had to rebuild the booth. We’d just put down new carpet in November, and that was obviously ruined.”
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Read the full article here including how much the Arcas may be out for the damage:
https://www.westword.com/news/denver-clocktower-long-history-sewage-mess-21215550
[Thanks to Alex Teitz for contributing this article! http://www.femmusic.com]
Photo: D&F Tower – Library of Congress
August 1, 2024| Colorado Music-Related Business| Barb Dye