Troubled
house on the Hill
Battle between CU student, neighbors typifies conflict
Daily Camera - 26 Dec 2004
...BOULDER, CO - If Zach Marks and his neighbors agree on anything,
it's this: The trouble started as soon as the University of Colorado
student and his parents bought the house on University Hill 31/2 years
ago.
The house and its occupants typify the conflicts
that divide permanent Hill residents from the fresh waves of students
who sweep into the neighborhood every year.
The people who live inside the house at 950 15th St. look at it
very differently than do the neighbors who cast baleful gazes upon
it from the outside.
The view from inside: The house is a real-estate
success story, a potential boon for surrounding property values.
Marks' California-based parents spent thousands of dollars renovating
a former "dump" into a comfortable eight-bedroom house.
The view from outside: The house's occupants are
the epitome of boozy, noisy and criminal student behavior, pure
property-value poison. When loud sounds — of bottles breaking,
drunks vomiting, thugs fighting and fireworks exploding —
punctuate the night, they come from 950 15th St.
From the inside: The house is the typical college
hangout in every way. It just happens to be cursed with the world's
most vindictive neighbors, who have co-opted the police department
in their campaign to keep students from living just a few hundred
feet from the university. It's the scapegoat for every instance
of student misbehavior that occurs anywhere near the property.
From the outside: The house is the reason a law
called the Nuisance Abatement Ordinance was passed — and the
fact that its owners still haven't been brought to justice is an
infuriating reminder of the city of Boulder's failure to crack down
on blatant, irresponsible scofflaws.
It's a perfectly average-looking house, two stories,
wood and brick, with a neatly tended lawn. It has a big wooden porch.
A doormat reads "Go Away!" A few feet away, piles of leaves
tucked into the porch's corners only partially cover the blue glint
of empty Keystone beer cans shining through the brown.
Outside
"For the last 40 months, we've been terrorized,"
Stephen Walsh said one recent morning over coffee and eggs. He was
enjoying breakfast at Burnt Toast, a Hill restaurant older neighbors
look on as a family-friendly oasis among the bars that line the
rest of the Hill district.
Walsh and his neighbors watched apprehensively
in 2001 as the Markses renovated the house, expanding it to eight
bedrooms. When the renovations were completed, Walsh said, he and
other neighbors saw their worst fears materialize: Party-prone CU
students moved into every single room, making a mockery of the city's
occupancy laws and turning the house into a de facto fraternity.
Boulder's laws say no more than three unrelated
people may live together; Walsh and other Hill neighbors say Marks
flouted those laws for years. Walsh said the extra tenants filled
up the street with their cars and added to the noise level the property
produced.
Then the parties started.
Several nights a week, the Marks house exported
music, noise and a confetti of beer cans and red cups onto the lawns
of their aghast neighbors.
"Every Friday, Saturday, Sunday morning, I'm
out there picking up after them," Walsh said. "I'm their
janitor."
Night after night, Walsh said, he and his neighbors
would wake up to fireworks exploding outside. They'd call the police,
who could never find the culprits.
One party, or an occasional party, wouldn't be
so bad, Walsh said. But he said the pain and inconvenience accumulated
slowly but surely, driving neighbors to distraction.
"It was death by a thousand cuts," he
said. "You could never count on a good night's sleep.
Since 2001, 950 15th St. is the address listed
on nearly two dozen city citations — for loud parties, for
trash, for litter and for third-degree assault.
Police have issued 13 alcohol-related citations
to occupants or people partying at the house, according to police
records. In January, police arrested a 19-year-old woman on suspicion
of third-degree assault after a fracas at a house party. They've
issued another dozen code-enforcement tickets for noise and litter.
Attempts to enlist Zach Marks in some sort of cooperative
relationship have failed, Walsh said. Marks went through a "restorative
justice" program after receiving a $1,000 party ticket and
also met with the University Hill Neighborhood Association. But
those efforts never bore fruit, Walsh said, and the parties and
noise soon resumed.
Neighbors who called the police faced reprisal,
Walsh said: "One guy called the police, and the next day there's
dog shit on his porch."
Inside
"He'd sit there by the phone, and 11:01, he'd
call the police," Marks said, referring to Walsh and the hour
at which the city's noise ordinance takes effect. "Any time
there was noise, anywhere on the block, they'd call the police on
this house."
The inside of Marks' house seems to bear out some
of the neighbors concerns. Hundreds of empty liquor bottles line
the wall, trophy-case style, alongside street signs that were once
the property of CU and the city. A stained pool table takes pride
of place in the dining room.
As Zach Marks and his parents, Ellie and Alan Marks,
sat on the porch of the home one recent afternoon, they didn't deny
that the house hosted parties. That's what normal college students
do, Ellie Marks said, and neighbors who think otherwise are living
in a fantasy world.
"We're across the street from campus. We're
right here on the Hill," she said. "This is where the
students live."
The Markses said their house is surrounded by ultra-sensitive
neighbors who call police at the slightest provocation. They think
they're on the receiving end of a concerted campaign brought on
by neighbors to use police power to get rid of people they don't
like.
They complain of neighbors peeking in their windows,
over their back fence, even coming into the house to snoop for evidence
of over-occupancy. The Markses said they've always limited the home
to the legally allowed three tenants.
Zach Marks said he's gotten a ticket for having
a couch on the front lawn during renovations: "We had the building
permit taped up, and they still wrote the ticket."
They've gotten trash tickets for a single piece
of litter in the alley behind the house, he said.
Police who would otherwise have plenty of better
things to do come to the house and write the tickets, Alan Marks
said, "because they're kowtowing to the University Hill Neighborhood
Association."
He added, "They're looking for ways to get
college students off of the Hill."
City hall
Boulder's City Council passed the Nuisance Abatement
Ordinance in 2003 to give the city a tool to use against property
owners for whom a slew of normal citations aren't sufficient to
change their behavior, said Councilman Gordon Riggle.
Theoretically, the law gives city officials the
power to compel property owners who have received more than two
citations for violating city ordinances to come in and talk about
how to fix recurring problems. If property owners don't cooperate,
the city can sue.
Now that the law has been in place for almost two
years, Riggle said, it's time to see if the law is accomplishing
its goal. There's evidence that it isn't, he said.
"Clearly, there are still problem properties
in Boulder, which means to me one of two things," Riggle said.
"Either the nuisance property ordinance isn't working in its
present form, or our enforcement policies aren't working. It's one
or the other."
Riggle said the ordinance is one of many being
reviewed by the CU-City Oversight group, a collection of city and
CU officials who are trying to address alcohol-related problems
in Boulder. That review process should tell them what needs to be
changed —the law or the way it's enforced, Riggle said.
Most of the infractions Marks' household received
preceded the law's passage. But in July, police wrote a ticket for
fireworks, and a month later, issued a noise warning. The noise
warning triggered the nuisance abatement process.
But the law hasn't had much of an effect on the
Markses' property, thanks to a technicality that essentially leaves
the family free to ignore the city.
Corey Schmidt, Boulder's chief building official,
called for a "settlement meeting" with Alan Marks. The
purpose of that meeting was to lay out the complaints and elicit
an agreement from Marks to address the problems.
But Marks wouldn't travel from California for the
meeting, Schmidt said, so the matter was forwarded to prosecutors
— marking only the second time that has happened since the
law was put into place.
That's where the technicality comes in. When police
contacted Marks about noise earlier this year, they gave him a warning
instead of a citation. And a warning doesn't give prosecutors the
ammunition they need to go to court.
Prosecutors have sent a letter to Alan Marks asking
him for a meeting so they can come to a voluntary agreement over
some of the issues raised by neighbors.
Schmidt said he knows some people aren't happy
with the way the nuisance abatement law works, but he said that
doesn't mean it isn't a good legal tool.
"There's a history there on that street, and
I think they were really hoping they could get their pound of flesh
out of this guy," Schmidt said. "But that's not the purpose
of the ordinance."
Outside
In Walsh's view, there's been far too much talk
and too many failed attempts at reconciliation.
What there hasn't been nearly enough of, he said,
is action on the city's part. And that sends a very clear message
to people inclined to break the law over and over again: Go right
ahead.
"In our town, we don't have to challenge the
laws that exist," he said. "You have to challenge them
to enforce the laws that already exist."
The court-ordered meetings and attempted mediation
have resulted in more of the same, Walsh said, and the city's reluctance
to challenge scofflaws means average people like himself have to
do it for them.
"The city isn't doing it," he said. "In
order to have rules enforced, citizens need to go on the offensive."
Inside
Ellie and Alan Marks were in town last week to
celebrate their son's graduation, and to ponder the fate of the
house. Their daughter, Amanda, is a CU freshman, and she could move
into the house once her brother moves on.
But they're not sure if that will happen or not.
They're weighing other options, including selling the house despite
the sluggish market.
"The biggest factor is whether she will be
harassed," Ellie Marks said, referring to her daughter. "We
don't want her to have to put up with what Zach put up with."
A few minutes later, however, Ellie Marks didn't
sound like someone ready to concede.
"If people think they can make two phone calls
and make me sell this house, they're mistaken," she said.
