Gates Rubber Company - Demolition Diary part 9
Sunday, January 26, 2014
This week, work ended a little before 6am on Sunday morning. There wasn’t a whole lot to do, so all I had to was wait for the day shift supervisor to show up, and I could start my 4 day weekend. (Wish I had those here...) Obviously, plans were to drop by Gates before going home, to see what else had been destroyed in the seven days since I was last there.
Problem being, it was completely dark outside. Likely be at least an hour, before the sun rose enough for decent pictures.
Like the one above!
Well, I’m in need of more of those great Great Value Pre-cooked Pork Sausage Patties, from the Englewood WalMart. It’s also cold enough that I can keep frozen food in my car for a couple of hours with no concern of defrosting. Said sausages will provide a balanced late afternoon nutritious breakfast, before my 12 hour graveyard shift!
It was still too dark for a decent picture of the Englewood WalMart, so I’ll resort to a stock photo from my collection. This one from May 11, 2013. To test out the daylight factor, just before 6:30am, here's some semi-arty and pretty-blurry photos of dark capitalism in Englewood.
The Chase Bank Tower.
I preferred the Bank One Bank Tower, which it used to be named about 15 years ago. As of 2014, there were still signs at the south parking ramp at Elati and Ithica, that reference this as Bank One. But I took this picture from the north side of the bank, while driving around the parking lot of...
Hobby Lobby.
Who will not be open today, since it's Sunday. This used to be a PharMor pharmacy, until it closed in 2001. That's enough of this place, so let’s move on a couple blocks east!
That clock on the Wells Fargo Bank Tower hasn’t worked since the turn of the century. The smaller building sitting directly to the right of Wells Fargo, was last occupied by the Church of Scientology. It would be demolished by the end of 2014.
There’s another future Englewood story, so keep your eyes peeled!
Beyond Scientology and Wells Fargo, would be the Trolley Square King Soopers. My next planned stop while waiting for the sun to rise. And because I also needed some groceries. In addition to those Great Value Pre-cooked Pork Sausage Patties. Specifically, some bagels to toast which will provide a base for those Great Value Pre-cooked Pork Sausage Patties. Laura needed me to pick up some Kroger brand light orange juice, as well as a lengthy list of other things.
Some of which were bought a few minutes earlier at WalMart.
Fascinating isn't it?
As bad as this picture is, it's still one of the better shots I've taken of the Englewood Post Office. Most of my pictures are blocked by the full trees in front. This building dates back to the 1930’s, and needs better documentation.
To my left is another retail building with a lengthy Englewood history, and a long list of former tenants. One of these three stores will be covered here fairly soon... (Hint, it will not be about any sort of smashing on mattresses.) By now the sun had cracked the horizon, so I drove up to Gates without taking another picture on the way, before snapping this at the intersection of Broadway and Mississippi.
The last time I was here was a week earlier, on January 19, 2014.
My intent was to make this a very quick trip. I had a lot of stuff I wanted to get done at home, so I was in a hurry this morning. It was also very cold, so I didn’t feel like being out walking around much. Instead of looping through the RTD Park & Ride, then walking around the property, I just pulled off Broadway onto Tennessee and parked the car on the side of the closed off Gates entryway.
Just feet from this sign.
If someone indeed took that key, does that mean they couldn’t demolish that day? I'm picturing a fat, angry, middle-aged man under a hard hat, chomping a cigar and stomping his feet, hitting his 4x4 truck with rolled up blueprints. Swearing all sorts of creative curse words at the damn fool that is stopping them from unlocking demolition. On a cold rainy Monday January morning. That foreman is hung over too! He ain't got time to deal with this kind of nonsense!
His name is Bill...
Wife just left him...
Kids wont talk to him...
Behind on the rent...
Anyways...
Work on this portion of the building has stopped for now. Segments further south of here are falling rather fast, but this area hasn’t been touched since I was last here. Including that large machine with the black wheel, down in front.
I like how this picture turned out since it’s usually covered by sunlight. Only the top of the fourth floor is now, leaving the floor underneath looking nice and clear.
The power plant building sits to the north. I’m usually parked on the other side of this canvas covered chain link fence. But since no work was currently being done here, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to drive around to that point.
Looking at some of the shelving left behind on the Gates floor makes me wish I could have taken it. Especially that narrow tan double shelf on the third floor. That looks perfect to hold some things I have in the basement.
Rounding the corner of Gates destruction, towards the east Broadway-facing side.
Low light plus zooming in equals blurry photos...
But that damn fence was prohibiting me from getting any closer.
And that sucks, because as this massive structure was rapidly disappearing, I’d be further and further away from the photos I’d want to take.
Getting shots like this, that show a lot of the detail of the stuff left behind, was likely to get more difficult as the weeks went on. Taken from a distance with poor lighting, while reaching over a covered over 6 foot tall fence, makes it very hard to line up your shot when you can't usually see what you're aiming at..
But look at those drawers facing off that grey shelf on the third floor!
That’s awesome!
At this point, I walked back out Tennessee to the sidewalk lining Broadway. The lighting was better now, and my only competition for sightlines was this pile of umbrella support pillars. Each with ample amounts of rebar sticking out the tops and bottoms. They had to support a ridiculous amount of weight, and did a great job of it for nearly 100 years.
It can never be understated just how huge the Gates Rubber Company was.
Wish they could’ve left the lights on for me, so I could see further into the depths of the first and second floors. Usually obscured by large piles of destruction, blocking my view of anything I could possible see.
Big fan of that staircase, just inside the door.
Basement of the former Gates office building. Now a loading zone for the parade of semi trucks carrying debris off the property, around Mississippi to Santa Fe, then onto I-25 south. Leading to wherever all of this concrete and steel ended up.
Probably dumped it in Pueblo...
I need a good cloudy morning for pictures.
Then there's this weird avalanche of crumbled looking floor, wiping out a corner of the building.
Frustratingly blocking my view of a good portion of the factory.
Sloppy work demolition crew! I expect better!
Did you get locked out or something?
Heavy equipment taking Sunday off...
They’ve done quite a bit in just over two months, tearing away this much of the factory.
Damn this place was huge...
Over the next few weeks, effort was concentrated on clearing much of this away, before they continued south. I'm assuming that it was due to being a newer addition, separate from the current work.
A tiny peek at Gates basement can be seen here.
I’m sure it was filled up with collapsed building, so any glimpse of it was pretty rare during the tear down process.
My view reaching up, but not over the surrounding chain link fence.
And what you could see from aiming the camera over your head…
Looks like some taggers have recently stopped by.
There's a fresh mark on walls that hadn’t seen the light of day in decades.
Time to walk back, I’m cold.
There's that collapsed floor mess again...
More useful - but doomed- shelving on the third floor.
Apparently that’s the floor Gates chose to hold the good shelves!
Time to get out of here and head back to Englewood.
I’ve got a few more stops I want to make, and I’m more interested in getting home than anything.
Goodbye destruction, my car is warmer than looking at this any longer.
See what it looks like next week.
The next spot of note will not be a stop, just a blurry photo as I drive by.
Hopefully traffic isn’t going to interfere with it. I’d sure hate to have to circle the block for this...
Cushion World was destroyed by fire on June 24, 2013. With boarded up windows and front door, the damage doesn’t look so bad. However, looking at the satellite view on the Googles, the entire roof had collapsed into the building. Sharing common walls with businesses on the north and south end, it’s hard to picture what could be done with this to make it functional again.
After the fire, Cushion World relocated a bit southwest, to a much larger store on Santa Fe. They are still operating today.
Over the next year, a strange phenomenon afflicted the front windows of the old store. Odd pieces of lumber began appearing in a nonsensical pattern across the boards. Seemed like just a few boards each week were fastened to the plywood covering, with the facade looking like this on September 20, 2014.
May 13, 2018. The last picture that I took of Cushion World, before moving out of state. Nearly five years after the fire, what was left of Cushion World was still as sealed up as possible. The plywood covering had been painted over to cover tagging, multiple times. But that strange wooden parasite growing on it was looking great!
ENHANCE!
Yeah, don’t know what that is, but it's all sorts of awesome!
As I was writing this story, I looked at my January 26, 2014 picture of Cushion World, and wondered what happened to it.
Did the storefront get bulldozed and something new put in it’s place?
Was the roof ever fixed?
Did it catch fire again?
A look at the Googles showed me this:
July 2022. The front windows are uncovered and the inside is exposed. That roof was never replaced, and it looks to be filled with picnic tables. Well, that’s pretty interesting.
Directly north of the former Cushion World is Grandma’s House. You know it’s her house, by the 8 foot tall inflatable Grandma on the roof. Grandma’s House is actually a microbrewery. (Being in Denver, you’d think it was a dispensary, but that is the store directly south of Cushion World.) Looking at their web site, they feature a full menu of beers brewed on site. The rest of the place is filled with all sorts of antiques and games. Just like going to your Grandma’s House, if you went to her place to drink. I'll give them full credit, a really fun idea if that's your kind of thing.
When the June 2013 Cushion World fire broke out, Grandma’s House was just another antique store. That and the dispensary on the other side suffered minor water and smoke damage from the fire, but the buildings themselves were fine. From what the Googles is showing, me, work on converting Cushion World took place in 2020.
The remains of Cushion World is now an open patio for Grandma’s House!
Looking out towards Broadway, Cushion World is now a burned out abandoned building themed picnic area!
Now this is something I will forever be in favor of!
I love that you can still see smoke and fire damage on the walls of ex-Cushion World.
(Special thanks to Lauren Hughes for taking the last two pictures and uploading them to the Googles, for me to borrow.)
While large percentages of the Broadway I knew and loved when I lived in Denver are disappearing, small pockets of it are being converted into something that's really cool. (See the 1940’s Sinclair gas station turning into a Snarf’s Sandwich Shop, in my last Gates story.)
Englewood didn’t save the former Funtastic Fun (which wasn’t really ever that cool looking) and it became a Chick Fil A (which definitely isn’t cool either). Read a lot of people's memories of being a kid, or taking their kids there. I get that, but I don't think anyone is feeling too nostalgic for the Funtastic Fun building itself. (Although the cut out roof allowing an indoor Ferris Wheel was pretty cool.) Which was originally a stationary company, when it was built in the 1960's.
Funtastic Fun only had a few more months to sit here all empty and sad, before the shovels came to rip it apart.
A few more blocks south of here, the site of Flood Middle School is now just a bunch of piles of dirt. Prep work for the future Alta Cherry Hills apartment complex has already started, where a near 100 year old school was demolished, about 6 months prior.
Speaking of former schools being demolished...
Destruction continues at the former Englewood High School.
I really miss Frank the Pizza King.
Minnesota has nothing comparable.
It was still early enough in the morning when I drove by, so I figured I’d take advantage of the empty parking lot to get unobstructed photos of the painted Headed West murals. Some 25 plus years ago, this was Uncle Milty’s Fishing Supplies. Milty retired and closed his shop. Since Marijuana is a much bigger draw than fishing in Englewood today, it’s now one of the bigger and nicer head shops in town.
Note to self: When taking pictures across the car seat, through the passenger window, the window needs to be rolled DOWN! There’s all sorts of dried water drips visible through the glass. Worse yet, a reflection of my camera cord hanging down into Alice’s shoulder.
South facing wall is a mural of Rock & Roll legends. Fine enough, but check out that Jim Morrison looking shaved hamster storing kibble in his cheeks. This mural didn’t last very long, the wall was soon painted yellow and and covered in the characters from South Park.
Which was a lot better in my mind.
It’s almost 8am, and I’m ready to get home.
Going to grab some food on my way though.
Which won’t come from Kmart!
They stopped being open this early on a Sunday, several years ago. But it wasn’t even 5 years earlier that this Kmart was open 24 hours a day. They had a pretty nice and stocked grocery section inside, after a 2001 remodel. Being just a few bocks from my apartment, it was very convenient.
Kmart closed the Englewood, CO, location for good in November 2017.
It remained empty for a couple of years, before getting chopped up into multiple smaller storefronts. Which is better than a complete demolition and rebuild. But it doesn't solve doesn’t solve my food needing problems this morning.
Wendy’s isn’t open yet.
They wont undergo a remodel to make the building look dumber until later in 2014.
McDonald’s behind me isn’t an option for today either.
I’m still stunned this place was closed and demolished not too long after we moved out of state. Sure the service and food sucked, but it was always busy, convenient and didn’t seem like a place that would just go away one day. McDonald's probably sacrificed the property, instead of going through the expense of remodeling it to look less like a McDonald's, and more like a box with boxes glued to it. Being such a high traffic intersection, I'm sure that land was pricey.
Starbucks took over the Broadway and Belleview corner, because of course they did.
No, I’m going with Del Taco this morning.
Just as soon as the cashier/window girl hands me my Del Beef Burritos and Laura’s Grilled Breakfast Rollers and Seasoned Rice, I’ll be heading home. Ready for some cartoons and photo editing with a little bit of the stuff they sell next door to Cushion World.
Opposite of Grandma’s House.
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Up next for the Gates Demolition Diary...
Tragedy strikes my documenting plans and I try to recover, with a SUPER-SIZED photo taking mission, of rubber making demolition. Coming just as soon as I get around to writing it!
Hopefully find something new to talk about since I’ve exhausted the topic of Cushion World.
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Catch up on any and all of the Gates goodness that you may have missed!
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