The owner of a Denver office building that suffered a partial collapse of its parking garage is accusing two law firms of breaching their lease by moving out after the incident.
“The building at 3600 Yosemite St. was, and remains, structurally sound,” it says.
Miami, Florida-based SF Partners owns the 50-year-old office building at that address, as well as the attached parking garage, after buying them for $13.4 million in 2019. On March 23, the top level of the garage caved, stranding 10 vehicles. No one was injured.
In the weeks that followed, tenants complained to BusinessDen about 3600 Yosemite.
“The garage actually did scare me,” said attorney Lisa Guerra with Guerra Law. “It was messy, it was dirty, it just doesn’t look like it was well maintained.”
Ann Horton, a paralegal for Legacy Law Group, called it “‘The Amityville Horror’ of business buildings,” citing uneven floors and always-broken elevators. An assistant at Golden Spike Roofing said of SF Partners, “They just don’t maintain that building very well.”
Guerra told BusinessDen in March, “I’m just riding out this lease.”
But in lawsuits it filed June 23, SF Partners complains that Legacy Law and Guerra Law did not ride out their lease. Rather, they left, on May 20 and May 29, respectively.
“In doing so, the defendants attempted to claim a lease termination and constructive eviction related to alleged structural deficiencies within the premises,” the lawsuits say.
Legacy owner Anastasia Fainberg and Guerra declined to comment on those lawsuits.
SF Partners hired Martin/Martin, a Denver engineering firm with experience investigating such collapses, to figure out what went wrong at 3600 Yosemite, according to a website it created to answer questions about the incident. Martin/Martin’s report is due any day now.
“We have made significant progress on the garage,” says Jeremy Story, a spokesman for SF Partners. “The demolition of the damaged area has been completed. In the meantime, the building continues to operate normally with ample alternative parking available.”
The company started a free valet parking program soon after the collapse, sent insurance information to the 10 vehicle owners so they can recover their losses, and gave those vehicle owners a $500 stipend. All tenants received free rent for April “to acknowledge the disruption the situation caused them,” and a full-time property engineer is on-site now, SF Partners says.
SF Partners’ lawyers are Michael Schlepp and Daniel Sol of S&D Law in Denver.
