The City of Aurora has threatened to shut down a second troubled apartment complex with a history of activity from a Venezuelan gang if the property management company fails to take control of the situation.

The Edge at Lowry complex, comprised of six buildings at 12th and Dallas, have been abandoned by CBZ Management LLC, according to a letter sent to its attorneys by city attorney Pete Schulte.

It’s the second of three Aurora properties owned by CBZ Management that have been the subject of intense scrutiny following reports of beatings, shootings, threats and intimidation allegedly by the Tren de Aragua Venezuelan gang, which has gained a foothold in metro Denver.

Aurora police have confirmed the presence of Venezuelan gang members at The Edge.

In his letter to CBZ Management, Schulte gave CBZ until the week of Oct. 14 to either manage the six buildings at 12th and Dallas itself or bring in another “bonafide” property management company to take over.

The letter tagged Aurora Police Chief Todd Chamberlain and Aurora City Manager Jason Batchelor, among others.

If the company ignores the letter, the city will take the issue to municipal court and begin the process to abate the property, the letter said.

The notice was sent to CBZ’s Denver law firm.

“The City of Aurora, Colorado has been informed repeatedly by you that your client(s) are unable to retain a property management company due to the crime occurring at these properties. For the last several weeks, no agents of your client(s) or a property management company have been on site at these properties providing necessary administrative and property management services,” the letter said.

One man was killed in a shooting near the apartments Aug. 18 and a video which went viral captured six men arriving and eventually entering an apartment unit there just hours before the shootout. In the video, captured by a neighbor’s doorbell camera, one man was armed with a long rifle, while others appeared to be carrying handguns as they banged on doors.

Wanted: five suspects

On Wednesday afternoon, Aurora police announced that all six of the men who were seen in the halllway video surveillance footage have been identified and that five of them are still at large. Aurora police spokesperson Joe Moylan said.  one of them, Naudi Lopez-Fernandez, 21, is in custody.

So far, none of the six suspects involved in the Aug. 18th video had been confirmed as gang members, Aurora police said.

The Edge

Besides the alleged criminal activity, The Edge is in disrepair.

A visit to the complex showed discovered broken windows, overflowing trash, and residents who complained that no one was doing repairs, despite the fact that they had paid rent.

The scene was reminiscent of how CBZ’s Aspen Grove apartments looked before the city of Aurora started clamping down.

In August, 300 people were evicted from the Aspen Grove apartments in an urgent dispossession that officials claimed was for the safety of the residents. Mountains of trash had overflowed into the parking lot, which brought rodents. Residents also complained of heat issues, water leaks, broken windows and burned out kitchens.

The city boarded up and fenced off the complex, which is located at 1568 Nome, after evicting residents. In its final weeks before it was evacuated, squatters moved into the the Aspen Grove apartments and took over the lobby.

Initially, local officials dismissed the assertion by the property management company that the presence of gang members precluded it from doing its work at at Aspen Grove and that it feared for the safety of its staffers and residents. The city called it an “alternative narrative” to the numerous code violations and the poor condition of the building.

Officials began modifying their statements after the video of armed men barging into apartment units surfaced and a cache of letters from a law firm representing CBZ Management — written a month before the federal government acknowledged TDA had extended its tentacles into Denver — became public.

More recently, a national law firm that investigated the claims said that, through violence and intimidation, the gang took over Whispering Pines — another complex owned by CBZ Management — and sought to collect up to half of the rent from leaseholders, drying up collections for the landlord, according to a law firm’s investigation.

Aurora officials also acknowledged that authorities had arrested people suspected — though not yet confirmed at the time of their apprehensions — of being members of the Venezuelan gang long before the media spotlight on the city. The gang’s activities also “significantly affected” apartment complexes in the city, officials acknowledged.

The owners of Aspen Grove have since found a broker to list the property they said was overtaken by the Venezuelan gang.

Based in Brooklyn, CBZ Management operates rental apartments in New York and Colorado, with 11 properties in Denver, Aurora, Colorado Springs and Pueblo. They included the three complexes in Aurora — Aspen Grove, The Edge at Lowry and Whispering Pines at 1357 Helena — at the center of the issue of gang activities in the city.

TDA began as a prison gang in Aragua, Venezuela and quickly expanded into the western hemisphere following the economic contraction during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The gang is involved in a sundry of criminal activities that include kidnapping, extortion, money laundering, human trafficking — particularly immigrant women and girls — and drug trafficking.

On Sept. 5, the city offered to bring two off-duty city police officers during weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. to The Edge and the Whispering Pines but CBZ did not follow through.

Reporter Nico Brambila contributed to this story.