Ash House clear of code violations after unpermitted bedrooms removed

BOULDER — The dozens of University of Colorado students living at the Ash House off-campus apartment building will not be forced to move out mid-semester after city officials determined late last week that Ash House’s owners have rectified a series of code violations related to the unpermitted addition of bedrooms.

“We are pleased at the quick progress the property owners made to remove the life-safety violations at Ash House and restore the building to its originally approved condition,” Brad Mueller, Boulder’s director of planning and development services, said in a prepared statement. “These changes were essential to making the property safe for the students who are living there. While we know this has been a challenging time for the students, our building code exists to help ensure Boulder community members are as safe as possible in their homes.”

The historic Ash House at 891 12th St. was originally built in 1923 to serve as the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house and was taken over in 1973 and converted into the Marpa House, which provided housing for members of the Shambhala community. 

Developer John Kirkland, along with a group of investors who purchased the Marpa House in 2019 for $5 million, won approval from Boulder City Council in May 2021 to transform the property into apartments for CU students despite vocal opposition from neighborhood residents. The redevelopment project finished during last school year.

The plans that Boulder officials approved three years ago allowed for 48 residents spread across 16 three-bedroom units to live at the property at any one time, according to city documents.

After an inspection on Sept. 12, city officials determined that most units had been modified to fourth bedrooms and several even had a fifth area that appeared intended to serve as another bedroom. They said they were concerned about the potential for fires, given that it appeared that electrical work was performed without permits and smoke detectors were not installed in the modified bedrooms, which also appeared to lack proper ingress and egress.

Boulder officials moved to immediately close Ash House, which would have resulted in its residents having to scramble to find new places to live. The landlord, 891 12th St LLC, sued to block the closure order and a Boulder County District Court judge issued a temporary restraining order doing just that, encouraging the parties to figure out a settlement agreement between them before the next court hearing, scheduled for Tuesday. 

“Pursuant to a previous agreement between the city and the owners of Ash House, a stipulation to dismiss the pending lawsuit is being filed,” the city said on Friday afternoon.

Ash House’s owners, in their lawsuit filed last month to block the closure order, said that this summer they made “improvements to thirteen units within the Property, such as extending four-foot ‘pony’ walls up to the ceiling, and adding doors to the newly partitioned area.”

The newly extended “walls were purely to partition the structure and were not load-bearing or otherwise structural,” the lawsuit said.

Because the work performed in the units was of a “limited nature,” Ash House’s owners “did not believe that it required City authorization or permitting and did not consult the City,” attorneys for the landlord wrote in the lawsuit.

The apartments have been returned to their previously permitted condition, the city said. 

It’s unclear whether 891 12th St LLC will face any penalty for the company’s multiple code violations.

“The city has not precluded other legal or enforcement options. We don’t have any additional information to share at this time,” a Boulder spokesperson told BizWest in an email Monday. 

When asked whether opting not to penalize the landlord could encourage other property owners to flout building codes to increase rental revenue potential, the spokesperson said, “The safety of community members is always the primary consideration for all code-enforcement actions throughout the city, which number in the hundreds each year. The mechanisms, timing and approach towards achieving compliance may vary, but safety and maintaining quality of life guide this work.”

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