The $875 Risk Hiding Inside Every Wash Park Teardown Purchase

In February 2025, Tony and Robin Kohake closed on a white farmhouse at 800 S. Franklin St., directly across from the park that gives the neighborhood its name. They paid $2.6 million for an 11,600-square-foot corner lot and a plan: tear down the aging structure and build a Tudor-style home with room for their four kids. What they did not know, because nothing in a typical closing tells you this, is that the same house had already survived one demolition fight four years earlier under a different owner. They were about to relive it.

That is the real lesson buried in this story, and it matters to anyone shopping Wash Park with a scrape-and-rebuild plan in mind. The expensive part of a teardown project here is not always the architect or the excavator. Sometimes it is an $875 filing fee that a neighbor, not the owner, gets to spend.

How a neighbor's $875 becomes your six-figure delay

Denver's landmark preservation ordinance lets a resident apply to have someone else's house designated a city landmark, even over the owner's objection. The application fee is $875. Once filed, it triggers a mandatory mediation period between the applicant and the property owner. If that mediation does not resolve things, the case goes to a public hearing before Denver's Landmark Preservation Commission, which decides whether to forward the application to City Council for a final vote.

While all of that plays out, the clock is not free. The owner keeps paying the mortgage, the insurance, and in the Kohakes' case, the interest on money already spent moving the project forward. Denver has more than 300 individually landmarked properties and 52 historic districts, so this is not some obscure clause. It is a mechanism the city uses often enough that Wash Park has now run through it twice on the same address.

What the fight actually cost

The timeline at 800 S. Franklin shows how quickly this escalates once a demolition permit is on file:

1. May 2025: the Kohakes apply to Denver for a demolition permit. The city writes a report and posts notice at the property.
2. Late June 2025: two neighborhood groups, 24 people between them, send letters to the city about potentially landmarking the house.
3. Summer 2025: a city-hired mediator sits down with the Kohakes and the neighbors. No resolution.
4. Late August 2025: three residents, Jody Debs, Stefanie Jacobs, and Susan Holbrook, file a formal landmark application, with help from the nonprofit Historic Denver.
5. September 16, 2025: the Landmark Preservation Commission holds a hearing. The vote splits 3-3. The application needed five votes to advance to City Council. It fails.

By the time that vote happened, Tony Kohake told BusinessDen the family was paying $15,450 every month just to hold the property, on top of $50,000 already spent on architectural plans and $125,000 in accrued interest. Public sentiment actually ran in the Kohakes' favor. The commission received 55 letters supporting preservation against 100 opposing it, plus a petition against with 121 signatures. They won the public argument and still spent months and six figures finding out.

Tony Kohake summed up his surprise this way: "we are still a bit shocked individuals can landmark designate someone else's property against their consent."

The same address already did this once

Here is the detail that should change how a buyer reads any older Wash Park listing. In 2021, a previous owner named Aaron Grant applied for a demolition permit on the same house, which city records place at 1884. Neighbors moved toward landmarking it then too. A mediator brokered a deal: Grant withdrew his demolition application, the neighbors agreed not to file for landmark status, and the house stayed standing. Grant sold the property in February 2025, for $2.6 million, to the Kohakes.

The Kohakes were not told about that earlier standoff. They found out the hard way, when the same dynamic surfaced again the moment they filed their own permit. A house can carry this kind of history quietly, because a withdrawn application and an informal neighbor agreement do not necessarily show up anywhere a typical buyer or inspector would look.

It is not a one-address problem

Two other Denver cases show this is a pattern, not a fluke. In South Park Hill, a family bought a home at 5013 E. Montview Blvd. with plans to build larger. Neighbors filed a landmark application there too, and the commission rejected it 6-0 in early 2024. The home was demolished and the new, larger house has since been finished. One of the people who lived through that fight, Mark Rinehart, later told the commission reviewing the Franklin application that his own case had been the weaker of the two, and his still lost.

More recently, in LoHi, Parker Gordon and Amy Heilig paid $831,300 for a house at 1805 W. 34th Ave. in April 2025. A group opposed to demolition sent a notice of intent to landmark the property, and as of that May 2026 reporting, the group had until June 8 to file a full application or the homeowners would be granted their demolition permit. That case was already in mediation as of this spring, which means the same clock the Kohakes ran had started again in a different Denver neighborhood within the past few months.

What this means before you write an offer

If you are shopping Wash Park with any intention of scraping and rebuilding, the due diligence list gets longer than square footage and lot lines:

• Ask whether a demolition permit has ever been filed on the property, current or past owner, since that history is public record with the city even when it never became a formal landmark case.
• Ask what makes the house distinctive on paper: build year, architectural style, park frontage, or any notable former residents. Those are the same factors that gave neighbors a case at 800 S. Franklin.
• Build holding costs into your underwriting the way the Kohakes eventually had to, not just construction costs. A few months of mediation and hearings can add real money before a single wall comes down.
• Talk to your agent about permit timing before you waive any financing or inspection conditions tied to a fast close. A demolition permit sitting in city review is a different risk profile than one already issued.

What it means if you are selling

If you own an older home near the park with any of those same markers, age, style, prominent siting, it is worth knowing your listing sits differently than a standard resale. That is not a reason to avoid the market. Wash Park's neighborhood page still shows plenty of buyers who want the character intact, not just the lot. But being upfront with your agent about any prior demolition or preservation activity on the property, even informal, helps set realistic expectations for how quickly a buyer with rebuild plans can actually close.

FAQ

Will a past demolition permit or landmark dispute show up in a standard title report or inspection? Not reliably. These are city hearing and permit records, not automatically pulled into a typical title search or home inspection. That is exactly why the Kohakes did not learn about the 2021 dispute until they triggered a nearly identical one themselves.

If a landmark application gets voted down once, is the house safe from another attempt? Not permanently. The house at 800 S. Franklin went through this twice under two different owners, once resolved informally in 2021, once decided by a commission vote in 2025. A rejection or withdrawal does not immunize the property going forward.

Does landmark status hurt or help resale value? It depends on the buyer. Landmark status prevents demolition, which some buyers value as protection for character and setting, and others see as a limit on future flexibility. There is no single right answer, which is why it is worth discussing against your specific goals rather than assuming either direction.

How would I find out if a home I am considering has this kind of history? Ask your agent to check the property's permit and hearing history with the city before you write terms, not after. It takes a phone call and it can save you the kind of surprise that cost the Kohakes months and six figures.

If you are weighing an older Wash Park property with rebuild potential, or you own one and want a clear-eyed read on how its history might shape a sale, Makin' Moves with Georgia has walked this ground before. Book a consultation and let's look at the specific address before you assume anything about the timeline.