Beauty in Urban Blight: Gates Rubber Factory

Not my photo. :-)

One of my favorite areas of urban blight in Denver is the old Gates Corporation building -- or Gates Rubber Factory, as we Denverites call it. The factory is due for a slow demolition, but a large portion of it remains along my scooter route to work on S. Broadway. It's a testament to Denver's working-class, industrial past, and it shows no immediate signs of leaving us just yet for the espresso-swilling, urban yuppie communities that are descending upon our cities. According to Wikipedia: 


In 1911, Charles Gates Sr. purchased the Colorado Tire and Leather Company located in southern Denver beside the South Platte River. He paid $3500 for a property that would soon become one of the largest non-tire producing rubber companies in United States. Their first product was called the Durable Tread, a cover attached to the bald tires as an alternative to purchasing new ones.


In 1996 the Gates family sold the company to the British-based engineering firm, Tomkins plc, ending 85 years of family ownership. The Denver factory closed, and by 2001 some buildings hadn't been used in nearly a decade. While parts of the property have been redeveloped, the original factory sits deserted on the corner of South Broadway and Mississippi, awaiting further cleanup and redevelopment into residential and commercial structures.

Clock outside, representing a lost Denver relic,
suspended in time.

A lot of crazy stuff has happened here due to urban exploration. (If you were an urban explorer, could YOU resist this?!) A friend of a friend was arrested for trespassing one evening. He posted his pictures online, and one of them haunted me for years -- an old bathroom, with a grubby, rusted toilet. It was the stuff movies like "Saw" are made of. 


Just over a year ago, a 17-year-old fell 45 feet through the roof onto some concrete. She recovered -- and is very lucky. She and her friends were charged with trespassing, as well.


One morning in 2007, another urban explorer wasn't so lucky. The 23-year-old, who was going into his final semester at Metropolitan State College, fell down an elevator shaft and was paralyzed... later, he died from his injuries. The Denver Westword wrote a beautiful article about it. They also go into urban exploration a little bit. I find it fascinating.


Falling injuries and deaths and trespassing charges (oh my!) aside, apparently the factory is riddled with asbestos and trichloroethylene, an industrial solvent. So, you won't see Scooter Lass getting too close... these pictures I show here were close enough for my blood! You can find tons of great (and ridiculous) images of the factory, old and new, inside and out on a Google image search.

I love the building. Whenever I pass by, I can't seem to take my eyes off it. But I'm well aware that some day it has to go. Unfortunately, it appears to be another victim of the economic downturn, as Cherokee Denver -- the developers slated to clean up the site and turn it into a residential and retail hub -- had to pull out when they couldn't get financing. So, the decrepit building is stalled in time, with only part of the development on the site begun in the form of the Alexan Broadway Station apartments (pictured above, left side). Here's some more information about the proposed project from Denver Urban Renewal Authority.


(Join me for Part II, when I interview my friend Shawn Snow, an avid Denver historian, who will be able to tell us a thing or two about this magnificent Denver ghost, for sure. I just have to wait until the big jerk-head is back from his four-week stent in Europe. So jealous! :-) )