A downtown Denver apartment complex recently has had glass panes shatter on balconies.
Panes have been breaking at Eviva on Cherokee Apartments at 1250 Cherokee St., said Marty McKenna of real estate investment trust Equity Residential. He didn’t provide further comment regarding the time frame or the number of shattered panels.
“We currently have our operations team working with our engineering consultants to determine the cause and any potential remedies,” McKenna wrote in an email. The manager on-site Wednesday declined to comment.
The high-rise complex is near popular city sites, including the Denver Art Museum, the Clyfford Still Museum and the Center for Colorado Women’s History.
Denver Community Planning and Development received a complaint about unsafe balcony guard rails on July 26, with the complaint providing details about broken glass panels, said spokesperson Amanda Weston. An inspector stopped by the apartment complex on Wednesday to meet with property management about getting back in building code compliance.
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The most probable reason for the damage is heat causing expansion of the glass, leading to cracks, Weston said.
“They’ve ordered some new glass to install, but it’s been back-ordered, and they’ve been waiting for a little while,” Weston said. “At this time, we do feel that the property management has done what they need to do to make sure that the hazard is secure.”
However, she said the inspector looked at one unit’s balcony. “The management company said that nothing had fallen down to the ground, and that (the broken glass) was contained to these balconies.” It’s not clear if the management company was saying that all cases of the panels breaking were contained to balconies or just specific cases.
On Wednesday afternoon, several residents of the apartment building acknowledged that they were aware of the broken glass, which they said has been occurring for at least a month. Those residents told The Denver Post that some glass had made it to the ground. One woman was concerned about her pet cutting its feet on shards, although she said the broken glass is quickly swept up from the sidewalk.
It’s not the first time it’s happened in Denver. In 2014, window glass fell from a high-rise near 16th Street and Broadway, injuring a pedestrian.
Weston encouraged residents to report incidents of glass on the sidewalk if it occurs because, “if glass breaks, and it falls to the ground, it becomes a public safety issue.”
A follow-up inspection is scheduled for Aug. 11. If the city office receives other complaints, an inspector will be sent out again before the two-week follow-up date to reevaluate, Weston said.
