Parking is rarely easy in Denver, but it’s causing a larger problem for business owners and their customers along Denver’s West 29th Avenue, where CôNu’s Corner Cafe & Bánh Mì Sandwiches owns a parking lot that is the focal point of neighborhood drama.
The tension exploded earlier this month when a bicyclist was videotaped cursing and yelling at the sandwich shop’s staff over parking issues, calling owner Thuc-Nhu Hoang “an ugly, nasty piece of garbage” on top of race-related slurs.
“I don’t feel safe anymore,” Hoang said in a phone interview with The Denver Post. She called the incident “very racist.” CôNu’s Corner posted footage of the rant on its Instagram page.
Her shop sits at the corner of Tennyson Street and West 29th, where the Sloan’s Lake neighborhood transitions into West Highland. CôNu’s Corner Cafe, 4400 W. 29th Ave., is just one business along a small corridor (where bike lanes have already caused some agitation) that includes Quarterback Liquors, Leroy’s Bagels and SloHi Coffee + Bike.
On a recent Tuesday, only a few of the dozen-plus spaces in front of CôNu’s were available. Posted signs warned drivers that only customers are welcome and violators will be towed.
For over four years, that wasn’t the case. When Hoang’s business operated solely as a convenience store, she said she let it slide when her neighbors’ patrons parked there. That changed once she opened the sandwich shop last year.
There wasn’t enough room for her customers to park, too, Hoang said, and she worried about the potential for lawsuits during snowy months if clients of other businesses slipped and fell in her lot.
But once Hoang began booting and towing violators, she experienced harassment. Her shop is currently rated 4.7 stars out of five on Google reviews, but Hoang says she’s contended with “fake” one-star reviews written by parking offenders.
“They lie,” Hoang said. “It’s really hurt our business.”
Quarterback Liquors now pays to share several spaces in the lot, but other business owners haven’t agreed to the offer. Hoang declined to provide the cost for monthly parking rent.
“I don’t know what else to do,” she said. “They should let their customers know. That’s their job to do that.”
“Being able to be neighborly again”
Sarah Green, who owns Leroy’s Bagels, 4432 W. 29th Ave., depicted the turmoil as uncharacteristic of their community. “We’re all small businesses, and we’ve all been able to coexist really peacefully over the years,” she said. The shop opened in 2015.
In Green’s opinion, the neighborhood rift started with a lack of signage at CôNu’s, which left drivers in the dark about the towing risk. Local business owners met to discuss the issue and asked Hoang to put up signs, Green said.
“There was a good amount of time that there were no signs, and there was still a lot of towing happening, which felt unfair,” Green said.
During that waiting period, entrepreneurs posted their own notices in their storefront windows to notify customers. Green said she’s never encouraged her patrons to park in the lot, adding that she can’t afford to pay the cost to rent the allotted spots.
Future talks are planned between the parties, which Green hopes “will at least be able to get us to a point of being able to be neighborly again.” Representatives of SloHi Coffee + Bike didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Regardless of the strain between neighbors, Green shames the person who berated Hoang and hopes for accountability.
“No one should ever, ever be able to say something like that to another person, especially seeing that in our corridor, because we always have been tightknit,” Green said.
