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The replica sits outside Mission Ballroom on 42nd street and Wynkoop street.
DENVER — Next with Kyle Clark is on a mission to find out why a piece of Paris is sitting in a dirt lot in front of Mission Ballroom. The area of 42nd street and Wynkoop street is apparently the Paris of Denver.
“No, it’s completely out of place,” Beth Lakin, a resident of the apartment complex overlooking Denver’s Eiffel Tower, said.
“Very unromantic, un-Paris Eiffel Tower mini version right here,” Lakin said. “It’s just in the middle of a random lot that is full of gravel.”
“You can just tell everybody and lie to everyone and say you were in France for a day,” Julien Constantino, another nearby resident, said. “They need to put up some lights. They need to bring a little bit more France over here. Maybe have a cute little restaurant.”
Neither of them knew why the Paris landmark replica was in the dirt lot.
“Westfield, actually, had a tenant back in the mid-2000s that was an event décor production company and a vintage warehouse,” Ally Fredeen with Westfield Company, the developer of Mission Ballroom, said. “The only piece that actually sat out on Brighton Boulevard, pre-sidewalk days I should add, was this quirky Eiffel Tower.”
Fredeen knew the Eiffel Tower came from a warehouse that was being demolished to make way for Mission Ballroom.
“It began as a, sort of, treasure of a past tenant of ours in the event production business,” Fredeen said. “Westfield saw value in that Eiffel Tower and decided to make it our own.”
But, why was it in a warehouse?
“We were told it was some vestige of an old fabricator or welder or somebody on the block had put this thing up,” Keanan Stoner, CEO of Two Parts said. “We do a lot of different festivals and events.”
Stoner may not know the origin story, but he may know the Eiffel Tower replica the best.
“I’ve actually climbed up and down that thing probably 50 times because I was the guy who was entrusted to hang the cables for all the bistro lights that connected around the food park,” Stoner said.
When Mission Ballroom opened, Two Parts created a food and drink pop-up in the dirt lot outside the concert venue.
“We looked at it and thought, well, this thing might be kind of cool and noteworthy to add to the Wynkoop Alley pop-up that we were doing,” Stoner said. “So, we plopped it down in the middle of it and hung some lights off of it and, kind of, made it the centerpiece.”
“It definitely looks a little rusty,” Lakin said. “It’s clearly a conversation starter or maybe a conversation ender.”
The replica is rusted and bent. It is not a great representation of a symbol of love.
“I can’t speak for sure, but I think during the demolition the thing got a little bulldozed, a little beat up,” Stoner said. “It had kind of been tossed behind one of the buildings. Before they knew that we might reuse it, I don’t think they handled it with quite as much care once we decided we wanted it.”
“The fact that she’s a little off is just a little reminiscent, but that’s relatable,” Constantino said. “It gives her character.”
“There’s nothing French around here that I’m aware of,” Lakin said. “There’s no croissants hanging around. There’s no French bakeries. It seems entirely out of place.”
Another Westfield executive suggested it might have come from a French department store that was the first of its kind in the U.S. in the late 1980s. Printemps opened its first U.S. store in Denver near Interstate 25 and Broadway in 1987. It closed in 1989. The building is now Quest Diagnostics.
The developer of Printemps passed away. One of his partners could not remember a miniature Eiffel Tower being a part of the department store.
“If anybody has any idea, we’d love to know too,” Fredeen said. “There’s enough people that have been around Denver long enough that are still here that may very well have some stories about that Eiffel Tower.”
Do you know anything about this Eiffel Tower replica? Email Marshall Zelinger at marshall@9news.com
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