The Afrikmall in Aurora, Colorado: City Council Gives $165,000 Tax-Incentive Deal to Finish Project to Give “Africans” a Place to Call Home

Stuff Black People Don’t Like
January 5, 2016

Am I the only one that cheers on the asteroids in Armageddon and Deep Impact?

[Small steps leading to big, belated debut for Aurora’s Afrikmall: The city has worked with the building’s owners on a $165,000 tax-incentive deal to help fund the project, and city council is expected to formally sign off on that deal later this month. The money will be paid back to the city via sales tax., Aurora Sentinel, 11-18-2015]:

Last July, organizers of the massive new Afrikmall development at 10180 E. Colfax Ave. hosted a grand opening celebration for the new mall at a location a few blocks to the north.

But the opening has been anything but “grand” for the $1.5-million project in the months since July.

Not a joke...
Not a joke…

As of this week, some of the tenants have their signs up and the almost-8,000-square-foot ballroom on the second floor is open, but the project doesn’t yet have an opening date when the public can shop there.

Emmanuel Eliason, chief business development officer of Afrikmall, said he hopes to announce a public opening date within a couple weeks.

Eliason said there were “some technical requirements” handed down by the city that organizers had to tackle before they could open, and that required the grand opening be held elsewhere.

“We could not allow the public to come in here at that time,” he said.

John Lichtner, building inspections manager for the city, said the electrical system and the fire alarm system didn’t match original plans filed with the city when inspectors looked at it last summer. From there, inspectors worked with organizers on their building plan and, by late October, issued the certificate of occupancy.

The 56,000-square-foot mall has long been an important project for city officials, who hope it not only becomes a major cultural draw, but also sees a sprawling and high-profile building on bustling East Colfax Avenue converted back into something useful.

The three-story building at Colfax and Galena Street was a Broyhill furniture warehouse and before that a JC Penney Department store, said Tim Gonerka, a retail specialist for the city of Aurora.

“To convert that, to repair the roof and start some vitality on that block, we saw it as an important anchor to invest in,” he said.

The city has worked with the building’s owners on a $165,000 tax-incentive deal to help fund the project, Gonerka said, and city council is expected to formally sign off on that deal later this month. The money will be paid back to the city via sales tax, he said.

The new mall is situated in the Aurora Cultural Arts District, which for years has been trying to rehabilitate the once-gritty stretch of Colfax into a hub of arts and entertainment.

The efforts have seen the revitalization of the Aurora Fox Theatre and several arts-focused businesses move to the area.

Those improvements are part of the reason Afrikmall chose the location, organizers have said.

And already, Eliasson said, there are more than 20 different businesses — restaurants, clothing boutiques, a coffee shop  and a FedEx store among them — that will be part of the project.

One of those business owners, Omar Ndiaya, is opening a Senegalese restaurant called Sene and a clothing store called Sene Boutique.

Last week he pushed a broom near his future restaurant as he and Kevin Lartson, Afrikmall’s CEO, put finishing touches on some of the restaurant spaces.

The second floor includes a ballroom and conference center space that can be rented out, and Eliason said the third floor will include space for small offices, such as insurance agencies.

Lichtner said the mall’s set up — several dozen smaller, independently-owned business inside a larger space — means each individual business inside needs its own permits, which can make the project more complicated than buildings with a single owner.

Gonerka said a grand opening followed by several months when a project isn’t open to the public is hardly common, but he said he has high hopes that Afrikmall will tap into some of the energy coming into that corner of the city via the Stanley Marketplace a few blocks away.

“We think it ultimately will offer a great place not only for Aurora, but for the the metro area to call their own and be proud of,” he said.

Afrikmall? For more than two years, the good people of Aurora, Colorado have been told this mall is opening, but now it gets christened with the “enterprise zone” tag to ensure it’s finished.

So what exactly is this Afrikmall?:

What is Afrikmall?

Afrikmall is a place that Africans living in Colorado can call home, providing a range of business services, as well as cultural, community and social opportunities and events. There are many thousands of Africans living in Colorado, from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, and other African countries.

What will Afrikmall offer?

Afrikmall will provide the best of African business, entertainment, products, services and cultural experience to the general public. This may include African restaurants and cuisine, a grocery store, a coffee shop, a beauty salon, art shops, clothing retailers and business office space, along with an event center and a cultural center. It is also envisioned that Afrikmall will also house a credit union or bank.

Why in the world does anyone from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, Uganda or Zambia live in Colorado (or for that matter, America)?  What type of asset could they be to America, when Americans of African descent represent the greatest liability in this nation?

We used to have a country.

A nation.

Now, we have the promise of Afrikmall, a shopping experience exclusively targeted at the black consumer receiving nearly $200,000 in tax incentives to finish. One needn’t be reminded that the same Aurora City Council voting unanimously (with a zeal border-lining on the sexual, normally reserved for a high school sophomore getting to third base for the first time) to provide these tax incentives for an exclusively black enterprise would immediately pass statutes to keep the city from doing business with any consortium daring to do a venture for white people-only…

Euromall wouldn’t need tax-incentives to be built, and would generate massive tax revenue for whatever city allowed it to be built, especially if it were for white shoppers only.

But in 2016, we must all clap our hands in unison and cheer on the Afrikmall’s progress, even it if is a project exclusively catering to black people and being built solely for improving the black community.

By the way, the mall still isn’t open.

What if, instead of being told to celebrate the imaginary achievements of non-whites in America, white people in America were once again free to put all our energy into building a world where our accomplishments become the envy of the world (simultaneously allowing the modern world to take shape and allowing non-whites to enjoy a vastly superior standard of living than the one their own people could provide in the absence of whites)?

What if indeed.