As the sun came up Friday, squatters were partying like it was happy hour in what was once the entrance lobby of a soon-to-be-closed Aurora apartment complex.

On Tuesday, the party will end for some — others could be homeless. 

The city will board up and fence the property in an urgent dispossession that, officials claimed, is for the safety of the residents. City officials have deemed the building uninhabitable after what they described as years of neglect by the property owner and management company.

The landlord has blamed the city’s decision to shut down the complex on a Venezuelan gang, saying it could not resume normal operations at the site because of an immediate threat of danger from the gang that staffers and residents face. The city rejected that claim. 

On Friday, a white flag was flying in the parking lot, white balloons and pillow cases hung from the walkways and signs begged for peace — leftovers from a rally held on Thursday by residents begging for extra time.

Those images contradicted red and white eviction notices in Spanish and English that warned residents of the 98-unit complex that the city would begin the process at 7 a.m. on Tuesday, along with the words: “Danger. No trespassing. Unsafe to occupy.” 

The city is turning off the water first thing on Tuesday morning. A spokesperson said Aurora is working to help the residents relocate.     

The building at 1568 Nome Street, off Nome and Colfax Avenue, has been referred to as Aspen Grove Apartments and also as Fitzsimons Place. 

A war of words is occurring between the apartment’s owners and city officials over who is responsible for the renters, who pay $1,200 for a one-bedroom unit and more for a larger apartment. 

The city said the landlords are the problem. 

“The building owners and managers made the decision to effectively abandon their paying tenants, and this is the unfortunate consequence,” Aurora spokesperson Ryan Luby wrote in an email. “The risks of residents remaining in the building and being subjected to its rapidly deteriorating conditions are far too dire.”

The city also claimed that the landlord ignored hundreds of code violations and then left the renters to fend for themselves.

The landlord is blaming the city’s decision to shut the apartment down on a Venezuelan prison gang, saying its presence at the building put staffers under immediate threat of danger. 

The landlord through it’s management company CBZ Management insisted that Tren de Aragua has been known to operate in the Aspen Grove Apartments. 

“Because we care for the safety of our tenants, and other members of the community, what we will say is that the issue of Tren de Aragua taking over properties and communities in Aurora means that we are not able to be present on this property, or any of our other properties in similar situations, also being impacted by gang presence,” a CBZ Management spokesperson earlier told The Denver Gazette.

CBZ Management operates rental apartments in Colorado and New York.

“We would like to be able to resume normal operations at our buildings, but we cannot do so under the threat of present and immediate danger against residents, staff, and management,” the CBZ Management spokesperson said. “This is an issue our city needs to face head-on with law enforcement and the further support of our state and country’s leaders to protect affected tenants, the surrounding communities, and Americans across the nation.”

City officials called the landlord’s assertion an “alternative narrative” to the numerous code violations and the poor condition of the building. 

Mayor Mike Coffman told The Denver Gazette’s news partner 9News that the city has been dealing with the building for a “very long time” and that the owners “haven’t maintained the building.” 

Still, this week, the Aurora police assigned four detectives to a special task force that will look into the gang’s possible activity in the city.

On Thursday night, during an Aurora City Council public safety meeting, Aurora Police Department Acting Deputy Chief Chris Juul said the force is “actively looking at who they are, what they’re doing, how many are there, what is the reality of the situation compared to what the other public information that’s going on around out there nationally is.”

Luby, the city spokesperson, said that Aurora is working with community partners to relocate “affected, eligible residents, even covering the cost of security deposits by paying the money directly to the new landlords.”

“The city expects residents to reimburse the cash to them when they can,” he said.