REBIRTH OF DRUG-PLAGUED INCA ST. HAILED

By the mid-1990s, the 600 block of Inca Street in Denver had become one of
those places parents tell their children to avoid. The street was full of
people coming to buy heroin, cocaine and marijuana from the dealers working
out of broken-down buildings owned by neighborhood drug kingpin David
George Gutierrez.

Junkies were shooting up and passing out while leaning against the
warehouse across the street. Their needles littered the sidewalk.

At night, gang members fought in the street. Guns were always going off,
either in drive-bys or to keep the street lights dark.

In 1995, after undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agents
infiltrated his organization, Gutierrez and 16 others were named in a
federal indictment. The government seized Gutierrez's property, eventually
giving it to the New West Side Community Development Corp., a nonprofit
neighborhood-improvement group.

On Thursday, a coalition of neighborhood activists and law enforcement
officials celebrated the block's reincarnation, thanks to the group's
rehabilitation of Gutierrez's land, completed this summer.

The drug houses are long gone, replaced now by the Inca Town Homes.

The four attractive, low-income townhouses were unveiled to the public
Thursday in a ribbon-cutting ceremony. They are proof that the troubled
block on Inca Street now has been liberated from the "notorious and often
violent" world that once overwhelmed it, U.S. Attorney John Suthers said.

"This is precisely what the forfeiture law was designed to accomplish,"
Suthers said, standing on the stoop of one of the units. "It's an example
of the success that can be achieved when a community is motivated to solve
a problem."

New West Side executive director Veronica Barela thanked government
officials for giving her organization a chance to redevelop the property.

"We owe you a debt of gratitude and a great big thanks for allowing us to
do this beautiful project," she said.

Two of the units have already sold, Barela said, and a third is under contract.

Chuck Koehler, a New West Side board member, said he grew up on the 400
block of Inca Street and has spent most of his 65 years living nearby. One
of his sons ended up joining a neighborhood gang involved in selling
Gutierrez's drugs, he said.

Now, kids growing up in the area are safe from the drug world's deadly
allure, he said.

People are not afraid to walk from West Sixth Avenue to West Eighth Avenue
after dark anymore, he said.

"This was a rough block," he said. "You had shootings up and down this
street, because they were all arguing over the drugs. When they said they
were going to attack this problem, they did - and it turned out really nice."