Condo Loses Court Case, Considers Fining Defendant Anyways

Gateway Plaza Condominium Association, Vail Colorado, has been unsuccessful in preventing the Arthrex company from opening a surgical training centre in their complex.

The complex, a mixed use building, holds 9 residential condos and about 9 current commercial tenants (realtors, a couple marketing/media companies, designers, financial advisors, and some home contractors and an upscale restaurant). The space Arthrex is looking to utilize previously held a medical office with OB/GYN and ear, nose and throat doctors.

Charles Lipton, president of the condo association, in what I can only read as an act of pettiness and donkey-ness, has indicated the board will examine fining the company for every day it runs the surgical training center. This is a classic example of a board looking at its quasi-judicial powers, and the ability to be their own judge, jury, and executioner (as the real courts didn’t award them their court case) to sledgehammer whoever ticks them off or fails to meet their level of decency.

Hey, if you don’t win in a actual, honest to goodness, real court – you might as well utilize your divine right of condominium to correct that!

Arthrex’s cardinal sin – the surgical (note “surgical”) training lab will utilize parts of actual cadavers. Specifically, the training will use human joints in educating surgeons on orthopedic procedures.

It’s not like the training lab is serving Soylent Green. There’s already a restaurant in the complex.