A warehouse along Interstate 70 in Wheat Ridge is now under the control of a court-appointed caretaker after a judge could not sort out whom in a feuding family it belongs to.
“The warehouse needs to be maintained,” Judge Christopher Rhamey explained when he appointed a receiver last month. “Tenants require a landlord to address issues, rent must be accepted, and the accounting of the company needs to continue in a professional manner.”
So, Chris Harff is running 10601 N. I-70 Frontage Road. He founded Highline Financial Group and has experience overseeing commercial real estate, court records show.
Built in 1977, the warehouse last sold for $2.4 million in 2012. The buyer was Kevin Semcken, a local entrepreneur who has founded 40 companies by his count, including several electronics resale businesses he established and then gave to his four adult sons.
“I raised them and I have always paid for everything,” he testified at a November hearing. “I started the companies after they asked me to help them start up their companies.”
Semcken is suing and being sued by three of the sons: Matthew, Jackson and Daniel Semcken. He says they fired him as CEO of Certified Brands and Electronics Row and are refusing to repay the $11 million he lent those resale companies. But the sons say their father embezzled money from Certified Brands and Electronics Row.
While that family feud plays out in Jefferson County District Court, the warehouse at 10601 N. I-70 Frontage Road has been caught in the middle. The Semcken sons claim their dad gave them that too. Kevin Semcken says he planned to do so but never signed it over.
With ownership in dispute, Rhamey thought it best to let someone else control the building. In addition to Certified Brands, it has two tenants: Mile High Tobacco and Arctic Spas.
“Semcken Commercial has no properly constituted governing body,” Rhamey wrote of its holding company Dec. 18, “and the open, ongoing dispute between the parties makes it nearly impossible for Semcken Comm. to be secure in carrying on necessary business.”
Meanwhile, that open, ongoing dispute is gaining another participant. Mary Jo Adams, the ex-wife of Kevin Semcken and mother of his sons, told Rhamey late last month that the warehouse along I-70 was supposed to be sold during divorce proceedings in 2020.
“The current position taken by Kevin is completely averse to the court orders in the (divorce) matter,” Adams wrote, adding that she may seek to have him held in contempt of court.
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