On the corner of East Seventh Avenue and Second Street in South Durango sits the adobe walled, tin-roofed La Paloma building. Once a bustling cultural hub for Durango’s Hispanic and Native American population, the building now sits quiet and vacant.
When the building hit the market in 2023, the La Paloma Preservation Project, LLC, knew it was time to act.
The building was constructed in 1945 by the Spanish-speaking labor union Sociedad Protección Mutua de Trabajadores Unidos. From the beginning, the La Paloma building was a place of cultural refuge.
“La Paloma was a gathering place,” said Ryan Osborne, who spearheaded the LLC. “It consisted of a bar and a dance hall. Kind of just a safe haven for workers of color.”
La Paloma Preservation Project’s vision for the building consists of a minority-run coffee shop, venue for artists to sell their works, stalls for agriculturists to sell their produce and a space for elders to share their stories.
Inspiration for the History Project, which focuses on recording the oral histories of the community’s elders, originated in 2019 when Osborne met with a group of about 30 elders in the La Paloma building.
“We just started getting more and more stories and we decided we had to have a place to preserve them all,” Osborne said. “La Paloma was the most natural choice.”
As members of the Paloma Preservation Project work to secure the funds necessary to purchase the building, their community is rallying behind them.
“I have carpenter buddies who have offered tools and time, a friend who’s an illustrator making a poster for the GoFundMe, coffee experts lending their expertise for equipment,” Osborne said. “We’re getting a lot of small contributions from big numbers.”
To raise money for the building acquisition, La Paloma Preservation Project planned to lease the building and run minority-owned businesses out of it. Osborne explained that the money raised from the GoFundMe could be used to get the businesses started and the proceeds could go directly to funding the building.
But that vision was foiled when Osborne was told the building is not properly equipped to support commercial businesses.
“The change-of-use would mandate a whole update on a lot of codes like curb and gutter, possibly a fire sprinkler system inside and out, (and it) was going to be like, easily getting toward $50,000,” he said.
But the LLC was not deterred.
“We're going to write the grants, do the work,” Osborne said.
Project members are in contact with organizations like History Colorado and Colorado Health Foundation to secure grants for cultural preservation.
Last year, La Paloma Preservation Project secured an arts and culture grant from the city of Durango, which it used to start a podcast and conduct dozens of elder interviews that have been added to the group’s research base.
La Paloma Preservation Project also hopes to get the building historically designated by the city and the state of Colorado. Osborne said the state has already expressed interest in the building, and he hopes it will be designated within a few months.
The designation of La Paloma would provide the group with tax breaks during the renovation process to bring the building up to code.
In the event that La Paloma Preservation Project’s acquisition of the building is unsuccessful, Osborne said the money raised will instead go toward historical research, documentation and storytelling for the community’s elders.
“If culture could be represented by trees, La Paloma would be the biggest and oldest tree in town streets,” he said. “Now, will it flourish as a cultural center, or bottom up?”
lveress@durangoherald.com
