With respect to the former-adult-movie-theater-turned-craft-distillery a block over, one storefront along South Broadway stands out as a glowing, hot-pink example of what the past half dozen years of change has brought to the historic Denver boulevard.
On the corner of Bayaud Avenue and Broadway, the second Denver location of Voodoo Doughnut has been boxing up its brand of oddball, primarily ring-shaped confections 24 hours a day since opening in June. Decorated in the Portland, Ore.-based company’s trademark pink color scheme and sporting an eye-catching neon sign, it’s perhaps the biggest store in Voodoo’s catalog to date, taking up two storefronts, including the corner spot, in the White Palace building and offering seating unlike its predecessor on Colfax Avenue.
“We searched around and we didn’t find a lot of areas for families to come to,” Voodoo Doughnut CEO Chris Schultz said of the stretch of South Broadway, the confluence of Denver’s Baker, Speer and Washington Park West neighborhoods between Sixth Avenue and Interstate 25. “We love being in Denver. We wanted to build a communal store for them, especially on South Broadway with all the growth that is going on there.”
The corner spot was previously occupied by Famous Pizza, a no-frills, New York-style pizza place that opened in 1974. “]
The arrival of Voodoo Doughnut and other, more corporate food and beverage operators like Arizona-based Postino WineCafe represents the latest phase in the evolution of a commercial strip that for decades was defined by dusty bookstores and funky, sometimes kinky boutiques.
It is two major residential projects two blocks away from each other — and the 340 apartments they are bringing — that promise to have the most lasting impact on the future of the street. Even business owners skeptical of other changes around the neighborhood see the bright side of more people calling South Broadway their home along with the multitude of shops, bars and restaurants already there.
“In the long term, it’s going to be good for the businesses down here,” Matt Megyesi, co-owner of Mutiny Information Cafe, a combination books, records, comics store, coffee shop and sometimes music venue at 2 S. Broadway, said of having a larger 24-hour population in the area. “In the summertime, 75% of my customers are people who come in here for the first time.”
The two projects are called the Quayle Building and Neon Local, and aside from their locations, they couldn’t be more different.
The Quayle project, at the northwest corner of Broadway and First Avenue, is a tax break-supported historic reuse effort that is now moving the first batch of renters into its 102 affordable studio and one-bedroom apartments. Formerly the First Avenue Hotel, a single-room-occupancy building that provided affordable housing for people after the turn of the century, it is now reserved for people making 60% of the area median income, or $39,000 per year for one person or $44,580 for a household of two, said David Zucker, CEO of Zocalo Community Development, the company that led the redevelopment.
A few blocks south, on the west side of Broadway between West Archer Place and West Bayaud Avenue, the three-story Neon Local building has topped out and is now beginning to take clearer shape. The 238-unit market-rate building should start moving people into its mix of studios, one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments by August, according to Walter Armer, managing director of developer Holland Partner Group’s Denver office.
Holland is a commercial-scale developer based in Vancouver, Wash., that has built 27 apartment projects totaling nearly 7,500 units in Colorado. The Neon Local property was formerly home to a branch of Security Service Federal Credit Union and a large parking lot often used by people visiting the neighborhood. Holland bought it for $12 million last April, city records show.
Neon Local, officially at 99 S. Broadway, is the type of block-spanning redevelopment project that has become common in other parts of Denver like Uptown and Five Points, but has yet to be seen fronting onto South Broadway, at least not on the north side of I-25. Armer pointed to the property’s size, the neighborhood’s vibrant dining and nightlife scene, it’s walkability and access to “what, by Denver standards, is a very good bike lane” as perks that will help draw in tenants.
“I think if you look up and down the street over the last several years, you’ve seen a change in the retail makeup,” Armer said. “I think bringing more of a population that can walk in the neighborhood, that will help retail succeed, and when retail succeeds that’s a benefit not just for us, but for the larger neighborhood, for West Wash Park and Baker.”
At the Quayle building, Zucker and his team also see their units as assets for surrounding businesses, not just as a place for potential customers to live but also workers. As of last week, about 70 of the Quayle’s units had been claimed by renters. Instead of large-scale marketing for the project, Zocalo, which is based in Denver, put out the word to area restaurants and primary employers like Denver Health hospital that units were available that could serve their employees.
“I think one of the reasons that a place like South Broadway is suddenly in the crosshairs of developers is it feels like a traditional walkable neighborhood. That’s because it is a traditional walkable neighborhood,” Zucker said. “It is a privilege to be able to help to build a community ecosystem for that very goal of having people live where they work.”
The company entertained redeveloping the building as a market-rate apartment project, a hotel or even a shared office concept, but it was input from the area neighborhood associations that really demonstrated the desire for affordable housing, Zucker said.
Luchia Brown, president of the Baker Historic Neighborhood Association, was involved in discussions with Zocalo that emphasized the need and desire for affordable housing in the neighborhood. Brown has lived in Baker for more than 20 years.
“We’re not a bunch of NIMBYists,” she said, referring to an anti-development mindset that stands for “not in my backyard.”
“We’re willing to listen to new things coming in — not that there isn’t fear when new things are coming in — but we look at it as ‘How can we adjust to this our advantage? How can we help make our neighborhood better,’ ” Brown added.
At the ultra-big, ultra-busy Goodwill thrift store at 21 S. Broadway, supervisor Toni Duran expects business to be booming when both buildings are fully occupied. She’s also excited by the potential of a larger employee base near her store.
“We’re always hiring,” she said.
Both the Quayle and Neon Local are bringing more commercial space to the street with them. In the case of the Quayle, its 17,000 sqaure feet of combined first-floor and second-floor space is being divided into five slots for locally owned restaurant concepts, most if not all of which should open in the spring, Zucker said.
Neon Local has 13,000 square feet of space that could be divvied up in a variety of ways, Armer said.
Mutiny Information Cafe’s Megyesi, for one, is hoping that Neon Local brings in some retail and services. Since he and his partner Jim Norris took over their bookstore from the previous owner seven years ago, the area has exploded with bars and restaurants with more and more retail space being gobbled up for those uses all the time. He’s particularly opposed to more liquor licenses on the commercial strip. A look at the city’s liquor license map shows 31 active licenses along Broadway between First and Alameda avenues.
“It’s a shopping mall for all intents and purposes. It was Belmar before Belmar,” he said of the area, comparing it to the open-air shopping district in Lakewood. “We don’t necessarily want this to become another LoDo where it’s just nightlife and the daytime population has to deal with the after-effects.”
Mutiny is open late, until 1 a.m. Sunday through Thursday and until 3 a.m. Friday and Saturday, but it doesn’t serve any alcohol. It has expanded its coffee bar services in recent years and added a selection of kids’ breakfast cereals that can be ordered by the bowl to keep bringing in customers; such hospitality services Megyesi said have allowed the business to survive and grow while other retail-only spaces have faded.
Marty Lavine met with a member of the Holland team working on Neon Local last month and got the impression they are looking at commercial tenants that will bring some goods and services to the block along with food and beverage. Lavine is the proprietor of Push Gym at 38th E. Fifth Ave., and the president of the Baker Broadway Merchants Association, a registered neighborhood organization he helped found in 2012.
“There is an odd, eclectic mix of things on Broadway, and I think a lot of people like a bit of grittiness to it,” Lavine said, highlighting two business the sit on opposite sides of the gritty-glitzy divide — and opposite sides of the street — on Broadway, an upscale restaurant and crusty rock club. “We’re to 2020 almost, but the Hi-Dive isn’t going anywhere and Beatrice and Woodsley isn’t going anywhere.”
When it came to the development of Neon Local, the main concern Lavine heard from businesses was that it would eat up the large parking lot there. Megyesi said between that lot being ground up and an armada of construction workers parking in the neighborhood every day to build new projects, many businesses have suffered or even closed in the past year. When Neon Local is complete it will have a large parking garage for residents and 28 spaces set aside for retail visitors. The Quayle meanwhile only has 41 spaces in a surface parking lot behind the building but does have space for around 100 bikes owned by residents.
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The Baker Broadway Merchants group has around 15 dues-paying members though more people come to meetings than that. Other concerns Lavine hears frequently are about the number of people experiencing homelessness that frequent the area and sleep in doorways, but he notes that is something happening across Denver’s urban core. Rents along the South Broadway strip are also on the rise, Lavine said, something that has contributed to a smattering of vacancies between the Quayle and Neon Local sites.
Real estate services firm CBRE found that Denver’s central submarket, which includes South Broadway but also the central business district, Lower Downtown, River North and other shopping areas in the heart of Denver, had the exact same average asking rent at the end of September — $20.10 per square foot — that it did at the end of 2012. That number, which has fluctuated plenty in the intervening years, does not tell the full story.
“We are paying more than we were three years ago for sure,” Eric Norberg, general manager of Mediterranean restaurant Gozo. “I definitely think that it has affected our neighborhood. We have definitely seen some good businesses go under because they can’t afford the rent.”
Gozo, 30 S. Broadway, opened in 2014. At the time, Norberg said the original ownership group had designs to provide an “elevated dining” experience but found that the city and the neighborhood are more unvarnished than San Francisco and New York and shifted to be more Denver approachable. Norberg is a Denver native who has seen plenty of change through boom and bust times. He said South Broadway is unique because it was already so well established and that is leading to some friction as new neighbors come to the street. The dusty bookstores are now home to sports bars and restaurants serving lobster rolls.
“At the end of the day, it’s like, ‘Who are we?’ and I think we’re still trying to figure that out as we grow,” Norberg said. “It’ll be fascinating to see the place in 10 years.”
