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HUGO — While kids meander among the stacks at the Hugo Public Library, 5-year-old Letty Nuffer sits cross-legged at a table concentrating on her language skills using a borrowed laptop computer that displays a fun video to show her how to pronounce consonant blends.

Thanks to a pilot project in telehealth, Letty can access therapy for her speech delay without a four-hour round trip to Denver for an in-person appointment. By checking out an equipment kit designed to facilitate a wide range of health care consultations, Letty’s mom, Kali Nuffer, can connect directly with her therapist as well as to specially designed video lessons.

The library, already an almost daily destination for Nuffer’s family, now has become the conduit for virtual doctor’s appointments for all four of her kids — just one more service that the facility offers beyond the traditional resources for residents on the Eastern Plains. Kristin Allen, the library’s director, says this year’s addition of telehealth has started to become, well, contagious.

“I’ve had several people recently call and say, ‘How can I do this? How can I get one of those kits?’” she says. “Just come down and get a library card. That’s all you need.” 

For many Coloradans, today’s library card unlocks a lot more than books or even an ever-expanding array of digital material available from 113 public library jurisdictions across the state — and that’s particularly significant for relatively far-flung rural communities whose smaller systems account for nearly 75% of the total.

The way libraries serve the public has evolved significantly over the last several years — a trend that only accelerated during the COVID pandemic, says State Librarian Nicolle Davies. She notes that libraries “leaned into technology” for the entire range of patrons, whether that involved teaching grandparents how to use video chat apps, preparing job seekers for a 21st-century workforce or helping kids advance their digital literacy.

“For years, we were really freaked out that everybody identifies us as just books, but we’re so much more,” Davies says. “And the reality is we’ve been in the (digital) space long enough now that we’re comfortable saying, ‘Yeah, we are still about books and we’re about all these other things as well.’ So it’s very surprising when people visit libraries today and find out what we’re doing and what we have, because the perception still can be outdated and antiquated.”

The pandemic necessitated a number of innovations that worked around COVID restrictions, and many of those remain. Davies, who lives in Douglas County, recalls checking out a meat-smoking kit from her local library that came complete with recipes and seasonings. She also checked out an outdoor version of the block-stacking game Jenga for the family to play.

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“There were just so many ways that the library got really creative on how to provide services to people during the pandemic,” she says.

The pandemic also elevated the role of libraries when it came to digital resources like ebooks, audiobooks, streaming movies and music, notes Sherri Baca, executive director of the Pueblo City-County Library District. She said her district reallocated its 2020 budget to pump up funding to digital vendors, embracing the “library at home” concept that meant buying fewer hard-copy books in order to meet the needs of homebound patrons with digital offerings.

“Readers are reading, but the formats are a little different, which is great,” Baca says. “I think that that’s what libraries are supposed to do, move with the times and be very relevant to our users, and get them what they need when they need it.”

That credo has provided scaffolding for public libraries’ ongoing evolution, a transformation forged in times of a devastating virus and deafening political noise — both challenging factors as library workers face burnout on one hand and, on the other, an invigorating reimagining of their role. Pushing back against the headwinds of censorship, libraries have sought to serve as patches in the social safety net, channels closing the distance between patrons and health care, and myriad other functions — while still navigating the shifting demands for information and entertainment in all its digital and analog forms.

Digital content use was escalating even before the pandemic, and COVID ratcheted the demand even higher. But for the Denver Public Library, there’s still high interest not only in bound books, but also older media formats such as CDs and DVDs, which remain popular among those who may not have access to the latest streaming technology.

“We think that’s an equity issue,” says Michelle Jeske, the city librarian and executive director of the Denver Public Library. “A lot of people still don’t have high-speed internet access or may not have great devices for downloading ebooks or streaming videos. Some people might still have a VCR or a Blu-ray player, so we’re still seeing use of those formats. And that’s why we’re continuing to buy or support that part of our collection.”

The specter of censorship

In any format, library collections nationwide have become the target of challenges — some from individuals, others orchestrated by politically motivated groups that have brought issues surrounding intellectual freedom prominently into the public discourse.

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Colorado isn’t without its conflicts, but has been far less affected than many other states. Still, lawmakers in the last legislative session passed a measure designed to reinforce the policies and procedures Colorado’s public libraries employ not only to acquire and use materials, but to deal with challenges to their content. 

James LaRue, executive director of the Garfield County Public Library District, has dealt with more than a thousand such challenges over a career in library management that includes stints as director of the Douglas County libraries as well as with the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. His book “On Censorship” explores the motives behind the challenges, which have come from across the political spectrum, and the dangers of book banning.

“It has gone from the one or two people that get upset by running across something in a library to being more centrally coordinated,” he says, noting that nationally many of the recent objections stemmed from both isolation during the pandemic that pulled some down conspiracy rabbit holes and political strategy aimed at motivating conservatives for the 2022 midterm elections — most often by objecting to books with LGBTQ content. 

Poll after poll says this is a deeply unpopular view, that 70% of either party is opposed to censorship. But why do they keep at it? Because it seems to work. It gets people riled up, and as always in America we are both obsessed with and repelled by sex.

— James LaRue, executive director of the Garfield County Public Library District

“Poll after poll says this is a deeply unpopular view, that 70% of either party is opposed to censorship,” LaRue says. “But why do they keep at it? Because it seems to work. It gets people riled up, and as always in America we are both obsessed with and repelled by sex.”

Although he notes that other states have experienced more frequent challenges, and have seen legislative efforts aimed at even criminalizing anyone who provides access to certain materials, about five states have passed what he calls “anti-censorship legislation.”

“Colorado,” he adds, “is a much happier environment.”

In particular, he notes the new state law’s emphasis on the “request for reconsideration” that challenges must go through that effectively slows the process and prevents knee-jerk reactions. The new law requires that library boards establish a written policy for reconsideration, and lists specific standards that, among several other things, require they consider the perspectives of marginalized groups.

Davies, the state librarian, says that the rancor that spills over from book challenges now appears to have gotten personal. For years, she recalls, surveys on the most trusted professions in America found librarians ranked near the top, along with firefighters. But in the last few years she has been troubled to hear the integrity of her peers disparaged, even if the spitefulness seems less prevalent in Colorado.

“We’re all librarians at the end of the day,” she says, “and so when institutions like the American Library Association are getting challenged, and everybody’s lumping our profession into having this agenda of grooming children and being pedophiles, it’s just been something I never thought I would have seen in this work.” 

The Pueblo district has had a request for reconsideration policy in effect for more than 10 years, and the passage of the new law required them to simply tweak the timeline for how often an item could be reconsidered, Baca says — from once in a 12-month period to once every two years, the most frequent allowed by the law.

Although she welcomes the attention to the issue of censorship, she estimates that in the nine years she’s been with the library system it has received only one or two requests per year for material to be reconsidered.

In Denver, Jeske estimates she sees “zero to one challenge a year — knock on wood.” Even before the new state law, DPL changed its policy to only allow Denver residents to challenge materials to block organized national challenges.

Providing a social safety net

The pandemic proved challenging in many ways, and its aftermath revealed all sorts of societal issues that had always been present but suddenly were exacerbated. Think homelessness, mental health issues and substance abuse, among others. And libraries, particularly in population centers, found themselves nudged to become more engaged when it comes to connecting those in need with social services.

“That’s nothing new, especially for the Denver Public Library being in this urban setting,” Jeske says. “I think the pandemic demonstrated to us and the community how vital we are as a public space and a place of access — for learning, for knowledge, for technology and connection to the world.”

Not to mention for clean water and a restroom.

Since 2015, the Denver Public Library has had at least one social worker on staff to serve that population. That lone hire nine years ago “seemed like a win,” Jeske says, but soon it became clear that one wouldn’t be enough. Now there’s a Community Resources team of at least 10 people, some of them “peer navigators,” people whose experience mirrors those they’re serving.

The team’s training has spilled over to the entire frontline staff so they’re better equipped to handle issues like security, de-escalation, mental health and first aid.

“We’re one of the pioneers in that space,” Jeske says.

Increasing concern over drug abuse at libraries surfaced early last year with a string of suburban Denver library closures over possible contamination from methamphetamine fumes. (There were no reports of patrons affected by exposure.) Contamination became an issue at one branch in the Pueblo district that required action to remediate exposure to the public, Baca says — though fortuitously, the branch was already scheduled to close for renovations. 

But just as libraries have adapted to community needs, they’ve also had to adopt safety measures. In Pueblo, that means installing environmental sensors in the restrooms that monitor the air in real time to detect potential hazards and immediately notify staff.

“A lot of preventative kinds of stuff,” Baca says, “and just being really active in making sure people understand what the library rules are.”

Pueblo’s library system saw another vehicle for meeting the community’s needs. Although most of the district’s facilities are clustered in the city, Baca launched the telehealth pilot in 2,000-population Colorado City, about a half-hour south of the city limits. Kits similar to the ones used in Hugo and elsewhere are available, with the added feature of a hot spot that can provide patrons mobile internet access in an area where service can be lacking — thanks in part to grant money from the Federal Communications Commission during the pandemic.

Pueblo recently received a $250,000 Mellon Foundation grant for a project aimed at collecting digital archives to preserve the local culture and history of areas that may not have the wherewithal to host the material themselves. As the regional hub for this effort, the Pueblo library will be reaching out to communities across southern Colorado to solicit audio, video or photo files that can be uploaded to help maintain the historical record.

She holds out both projects as evidence of the evolving state of public libraries as they match resources with pressing local concerns.

“So it goes back to the social supports,” Baca says. “Where are the gaps? Can the library be relevant?”

Digital literacy, broadband and health

Kieran Hixon suspected something was up when he took part in Gov. Jared Polis’ broadband initiative and learned that rural areas use telehealth at far lower rates than urban centers. The trend seemed counterintuitive, given the scarcity of medical services in rural areas.

A subsequent partnership with the state Office of eHealth Innovation explored melding telehealth services with libraries that, especially in small towns, are considered anchor institutions when it comes to broadband. And it turns out that one of the hurdles to implementing telehealth in those communities is digital literacy. 

Hixon, the rural and small library consultant within the state department of education, saw the gaps and immediately knew libraries could be relevant by combining their core mission — namely literacy, including the digital kind — and their unique ability to provide access to broadband in far-flung locations. He started calling around to small libraries to ask what they thought and found that while some were already hearing about patrons’ health concerns, they didn’t have the resources to assist them. 

“I called this one librarian and she says, ‘People are coming in, and I just don’t know how to help them. And I could sure use help to do it better,’” Hixon says. “I was like, OK, we’re onto something.”  

In partnership with Ashley Heathfield, a telehealth project manager at the Office of eHealth Innovation, Hixon combed data to find the counties with the worst health outcomes that were farthest from medical services. Then they targeted libraries in those counties and sent out an email to see who was interested.

Eventually 17 library jurisdictions, encompassing 24 buildings, signed on to the pilot project, which has been running for less than a year. Early findings include greater use of the in-library spaces than the kits. 

But in Hugo, director Allen began a “soft launch” last spring, and then started spreading the word. Two portable kits have been the most popular, with Allen scanning a barcode just as she would a book to check them out. Patrons normally have 24 to 48 hours to use the kits, though Allen remains flexible. She also fitted a mobile desk that patrons can roll into the library’s board room to use for in-library telehealth appointments with privacy.

Each kit contains a laptop computer with features like headphones with individual volume controls for the hard of hearing and large-print keyboards for the vision impaired, and an ergonomic mouse. It also includes a ring light, scale, blood pressure monitor (including cuff sizes from child to extra large adult), pulse oximeter and forehead thermometer. The kit includes a wireless hot spot to provide an internet connection to a health care provider.

Getting people to realize that libraries are available for more than just books is changing a thought process.

— Kristin Allen, Hugo Public Library director

Allen estimates that the portable kits get checked out five or six times a month, a gradual increase as the area’s “very traditional” population becomes familiar with telehealth as an option and gets used to the idea that their library can be a resource to pursue it.

“Getting people to realize that libraries are available for more than just books is changing a thought process,” Allen says. “They still get surprised when you say, ‘Oh, yeah, you can come in and make copies.’ And then you throw in being able to check out a telehealth kit, and they’re like, ‘A what?’ It’s just a whole new thing for a lot of people to wrap their heads around.”

Librarians going … and coming 

As libraries have undergone mind-bending changes, there’s been some evidence of burnout among librarians even as another generation has embraced the job for new reasons.

Davies, the state librarian, says she’s seen signs of burnout particularly among those frontline staff who deal directly with the public. She also notes what appears to be a mass retirement among those in library leadership roles, though it’s unclear whether that’s a response to librarians coming under attack over issues of content, the overarching lack of civility from the public or just demographics naturally thinning the ranks.

“Regardless of why it’s happening,” she says, “it is happening.” 

But she adds that a lot of younger people have been attracted to librarianship, prompting a spike within some programs as students seek advanced degrees in library and information science, because the shifting role of libraries has in some ways recast the profession as social justice work.

“It’s an equalizer in a community,” Davies says. “It serves everybody.” 

Allen, 44, first worked as an auto insurance claims adjuster in California, but about 14 years ago migrated to Colorado when her company moved its call center to Colorado Springs. She eventually moved to Limon after her husband took a job at the correctional facility outside of town.

With a degree in early childhood education, Allen did day care in her home. She often took her own kids to the Limon Memorial Library for story time with library director Lucille Reimer.

Describing herself as “one of those odd introverts that likes people,” Allen soon found that at the library she was completely in her element, and that comfort zone fed an innate desire to help people. It wasn’t long before Reimer, who needed some extra help, offered her a part-time job. So a few days each week, Allen learned that being a librarian involved a lot more than checking out books.

“It’s a service that you’re providing a community,” she says. “And it just spoke to my heart.”

After about a year, the position overseeing the Hugo library opened up. Reimer urged her understudy to apply. Allen hesitated — she didn’t have that much experience. But Reimer convinced her to take a shot, and she got the job.

It’s part-time, like many library jobs in rural areas, but that meant Allen could continue helping Reimer on a morning schedule in Limon before heading over to run the Hugo library in the afternoon. Now, Reimer is retiring and passing the reins in Limon to Katie Zipperer, who has been directing the library’s bookmobile, another crucial tool for serving the 2,500 square miles of Lincoln County.

“We try to do everything we can together,” says Allen, who’s in her third year directing the Hugo library. “So when we make flyers, when we do programs, it’s always the three of us working together. So it’s been great to share resources.”

When she attended CALCON, the annual gathering of library staffers from all over the state, Allen saw the world opening up. She knew she wanted even her tiny facility to be about much more than books, and suddenly she learned that bigger (and better funded) libraries were doing all sorts of things to serve their populations.

“It just opened my eyes,” she says. “When I saw what other, bigger city libraries were doing, I thought, ‘We can do that.’ I was like a blank sheet when I got here.”

While Hugo’s size and budget might be limiting, Allen’s imagination was not. She noticed the array of “tool kits” that other libraries offered — materials for crafts, sewing machines, yoga, even memory resources for Alzheimer’s patients. She went to her board and told them that Hugo wasn’t keeping up. The library could do more.

So she started small, packaging various school materials in backpacks that students could check out. After those started gaining popularity, Allen moved to providing copying services and printing services that could produce brochures, flyers and posters. Word started filtering through town that the library could offer some extras like binding and laminating, printing and faxing — Allen even started providing a notary service.

With the Lincoln County Courthouse nearby, services like those proved particularly popular.

“We’re trying to do small things,” Allen says. “We don’t have tons of room but we can add on services to make things easier for people.”

When it comes to the future, Davies figures that Colorado is “just scratching the surface” in terms of creative ways that libraries can serve their patrons.  

“Ten years ago, we didn’t have a library of things where you can check out tools and you can check out cake pans, and you can check out VR headsets or GoPro cameras,” Davies says. “Whether you’re checking out gardening tools because you live in an apartment, but you have a gardening box, you don’t need to own these things. But how cool is it that you can check it out from the library?”

As gardens around Colorado begin to overflow with tomatoes, growers and cocktail enthusiasts may find themselves crossing paths at a unique version of that particular morning drink, whether the hair of the dog or a jump-start to the day, the Bloody Mary.

In a state bursting with home gardens, farmers markets, fresh produce and a DIY spirit, it seems inevitable that the drink would move beyond syrupy, heavily processed tomato juice out of a can. A couple of Colorado establishments offer their own versions of the drink and they stepped up with tips and tricks for the home bartender to try their hand.

Visitors to the juice bar at Mt. Princeton Hot Springs near Buena Vista have come across the freshly juiced Bloody Mary this summer, recently returned to the menu after some years of absence. The Mt. Princeton version of the cocktail relies on extremely ripe local hothouse tomatoes — grown on a neighboring property that makes use of the same geothermal activity that powers the springs — juiced along with a small handful of additional vegetables, according to Tom Warren, general manager at the hot springs.

For each 16-ounce drink, he said they juice five to six tomatoes along with half a lemon, a touch of fresh garlic and three local carrots, the last of which vastly improves the texture of the juice.

“With the tomatoes only it’s very thin, but when you squeeze the carrots it’s a thicker juice,” he said. “I think in the mouth it feels better than just the really really liquidy tomato juice.”

Warren rounds out the flavor profile with a touch of Japanese oyster sauce, which takes the place of traditional Worcestershire sauce in adding a touch of savoriness to the whole package, along with a sprinkle of salt and pepper and the customer’s choice of vodka. They experimented with oyster and Worcestershire, and Warren said the Worcestershire was too strong for the milder, freshly-juiced version of the cocktail. 

“We thought with the oyster sauce, it tasted very, very good. I did taste a sample with the Worcestershire sauce, it was not bad, but it almost overwhelmed the taste of the tomato,” he said. It’s overall a relatively low-sodium approach, though they rim the glass with Tajin, a blend of chile, lime and salt.

When it comes to garnishes, Mt. Princeton sticks with its minimal approach, offering bacon as an add-on. There once was an option to add three chilled shrimp, but that became “just a nightmare to prep” because of its popularity, Warren said.

For the home enthusiast, he recommends finding high-juice tomatoes, such as the fresh local ones used at the resort. “This is a very low-structured, soft tomato that’s full of liquid content,” he said. Some varieties and underripe tomatoes, liked the ones in the big box grocery stores that are “as hard as an apple,” will have too much flesh and yield less juice. “You would juice 20 for a (cocktail).”

Warren’s biggest recommendations for making a home-juiced Bloody Mary were to buy a good juicer and be prepared to spend some time making and perfecting the cocktail. It’s a “very simple, very wholesome” drink that relies on a few quality ingredients. “The real joy to it is that none of it is from a can or a bag.”

“The best Bloody Mary I’d ever had”

In Colorado Springs, Mother Muff’s owner Susan Hirt says her menu of Marys was informed by an older, more complex version of the Mt. Princeton cocktail that she enjoyed almost 20 years ago. Inspired by “the best Bloody Mary I’d ever had,” she experimented with different vegetables and different proportions to put one on the menu years later when opening Muff’s.

Because Mother Muff’s can serve hundreds of Bloody Marys in a day, the restaurant relies on a high-quality commercial tomato juice for its base, and blends it with a “concentrate” that consists of other juices and ingredients. The concentrate is made by juicing carrots, celery, cucumber, green and red bell peppers, beets (for color), jalapeño and a secret seventh ingredient in big batches using heavy-duty Breville juicers. They pass the initial pulp through a second time to ensure that they’re getting as much juice as possible for their effort and then freeze the concentrate

“At first we juiced every couple of days, because it only stays fresh for three or four days,” Hirt said. “I wanted to keep it as fresh as possible, and as veggie as possible. We came up with making it in big batches and freezing it.”

Vegetables get cleaned and chopped for ease of processing, but none are peeled. Once everything is processed, the vegetable juice is dosed with Tabasco and Worcestershire sauces and is ready to be added to the tomato juice.

For the home mixologist, Hirt recommended the approach she took to develop the Mother Muff’s recipe: juicing a few cups of a variety of vegetables, then playing with the proportions. She had a cucumber-heavy version that she liked, but it was less popular with tasters, so she dialed down the cucumber and turned up the peppers, carrots and other ingredients. “The beet helps to give it that juicy, earthy flavor, but it’s also for color,” she said. Without it, Muff’s mix is more brown than red.

Removing the seeds from the jalapeños or other peppers can impact the flavor profile and the level of heat, and she suggested substituting poblanos for the home mixologist who prefers it mild. She’s used Anaheim peppers in a pinch, as well.

“Don’t be afraid to try different things if it’s for yourself, for a party,” she advised. “It really is endless, the things you can juice. I think apple might be a really great minor ingredient if you’re looking for something different.”

Muff’s offers a variety of additional customizations that customers can explore or the home bartender can take inspiration from. There are choices that stray from vodka or house-infused poblano vodka — with offerings that include gin, rum, whiskey and tequila — and garnishes that range from the typical olive and celery stalk to bolder choices such as a pickle spear, bacon, blue cheese-stuffed olives and pepperoncini. 

Other tweaks, often based on regional interpretations, include Clamato instead of tomato juice, or augmenting the drink with olive juice, pickle juice, sriracha, wasabi, porter-style beer, and even beef broth. 

“There are different kinds of Bloody Marys depending on where you are in the United States,” Hirt said. “Where I grew in in Illinois, they put beef broth into ‘em, which I think is kinda gross, but it’s on there. Years and years and years ago, I stole a recipe from a bartender at The Keg Lounge in Manitou — who is now a regular, by the way, which I love — he put a little bit of porter beer in his Bloody Mary. It was something really unique that’d I’d never tried. It was really good, so it’s on there.”

So whether or not it includes clams or beef, Mother Muff’s illustrates the diversity of the drink. There are countless roads that the tender of a Bloody Mary bar can explore to make the drink their own, and the next great iteration might just come from a basket of fresh farmers market ingredients.

A basic tomato juice recipe

3 pounds very ripe tomatoes, cored and roughly chopped
1¼ cup chopped celery, including leaves
⅓ cup chopped onion
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 pinch of black pepper
A couple of shakes of Tabasco sauce (6-8 drops, to taste)

This recipe can be made using the cooked method, recommended by simplyrecipes.com, or using one of these no-cook methods (including putting the ingredients through a countertop juicer) recommended by alphafoodie.com.

We tested the recipe using the blender method using extremely ripe field tomatoes and substituting two carrots for the sugar.

It was too expensive for the Three Leaches Theatre Company to practice Shakespeare in a proper rehearsal space, so they rented an office.

“Literally just a simple 400-square-foot room. We have some furniture in it, from our shows,” said Melissa Leach, co-founder of the Three Leaches.

The office cost Leach and her co-founder, Amber Irish, about $800 per month, and they rented it out to other small theater companies, like Flamboyán, a new Puerto Rican-focused theater group, for $15 an hour.

Finding rehearsal space in Denver has become increasingly challenging as rents go up and small theater companies are pushed out.

Meanwhile, remaining community strongholds, like the Buntport Theater near the Arts District on Santa Fe and The People’s Building in Aurora, are booked out a year in advance due to the high demand and low supply of affordable spaces.

In late May, the Benchmark Theater in Lakewood announced it would be leaving its home of six years. That meant an open theater space. The building is owned by the Colfax Business Improvement District, which leases it to creative community organizations. Leach interviewed for the spot and landed the new sublease. 

Three for one

The Three Leaches will have its name on the theater space, but they’ll be joined by Flamboyán, founded last year by Jon Marcantoni, and Josh Berkowitz of The Laboratory on Santa Fe. Flamboyán will occupy the stage four months of the year — February, June, September and November — while Berkowitz will largely control the theater’s attached gallery space. But the terms are flexible, and Leach and Marcantoni emphasized collaboration among the three groups. 

“We have a working relationship that’s just like, ‘communicate, overcommunicate,’” Marcantoni said. “Let’s work together, let’s make amazing art, let’s invite the community in and let’s be a space that isn’t just for us.”

The 40 West Arts District has been absorbing Metro Denver’s outpriced artists for the better part of a decade. In 2017, a handful of galleries, including Pirate Contemporary Art Gallery, Edge Gallery and Next Gallery, moved into the blossoming district. The theater building itself has housed 40 West Arts Gallery, Edge Theatre and the Benchmark Theater over the past 13 years.

The new Three Leaches Theater will be part performance space and part community hub, Leach said. They plan on hosting workshops, karaoke nights and participating in the art district’s vibrant First Friday Art Walks. Of course, they’ll also rent the theater out to small companies when they can. Leach said she hasn’t decided on rates yet, but it will probably be somewhere around the $15 per hour mark, just like in the office space.

“I want to talk to people in the community and see what is doable,” she said.

“We’re still doing this?”

Leach and Irish started their company 14 years ago, a couple of self-described “nerdy theater kids” with dreams of creating a “fun, exciting, kind of edgy theater that did what we wanted to do, and was affordable to everybody,” Leach said.

They planted a flag in “bare bones, scrappy” productions, grounded in a philosophy that good plays don’t require elaborate sets and costumes. They budgeted $1,000 per play, including all rentals, and kept ticket prices under $20.

“Every couple of years we’d be like, ‘We’re still doing this?’” she said. They kept doing it. They’ve produced 13 seasons worth of shows, including 10 minute plays, a Zoom play, “Macbeth” and lots of absurdist comedies. 

In 2021, Leach told Shoutout Colorado that they started excluding rental space fees from their $1,000 budgets because spaces were getting too expensive in Denver. They also switched to a pay-what-you-can ticket system to eliminate hesitation by new theatergoers.

“People are more likely to try something new if it costs them $5, rather than $30,” she said.

Making it work

Coming out of the pandemic, The Buntport Theater — which Leach considers a “role model” of community theater spaces — decided to offer their rehearsal space for free, before switching to a rate that is “just enough to keep our heating and cooling systems running,” Buntport co-founder Erin Rollman said.

“It was not a business or financial decision,” Rollman said. “We’re not making money, in fact we’re losing money. We made the decision because we know it’s extremely difficult to produce work in this town, and there are very few spaces to rent at this point.” She said they’re able to make up for the financial burden of cheap rental fees through grant funding from foundations like the Science and Cultural Facilities District, the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation and the Olson Vander Heyden Foundation.

But word got out — way out — about Buntport’s offer. According to the theater’s website, they are “overwhelmed with requests” by artists trying to book time. Not to mention, the Buntport has its own shows to rehearse and perform, including a season-opening production of “Buntport’s 55th Original Show” that starts Nov. 1. Rollman is excited at the prospect of another space to point inquiring artists toward.

“Honestly, it is overwhelming,” Rollman said. “It will just be nice to finally say, ‘there’s this other space you should check out.’”

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Months before the global pandemic, chef Troy Guard opened his first restaurant outside of Denver, a Guard and Grace steakhouse in Houston. Then COVID “kicked our butt,” he said. The restaurant eventually found its place in the city, even landing top honors in a state where beef is just part of being Texan. 

And now Guard, who began building his restaurant empire TAG Restaurant Group in Denver in 2009, is leaving Colorado for greener pastures.

“My wife and I are moving to Houston,” Guard said. “The company will still be based in Denver, but we want to grow more of the company in Houston because it’s a better climate for business and restaurants over there. … Honestly, I love Denver. I’ve been here 23 years. But it’s becoming more and more difficult every year to open restaurants. The last three restaurants have taken way too long by the city to OK, and I’m just kind of over that.”

Troy Guard, chef and owner of Guard and Grace, located in downtown Denver at 1801 California St., on July 26. (Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun)

That’s just one beef that Guard and other top local chefs and restaurateurs have with doing business in the city these days. Higher operating costs were exacerbated by the more commonly known culprits, like inflation, which pushed up the price of not just food, but also construction, insurance, utilities and property taxes. Labor shortages fueled rising wages and new worker benefits, like the state’s paid-leave program.

But there seems to be something in particular with Denver, especially as downtown has struggled to return to its pre-pandemic heyday. Ongoing construction that ripped up 16th Street Mall hasn’t helped. While Mayor Mike Johnston’s pledge to end homelessness has minimized the number of tents pitched along sidewalks, the reputation has been difficult to ditch. For some of the biggest names in Denver dining, it feels like the city just isn’t listening. 

Juan Padro, cofounder of Culinary Creative that operates several Denver restaurants, including Michelin Bib Gourmand winners Mister Oso and Ash’Kara, first ventured out of state in 2019 with Italian eatery Sofia in New Orleans. Now the Big Easy also has a Mister Oso, and soon, another Denver original, A5 Steakhouse.

“We are looking all over,” Padro said. “We have deals that are signed in Denver that we’re going to honor, but generally, I don’t have a strong interest in doing business in Denver right now. I love Denver and want to do business in Denver. But economically, it’s just not feasible.”

How infeasible?

Culinary Creative’s Red Tops Rendezvous, a Detroit-style pizza joint that opened last summer in the Jefferson Park neighborhood, started on a high note, averaging $50,000 a week in revenue, Padro said. But when construction began last fall on Federal Boulevard, making it tough to turn onto West 25th Avenue, where the restaurant is located, sales dropped to $30,000 a week overnight. He said $36,000 was breakeven. 

“And then they ripped up 25th and we dropped to $16,000 to $18,000,” he said. “I’m under no illusion that the city doesn’t have to move forward with projects to enhance the streets and sidewalks for citizens. I support that. What I don’t understand is how the heck do they not have a plan for the businesses?”

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Instead of keeping Red Tops open and paying staff, food and other other operating costs, he temporarily closed it in June. It’s still losing money. Padro has loans to pay, plus insurance and other upkeep for the building.

“I’m losing $17,000 a month, but it’s better than losing $50,000,” Padro said.

While he’s rethinking Denver for new restaurants, he hopes to reopen Red Tops, which he said did get a $15,000 grant from the city’s Business Impact Opportunity Fund with United Way. 

“You don’t just get into the restaurant business to make money,” he said. “You get into the restaurant business for community, and because you believe in something. It’s a form of art and entertainment. So as long as the company remains healthy, and the company’s healthy, but, generally speaking, we have other restaurants that are more profitable for sure.”

During a recent weekday lunch hour at the Mercantile Dining & Provision, business seemed steady, but there was no wait to be seated as the clock ticked past 1 p.m. The restaurant, tucked into the northern end of Union Station, was one of the most anticipated openings in 2014. That’s because it’s led by Alex Seidel, the first Denver chef to earn a semifinalist nod in the prestigious James Beard Foundation awards in 2008 for Fruition. He was named Best Chef South West for Mercantile in 2018.

Alex Seidel, owner and chef, inside Mercantile Dining & Provision on July 26 in Denver. The restaurant is located downtown inside Denver’s Union Station. (Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Business hasn’t returned since COVID, at least not enough to sustain a staff of 100, which Mercantile employed prior to the pandemic. It now employs 30, he said.

“I personally have never worked in a restaurant in my entire 36-year career where it is slower on a Friday and Saturday night than it is the rest of the week,” Seidel said. “What that tells me is that there’s nobody coming down from the suburbs. The people that go out on Friday, Saturday night are no longer coming downtown.” 

It wasn’t too long ago that Seidel was excited about sharing his cooking. “You felt this great responsibility to provide something amazing for the community,” he said. He opened the fast-casual Chook Charcoal Chicken in late 2018 to “bring great food to people and it doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg.” Back then, Chook charged $20 for a whole chicken. More than five years later, it’s $21.95, or 10% higher, less than inflation for the same period.  

118 minutes

In 2018, when the state’s minimum wage was $10.20/hour, it took one hour and 58 minutes of work to pay for a whole chicken at Chook, which cost $20 at the time.

72 minutes

In 2024, with Denver’s minimum wage at $18.29/hr, it takes one hour and 12 minutes of work to pay for a whole chicken at Chook, which now costs $21.99

“We’re a certified B Corp., we have been trying to do things for all the right reasons, taking care of people and our planet,” he said. “And those restaurants have struggled in this setting. And when I say struggle, I mean they just break even.”

His northeastern Denver commissary, Füdmill, which produces pastries for his restaurants, has struggled to renew its license after the city put the licensing system online to save applicants an in-person visit to City Hall. He admits that this delay could be his fault. His applications had some missing information. But the back-and-forth emails to figure out what was missing has been such a time suck that even a James Beard award-winning chef feels hopeless. 

He took up pottery during COVID and that “has brought some peace to my life,” he said. But, he added, “I am not looking to open another restaurant. (Insert audible gasp from the interviewer.) No really. It sucked the life out of me.”

Denver. Costs. More.

The restaurant business is no picnic even with the fame and foodie fandom that can come with it. Profits are notoriously minuscule, like living from paycheck to paycheck. 

According to an analysis by point-of-sale system developer Toast, restaurant profit margins range between 0% and 15%, but the average is 3% to 5%. Larger corporate-owned chains benefit from shared costs and streamlined operations, allowing a place like Olive Garden to notch a profit margin of 22.8% despite a 1.5% drop in sales at existing locations in its latest quarter, according to parent Darden Restaurants. 

“It’s very, very difficult to make any money,” said John Imbergamo, a Denver restaurant consultant who represents award-winning chef Jen Jasinski’s restaurants Rioja, Bistro Vendome and Stoic & Genuine. “The fact is, you not only have to be busy, you also have to make money. And we’ve had a harmonic convergence of cost increases … that have all hit at once combined with pandemic relief funds, which are now running out or have run out in most cases.”

Jasinski, in fact, with Crafted Concepts partner Beth Gruitch, announced Aug. 2 that Stoic & Genuine will close in September, a decision made based on “changing market conditions” and  coinciding with an expiring lease at Union Station. They’ll also hand over two restaurants to their partners. Adam Branz  becomes sole operator of Ultreia, while Tim Kuklinski takes Bistro Vendôme. Jasinski and Gruitch will continue to operate Rioja in Larimer Square. 

“It was always our plan to turn our businesses over to our partners and let the young, fresh people run these businesses so we can take a little bit of a step back,” Jasinski said. “We weren’t thinking about closing Stoic, but that has more to do with the economy. … The pandemic changed a lot of things.”

Inflation also hit the Denver area earlier than other U.S. cities. The metro area recorded a 9.1% increase in consumer prices in March 2022, several months ahead of the nation. And while Denver’s inflation has slowed —  it fell to 2.6% in May — it hasn’t stopped.

Once raised, prices rarely go down, though corporations do try to nudge revenues higher. In late June, McDonald’s launched a $5 meal deal. It wasn’t enough to improve sales for the quarter, which fell 1% from a year earlier. But CEO Chris Kempczinski said it did the job of “improved brand perceptions around value and affordability,” reported business-news site TheStreet.

Honestly, I love Denver … But it’s becoming more and more difficult every year to open restaurants.

— Troy Guard, chef and owner of Guard and Grace

And restaurants and all businesses, really, must deal with customer perception, Imbergamo said. Sourcing fresh ingredients, maintaining a trained staff to grill a burger to perfection, and serving customers at the table, costs more than it did a few years ago. The consumer’s “value barometer is a very, very difficult thing to change,” Imbergamo said. 

“For 10 years, we’ve been telling people that a burger is worth $10 or $12. Now it’s $15 and that just doesn’t compute when it comes to the value barometer,” he said. “We can’t move that needle over to where it needs to move very easily because even though consumers understand (that) the price of goods has gone up in the grocery store, they don’t equate that necessarily to restaurants. And if they do, they still don’t care. The fact is they say, ‘Why is my burger that used to be $12 now $15?’”

But not all consumers have pulled back their spending. Guard said he’s seen sales at his lower-priced restaurants slow, but not so much at pricier places, he said. Guests at Guard and Grace, where a 22-ounce Cowboy Ribeye is $140, tend to be out-of-town visitors or business professionals with big expense accounts. 

“At Guard and Grace, which is a high-end steakhouse, we were up. In my opinion, people that go out and dine at the $100-plus check average have the money to do that,” he said. “At our HashTag restaurant, breakfast is a little bit down. … Maybe it’s summer and it’s hit and miss because people are on vacation (but) the first seven years of HashTag have gone up every year. And this year, it’s down, so not flat, but down. That’s kind of a bummer.”

Hop Alley owner Tommy Lee introduced a six-seat Chef’s Counter in February. The chef-driven tasting menu is available only by reservation, which requires a $100 deposit per person. He said 90% of Chef’s Counter customers end up spending around $230. That’s steeper than the average $65 check at Hop Alley, which earned a Bib Gourmand award from the Michelin Guide this year for “good quality, good value.”

“It’s been great because we’re generating a good amount of revenue out of the six seats,” Lee said. “It’s a lot of people from out of town because there are people seeking out these tasting menu experiences. A lot of these customers that are coming to the Chef’s Counter have never been to Hop Alley.”

The economy may be impacting consumer budgets, but restaurants are still opening in Denver, Imbergamo pointed out. According to his unofficial count — he relies on Westword’s weekly “Every Opening and Closing This Week” report — more open each month than close. 

What he doesn’t understand is why established out-of-state restaurants pick Denver, where operating costs, including minimum wage, are much higher. Denver’s hourly minimum wage is $18.29 an hour and will increase to $18.81 in January since it’s pegged to inflation. Many other states, including Texas and Louisiana, default to the federal minimum of $7.25. 

And in the land of restaurants, there’s something called the tipped credit. There are many, many complex rules around tipped credits in Colorado. But the gist is that tipped servers can be paid $3.02 less than the minimum wage, or $15.27. Meanwhile, the states that use the federal rate? The tipped minimum is a mere $2.13 an hour, which hasn’t changed since 1996.

“I can’t stress enough how much that tipped minimum wage increase every year impacts profitability because we use so many tipped employees,” Imbergamo said. “In many restaurants, some restaurant servers, bartenders are making $55, $60, $70 an hour and for them to get $1 raises is, you know, it just doesn’t really make any sense. When you multiply that dollar times the number of hours that we use in a week, in a month, in a year, that turns into a huge number for restaurants.”

The minimum wage and tipped minimum in Denver and Colorado are going up again in January. That will happen every year, as long as inflation exists. Robin Kniech, an at-large Denver city council member in 2019 who advocated for the city to break out in 2019 with its own higher minimum wage, said her support was due to the gap between stagnant wages and escalating housing prices. 

“We talk a lot about a housing crisis in Colorado, but we’ve really had a wage gap. That’s really the underlying thing that has complicated and exacerbated our housing crisis,” Kniech said. 

But she also pointed out that rising wages is just one piece of rising costs of doing business. Commercial landlords have increased rent. Food prices are up. The city policy helps the lowest-paid workers whose income makes it challenging to live in the city.

“What’s really clear (is that) leisure and hospitality employment in Denver is growing,” she said. “It grew at a rate of 5.9% last year. It’s grown every single year since the pandemic — 13.8% in 2021, 19.9% in 2022 and 5.9% in 2023. All of that is along with this wage. Each individual business may be having a variety of adjustments that they are making in this era of making sure that workers can earn closer to what it costs to live in their city. But overall, the industry is growing. It is not contracting.”

The city’s leisure and hospitality workforce has grown since the worst of the pandemic, and so has pretty much every industry, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. But at the same time, the city’s estimated 65,322 workers in such occupations is just back to where it was in 2019, as seen in the chart below. 

Kniech, now a Bell Policy Center fellow working on affordable housing projects, said the City Council couldn’t touch the tipped minimum because it was already baked into the state constitution. 

“There was a desire to talk about it and it just wasn’t on the table,” she said. “But I will tell you because I have a little mental file cabinet of the number of restaurant owners who said they could never, or would never, go to a service-fee approach (like in Europe) and that was not happening in America. That it was impossible. That was 2019. And here we are. Many restaurants have adjusted. It’s not just about government policy. It’s also about business practices.”

Dana Rodriguez, chef and owner of Carne and Work and Class, inside Carne located in RiNo at 2601 Larimer St. on July 26 in Denver. At a cutting board, she prepares olive tapenade to be served with achiote-grilled octopus. (Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Chef Dana Rodriguez may be one of the more recognized names in the local restaurant industry as the chef behind Casa Bonita’s new menu. But at the two restaurants where she is executive chef and owner, she has just 60 employees. TAG Restaurant Group employs about 500 companywide. Culinary Creative Group has 750. Darden Restaurants, which owns brands including Olive Garden and The Capital Grille, employs 190,000 globally.

Policies often apply uniformly to all. Why is that, Rodriguez wondered. She said she appreciated how Mayor Johnston talked last year about helping people who were homeless.

“He said the first thing is to divide. Some is mental health, some is addictions. And the other one is literally like they just want to live their life like that,” she said. “And I say they should look at us in the same way. There are the big corporations, there are the small independents, there are franchises and fast-food restaurants. How can we help them and them and them? The same formula doesn’t work for everyone. That’s the part that we’re missing. They don’t see us for our real needs.” 

Denver improves backlog, wait times 

And then there are delays with building permits, inspections, reviews and business licenses. Before COVID, Guard said, the city provided a time estimate on how long it would take for approvals. Now, it seems like it’s timeless.

“It used to be 90 days. Now, it could be eight months, which my last one was, and I lost my general contractor because of that. I lost my pricing because of that,” Guard said. “Then I have to reprice and then the price goes up and then I have to go to my investors. They don’t want to give me more money. It’s like this complete circus and it’s frustrating.”

City officials acknowledge that things got backed up during COVID. But commercial building permits, in particular, have been a priority of Denver’s mayor. Last year, Johnston pledged to reduce building-permit wait times by 30%. As of the end of July, the average wait time for intermediate commercial projects had been cut by 14% to 30 days. The goal is to get to 25 days by the end of the year, city spokesperson Genna Morton said. Current plan review times are posted on the city’s interactive dashboard.

“Our recent efforts have brought those review times back to what customers were experiencing pre-COVID. There’s opportunity to continue to improve and the city is focused on continuing to bring down those review times,” Morton said in an email. “Overall, our permit review times as of (July 31) are comparable to what our customers experienced 3 to 5 years ago, before the pandemic.”

The city also revamped its food licensing program by moving everything online so applicants no longer needed to show up in person. When the new system launched a year ago last month,  the average wait was 71 days. Now, it’s five, said Eric Escudero, spokesperson for the city’s Excise and Licenses department.  

“We’re seeing the fruit from the changes with the processing times. I mean the vast majority of applications are (completed) within five days,” Escudero said. 

But he understands that the new system may be confusing. Companies that just needed to renew had to start over because the new system didn’t have their old data. Escudero said the department helps anyone who asks.

“If you’re applying for a license and you’ve run into a dead end, you’re not sure what to do or are confused, we’ll meet with someone and we’ll coordinate with those other city agencies,” he said. 

According to city licensing data, the number of retail food establishments has increased in Denver since 2021, but it declined 4.4% to 3,947 businesses this year. (Escudero said older data before 2021 is unreliable.) Statewide, the Department of Revenues’ sales tax data shows that the number of active food services and drinking establishments in Colorado is higher than it was before the pandemic. 

Permit delays have long been part of commercial projects, which include restaurants. But the convergence of inflation, pandemic recovery and a slower summer has just made restaurant operations more challenging, Ibergamo said.

“Restaurants used to be the place that people who didn’t have a ton of money could open, could find a spot that had a grease trap and make some minor changes to the way the place looked and get open,” Imbergamo said. “That’s kind of gone.” 

How chefs decide to increase menu prices

Higher prices are an issue consumers face at nearly every income level. But not all restaurants have effectively shared why menu prices are higher.

Rodriguez gave it a shot: “This restaurant is a $2.3 million restaurant,” she said referring to the revenue at her award-winning Work and Class in Denver’s RiNo neighborhood. “And then when you look at the expenses, it’s $1.9 million. “And you’re like, ‘Why even open?’” 

That’s roughly a 17% profit margin, and her most profitable restaurant, largely because the staff is small with 31 employees. And call her crazy, or uncorporate-like or just someone who wants to do right by her staff and the community. Her workers have benefits. They support one another, which meant covering health insurance for an employee who spent three years fighting cancer and was unable to work.  Customers waiting for a table can order a discounted mixed drink, for $4. But every year, costs continued to rise. 

As the cost of Colorado lamb rose, she pulled it off the menu at Work and Class to avoid raising prices. 

“And people said, ‘What?’ Yeah, now I can serve chicken, pork, veal, the meats that are more affordable. And people who say, ‘What the f—, we want our lamb back’ (and) I say, ‘Are you willing to pay market price?’” she said. “That’s why all the menus now you see market price for oysters, for lamb, for steaks, for caviar (so) you don’t get stuck as an owner feeling, ‘Oh, I’m losing more and more every time.’”

She brought lamb back at double the price. It’s currently going for $64.75 a pound, up from $28.75 a decade ago when the restaurant opened.

216 minutes

In 2014, when Denver’s minimum wage was at $8/hr, it took three hours and 36 minutes of work to pay for the lamb dish at Work and Class, which charged $28.75 back then.

212.5 minutes

In 2024, with Denver’s minimum wage at $18.29/hr, it would take 3 hours and 33.5 minutes of work to pay for the lamb dish at Work and Class, which now costs $64.75.

Restaurants hate to raise prices though because of customer perception, said Lee, whose restaurants, Uncle and Hop Alley, serve up ramen and regional Chinese cuisine, respectively. But they have to figure out a way to make a business sustainable.

“I was looking at our prices and our ramen has only increased by, I think, $4 in 12 years when it should probably have increased by $10,” Lee said. “We’re lucky, you know. I think our restaurants are relatively busy in general, like every day, and we’ve just had to kind of get creative with how we bend our models to make it work.”

105 minutes

In 2014, when Denver’s minimum wage at $8/hr, it took one hour and 45 minutes of work to pay for a bowl of Uncle’s Chashu ramen, which cost $14 back then.

63 minutes

In 2024, with Denver’s minimum wage at $18.29/hr, it takes one hour and 3 minutes of work to pay for a bowl of Uncle’s Chashu ramen, which now costs $19.

Lee said that right before the interview, he was texting another restaurant owner about how some places are adding a credit-card surcharge to their bills. Among his three restaurants, Lee said he pays “a hundred-and-something thousand” a year in credit card fees. 

“And if you were to pass on that 2%, which the customer would barely notice probably, you could cover your credit card fees. But to a customer seeing that, it’s like, ‘Hey, why are you charging me $1.25?’” he said. “But we can’t just eat the cost of everything that’s going up.”

For him, the restaurant business is a marathon with good years and bad years. He’s had more good years than bad so he feels fortunate. But 2024 may be one of the bad ones. Lee has a business degree so when he started out, he was always thinking about sustainability.  

LEFT: Tommy Lee, owner and chef of Uncle, inside his restaurant’s West Wash Park location at 95 S. Pennsylvania St. in Denver on July 26. RIGHT: Line cook Hilario Gregorio prepares Chinese eggplant inside Uncle. (Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun)

“At the two Uncle locations, we have open kitchens where the cooks are also helping serve customers. So we can legally put them as part of our tip pool, which helps pay your cooks through a different method and outside your bottom line,” he said. 

In Colorado, wait staff can’t share tips with the kitchen crew unless those workers interact with patrons and provide customer service. In order to pool tips, all staff must earn the full minimum wage, and not just the tipped minimum.

Jasinski said that her restaurants opted to skip the tipped-minimum savings and pay everyone minimum wage so that the kitchen crew, who are doing all the prep and cooking, can share tips. That started after 2019 when the city of Denver approved its own minimum wage, which initially was 7.1% higher than the state. Now, it’s nearly 27% more.  

Padro tested out a service fee at Highland Tap and Burger, the first restaurant he opened in Denver back in 2010. Then they rolled out a 20% service fee at all 18 restaurants that is shared with its nontipped kitchen crews. Customers are told that no tip is required, but some consumers call such fees “sneaky” and vow to never return. One Reddit thread tallied up Colorado restaurants with fees and the restaurant’s explanations.

But it’s really helped the rest of the staff. The restaurants still had to raise prices. At Tap and Burger, it’s still busy but profit has slid, Padro said.

“Volume in our restaurants? For sure, people are there. We have some really busy restaurants. It’s just not translating into profit,” he said. “In 2017, Highlands Tap and Burger did $3.7 million or $3.8 million in sales and a profit of $900,000. Last year, it did $3.3 million in sales and profited $30,000.”

Is it just Denver?

It’s still challenging even for someone like Rodriguez, who has won multiple best-chef awards. Sadly, she said, she made the hard decision to close her first solo venture, Cantina Loca, on April 29. Higher costs for food and labor plus declining number of patrons did in the 2-year-old Loca, she said.

“My employees start working at 8 in the morning to prep. And then at nighttime, come to cook at 4 p.m. but no one shows up from 4 to 6, so you already lose money in the first two hours. And then you make money only two, and lose money the other three,” she said. “That’s when I decided the numbers are not making sense. I put all my savings to save a restaurant and then I say, I’m hurting myself and my other businesses. It’s a hard decision that investors will never understand. And maybe the community will never understand. It’s so sad when people hear you are closing and are like, ‘Oh my God, she was my favorite.’ And I’m like, ‘But where have you been?’”

Of course, Rodriguez is a little … loca. Two months and a few days later, she opened Carne, a globally inspired steakhouse “for everyday” in Denver’s RiNo neighborhood. She says she wasn’t going to do it. She says she probably shouldn’t have done it.  

“I was down. I was sad. And the next day, literally, I’m like, ‘I’m not f-ing done.’ I guess I have this strength that I’m going to keep going whether it is here, whether it be somewhere else,” she said. “This is the only thing I know how to do and I love it.”

The “everyday” menu items may be more expensive than grilling steaks at home. But for the extra service, flavor and overall dining experience, Carne’s menu has dishes that seem tricky to cook at home, like the Argentinian Bife de Chorizo, which at $29 is about the same price as a bacon cheeseburger, large fries and milkshake at Five Guys ($26.37, before tax).

She still doesn’t feel Denver is the easiest place to open a restaurant, even if it took a mere two months to turn the old Il Posto location into a sexy, ’70s-inspired hangout complete with an upstairs lounge with shag carpeting, low-slung seats and Playboy magazines hiding behind a beaded curtain. She considered other states. Nearby cities also tried to woo her.

She picked Denver. RiNo specifically, because it’s an active nightspot that translates into multiple hours of activity. It helped Work and Class, located a few blocks away. Both are open Wednesday to Sunday, mainly for dinner “’til close.”

She wishes someone at the city would just listen “with their heart.”

“I have a fake sign because I’ve been waiting three months for a permit. If they come and they want me to take it down, I have to pay a fine. They are not very helpful in trying to build more businesses,” she said. “It feels like they’re saying, ‘Dana, you don’t need to open another restaurant.’ And I’m like, ‘No, I do need to open another one.’ ‘No, you don’t.’ And I’m like, well then if I close all my restaurants and Troy closes restaurants and Jen closes restaurants and Alex, what do you got in Denver? Do you want just Applebee’s?”

In the past two weeks in downtown Denver, Bonanno Concepts announced a temporarily closing of French 75 on 17th Street (via Westword), Cholon Restaurant Concept’s Bistro LeRoux shuttered on 16th Street (via Denver Post), and the aforementioned Stoic & Genuine is closing on Sept. 1. 

But coming soon, two new restaurants will debut inside the funky new Populus hotel near Civic Center park; South Carolina import Church and Union may finally open on 17th Street (via 303 Magazine); and (ahem) two more from Guard, including a HashTag on 17th Street and Swedish import, Eggs, on Wewatta Street, which Guard is opening with former Avalanche hockey player Peter Forsberg. 

Guard said it’s hard to say if he’d be moving to Texas if the permit delays had never happened. 

“I love Denver. I have the brand here and, yes, we want to continue to grow. But this was just one more push that says ‘Troy, you’ve got to get up and get out of the city and go somewhere else to continue the growth.’ I kept my roots here, but I believe in signs. I don’t know why but this is a sign. It’s time for your family to get up and move and try something new and grow the company somewhere else,” he said.

Jasinski is eager to focus on her first born, Rioja, which she and Gruitch opened in 2004. It’s won multiple best chef and restaurant honors. So, instead of running around operating four restaurants, she’ll return to the kitchen. They just signed a 20-year lease.

“There were times I didn’t cook all week and that was a bummer for me,” she said. “But you know, Beth and I have wanted to do this plan. We’ve taken these people, we’ve taught them and they’re wonderful people and we want them to shine on their own, have new ideas and do cool things like that. Let me get out of the way.”

A new city, new people and new food experiences invigorate many a chef, and that’s probably the sentiment Guard, Jasinski and others felt when they landed in Denver years ago. 

“There’s always a new crop of people who have worked their lives in restaurants and are now looking for the opportunity to do one of their own. And that’s what keeps the Denver restaurant scene vibrant,” Imbergamo said. “The base premise is that it’s an industry that thrives on creativity and opportunity and hard work. That premise remains in place no matter what the economics are. It’s just harder.”

Kalyn Rose Heffernan has played shows all over the world and never been asked about her accessibility needs. 

“It’s wild to me,” said the emcee frontwoman of hip-hop group Wheelchair Sports Camp. “Wheelchair is in my band name. All of my pictures are me in a wheelchair. And you wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve been placed at a festival upstairs.”

Wheelchair Sports Camp has been a sonic staple in Denver for over a decade, and they’ve played the annual Underground Music Showcase a handful of years during that time. In 2022, Youth on Record, a nonprofit music organization that Heffernan works for, took over partial ownership of the festival. The ownership agreement came with a commitment to audit and overhaul the festival’s accessibility strategy. Heffernan was the obvious first call.

Growing Denver’s largest music festival

The Underground Music Showcase, a three-day, multivenue festival with nearly 200 acts, bubbled up in 2001 at the Bluebird Theater on Colfax. For a few years the showcase — which started with four bands for $5 — bopped back and forth between the Bluebird and the Gothic Theater in Englewood, until 2006, when it settled into its current location, a six-block strip of South Broadway. 

Over its 23-year run, the festival has changed hands from Denver Post reporter John Moore (now the arts and entertainment reporter at the Denver Gazette), to the Post’s then-music critic Ricardo Baca (now of the marketing agency Grasslands), to The Denver Post itself through the paper’s community foundation, and finally, in 2018, to its current co-owner, the marketing agency Two Parts.

Two years ago, Youth on Record, a nonprofit music organization, got in on the action. 

Youth on Record had received a surprise, unrestricted $1 million donation from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott in 2021, which Jami Duffy, executive director of Youth on Record, wanted to put toward building a “musician middle class.” That meant investing in things like professional development, higher wages and more opportunities for young musicians “to get in front of people,” Duffy explained. “So I looked at that and said, why don’t we see if that’s possible under UMS’ umbrella?”

Putting accessibility in writing

In March 2022, Duffy met with Casey Berry of Two Parts at the late-night hang Sputnik and inked their new co-ownership deal. Part of the ownership agreement included an accessibility audit, conducted by Youth on Record. 

They didn’t get straight to it. During Youth on Record’s first year of co-ownership, they had “some other things to focus on,” Duffy said. They set up sober bars, created a “care lounge” for artists to recharge away from the noise, and started Impact Days, a two-day industry-focused conference for musicians to learn and network.

Then it was time to hire Heffernan.

“Kalyn’s always been such a leader for accessibility rights. She’s a huge advocate in our community. She works with kids. And, bonus points, she’s also a well-respected career musician,” Duffy said. “So there was no better option locally.”

They also brought in Jessica Wallach, an accessibility consultant and artist who sometimes uses a scooter to get around. Together, Wallach and Heffernan conducted a comprehensive audit of every venue at UMS. 

“Just by us rolling through these places, and knowing little tricks, I think we were able to explain the accessibility of places in a way that hopefully other people are going to benefit from,” Heffernan said. 

“You know, like, ‘the door is heavy, but once you get in, it’s nice and open. The bathrooms are accessible, but the sink is high up.’ Weird shit like that.”

Together they compiled the festival’s first accessibility guide, which details everything from where to find water (for concertgoers and service dogs alike) to what the floor is like (the stage at Goodwill has freshly paved concrete, the stage at Punch Bowl has potholes). This year’s guide is 31 pages and can be downloaded ahead of time in regular or large print, and can be read at the festival in braille. 

“Ability is temporary”

The goal is to make bigger changes in the coming years, like building raised platforms at the main stages, creating low-sensory spaces where people can take breaks, hiring American Sign Language interpreters, and looking into alternative modes of experiencing music, like vibrating haptic suits that allow wearers to feel the music. 

But all of that costs money. Duffy is looking for an additional $50,000 next year to specifically address accessibility needs. 

“Something Kalyn taught me that has stayed with me is that ability is temporary,” Duffy said. “At some point in most of our lives, we will experience a disability, whether that’s temporary, long-term or forever. It could be because of an illness, because of an accident. You know, there’s all kinds of things that can happen. So ensuring accessibility for people with disabilities means that everyone is being taken care of.”

For now, the accessibility committee — headed by Wallach and Heffernan — is focused on providing an abundance of information so people with access needs know what they’re getting into. Along with the accessibility guide, they will have on-site coordinators and a tent with ear plugs, water and power strips to charge wheelchairs. 

For Heffernan, working with UMS “really filled a void. And like, (quieted) the rage,” she said. “It’s frustrating at times. If I don’t say something, nobody will, and if I say something then I’m working within all these trade-offs,” she said, referencing the inaccessible shows she’s gone ahead and played, but that upset the disability community in the process. “What a dream world it would be to just make my art and play music.”

History Colorado will begin its second wave of research into Native American boarding schools next month — this time with help from Indigenous people whose family members survived the horrifying experience.

The three-year project, funded with $1 million from the state legislature, will focus on consultation with Native American communities to foster healing and reconciliation.

“During the first round, they only had a year to do the research and write the report, which was a very narrow timeline,” said state Rep. Barbara McLachlan, co-sponsor of the laws that allocated funding to the research.

“A lot of the research, because of that short timeline, came from papers and reports by a white person involved in all of this,” she said. “With this new law, they’re hoping to talk with tribal members and second generation Native Americans to see how this has affected the next generation that is coming up.”

History Colorado plans to meet with leaders of Native American tribes and Indigenous community members, Alaska Natives and others living on reservations outside of Colorado to help create a plan to care for the people affected by federal boarding schools that existed statewide.

Gina Lopez, a member of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe who lives in Towaoc, said she’s skeptical of the accuracy of the report, which relies on archived government reports that are inconsistent and incomplete and written by school superintendents, who wove their own narratives about the success of the schools and the students’ everyday experiences, according to the paper’s authors.

“If those things aren’t reliable, how will we ever know the truth and achieve any justice in terms of these boarding schools?” Lopez asked. 

During the next iteration of research, History Colorado has said it plans to meet privately with representatives from 33 tribal nations twice per year, Alaska Native organizations and students who attended federal boarding schools in Colorado to help provide insights into future recommendations for reconciliation, according to the historical agency’s public recommendations made to the state legislature.

History Colorado raised awareness about the report through social media posts when the paper was published in October 2023, included links to stories about the report in its newsletter for subscribers, created other informational links online and has a webpage on its site dedicated to informing people about boarding schools, Luke Perkins, manager of communications and public relations at History Colorado, wrote in an email to The Colorado Sun. 

History Colorado also held a listening session Aug. 16, 2023, with leaders of Native American and Alaska Native community organizations, Perkins told The Sun. 

History Colorado plans to travel to reservations outside of Colorado to examine their archives, personal stories and other repositories to help create a fuller story of the impact of the boarding schools.

At the discussions, which may take place at some of the boarding school sites, community members are expected to address and plan for memorialization at former boarding school sites where children are still buried, finding ways to support impacted communities and education opportunities for Native American Coloradans and others statewide.

A tribal communications specialist at History Colorado, who was hired to help complete study requirements during the first round of research, will continue helping with the investigative efforts by managing communications with tribal representatives and descendant communities.

The report identified nine boarding schools in Colorado that were financially supported by the federal government, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, from 1880 to 1920.

Native Americans and other community members have requested additional research into federal, state and local school policies after 1920, when many off-reservation and on-reservation schools were closing as Indigenous kids were integrated into local public schools.

History Colorado must develop recommendations to the Colorado Department of Education, the Colorado Department of Higher Education and the state legislature that aim to address the effects of the boarding school system on Indigenous communities in partnership with the Colorado Commission on Indian Affairs and a steering committee that will include organizations led by and served by Native Americans.

History Colorado must provide preliminary recommendations for care and memorialization at the boarding school sites to the Commission on Indian Affairs no later than Nov. 8, 2025, and should provide final recommendations by May 10, 2027.

Abusing Native children in the name of assimilation

For more than 150 years, hundreds of thousands of Native American children were taken away from their communities to attend boarding schools.

More than 500 government-funded Native American boarding schools existed in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries, often led by churches.

By 1926, nearly 83% of all Native American children of school age were in boarding schools.

The purpose of the schools was to culturally assimilate Native Americans by forcibly removing children from their homes to far away residential facilities where their identities, beliefs and languages were stripped.

Some students lost their surnames when facility leaders gave them names of famous people, such as presidents, or even school staff members, according to the report.

Families lost their parenting authority and the ability to pass on Native American culture and traditions and the legacy of the schools has caused long-standing intergenerational trauma, cycles of violence and abuse, disappearance of Native American people, mental health issues and substance use disorders in Native communities, lawmakers wrote in the law.

Native children in Colorado’s boarding schools were forced to learn carpentry or blacksmithing to prepare them for jobs as laborers in white families’ homes, according to the report.

Neglect, unsanitary conditions and poor nutrition caused illnesses that frequently swept across the schools and some children were physically and sexually abused, according to the report.

Students were, most often, enrolled in boarding schools after they were kidnapped or recruited, or after their parents were coerced or threatened by Native American agents or school superintendents, according to the History Colorado report.

Once students were physically separated from their parents, they often did not return home for two to five years, the report says.

James Jefferson, a member of the Southern Ute tribe, attended Ute Mountain Boarding School in Towaoc in the late 1930s and the Southern Ute Vocational School near Ignacio in the 1940s.

His parents met in a Towaoc boarding school and recalled the horrors of the experience and tried their best to keep Jefferson and his siblings out of boarding schools. 

But boarding school superintendents threatened Jefferson’s parents and said they would be thrown in jail if their kids did not attend.

“If you spoke your language, you were slapped with a ruler,” said Jefferson, 90, who lives in Durango. 

“They washed my mouth out because I spoke Ute, they made us march everywhere, kids were thrown in basements, the teachers were mean. It was horrible,” he said.

He did not attend the boarding school for long. His family fled to Denver through a relocation program led by the federal government, soon after he attended boarding school, where he says he got a much better education. 

The relocation program encouraged Native American people to move to urban areas where they would merge with white American culture, according to a report by People of the Sacred Land’s Truth, Restoration, and Education Commission of Colorado.

Several of Morning Star Jones’ family members attended boarding schools and she said the original research was well done and presents opportunities for reconciliation. 

“This is a report to most, but to me, there’s so much emotion tied to it,” said Jones, a Northern and Southern Cheyenne woman living in Denver. “My great-grandmother, grandparents and cousin went to boarding schools,” she said.

The first step toward reconciliation should include returning the remains of children buried at former boarding school sites to their families, if that is preferred by relatives, she said.

“I fully understand this may not be fully in line with the views of certain tribes. However, as a mother, I would want my child with family members,” Jones said during an emotional interview.

Therapeutic services should be made available to Native Americans who are still affected by the boarding schools to help them heal from generational trauma, Jones said.

All schools in Colorado should teach the history of boarding schools to students, she said. Educating people about how the federal government killed Native people and erased their culture may make Coloradans more understanding of and sensitive to Indigenous people’s needs, Jones said. 

Funds should be donated to Native American tribes and the organizations that support them, Jones added. And Colorado should pass a bill that makes it a hate crime to cut the hair of an Indigenous person, she said.

Hair cutting was a standard practice at boarding schools. Newly arrived students were forced to have their hair chopped by teachers, who in some cases, held down children during the process, because long hair was viewed as a “hygiene issue,” according to the report. 

“Across North America, I see boys with long hair are being targeted and their hair is being cut off,” Jones said. “The only time that we are to cut our hair is when we are in mourning.”

Poor record keeping by boarding school administrators left yawning gaps in the historical record, challenging efforts to determine how many children ran away under duress, or fell ill and died far from their homes and families. And that makes Lopez wonder if anyone can really know what happened at the schools, she said.

“Justice has always been out of reach for Native people and other communities of color and I think this enforces that reality,” she said.

Lopez attended Sherman Indian High School, a boarding school in Riverside, California, where students learn about the history of the school when they’re enrolled, an effort that provides healing, she said.

“It didn’t feel like there was a lot of outreach to make this report too widely known. I had to go look for it,” Lopez said. “They need to do a marketing campaign to make sure folks have the opportunity to learn about this next report and any other developments.”

History Colorado is accepting comments, questions and suggestions from Native American tribal representatives, community members and organizations and descendants of people who attended boarding schools at h-co.org/HB22-1327.

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In a farmyard on the western outskirts of Palisade, a distinct odor seeps through the sweet scent of ripening peaches, the yeasty aroma of fermenting wine, and the perfume of lavender.

It doesn’t take a vampire to recognize that punchy smell. It is allium sativum — garlic — and it is wafting from the Green Acres U-Pick farm.

Green Acres U-Pick is the most prolific grower of garlic varieties in Colorado. In five acres that neighbor a handful of wineries, bulbs of Montana Zemo, Russian giant, Georgian crystal, Killarney red, rose de Lautrec and dozens of other garlic cultivars are waiting under the soil for farmer Bob Korver’s digging fork. 

About 1,500 pounds of bulbs will be liberated within the next several weeks.

Bob and his wife, Elaine, still have fruits and vegetables dotting and fringing their small farm, but it is the half-acre spiked with the spear-like leaves of 40 garlic varieties that has bumped up the Korvers from garlic growers to garlic geeks.

If the Korvers were to put pins on a map showing where their garlic cultivars originated, the dots would be sprinkled to the far reaches of the world.

This year’s garlic crop originated in Siberia, the Republic of Georgia, the San Juan Islands, Uzbekistan, Russia, Italy, Spain, France, Transylvania, South Korea, Vietnam and Romania. There is also garlic that was first grown in California, New Mexico and the Colville Indian Reservation in Washington.

“I don’t think you will find anyone that is crazy as I am,” Bob admits about his garlic enthusiasm.

Elaine puts that obsession into more sensible terms: “We like to experiment.”

How to grow (and sell) garlic by hand

All the work of planting and harvesting garlic at Green Acres is done by hand except for the initial field preparation. Bob does that by putting around on his little orange Kubota tractor to create furrows.

Halloween is planting season. That’s when Bob hunkers down over those rows poking each garlic clove into the ground. For the next seven months, if all goes right, those single cloves will expand into a fist-sized bulb made up of many cloves.

Shortly after each Fourth of July, Bob starts the harvest by aiming his trusty garden fork with uncanny accuracy into the weed-choked rows. He digs and hauls in the early mornings and the evenings because the hot sun can leach some of the flavor from garlic.

He lays out the newborn allium bulbs in his well-used wheelbarrow and hauls them one load at a time up the road, past the revelers on the patio of Red Fox Cellars winery, to the Korvers’ little garlic-colored house.

There Elaine sorts it, with nothing more than an appraising eye and a quick heft in the hand to determine the size of each bulb.

In a couple of weeks, this same patio will become the sales floor for Green Acres garlic.

The Korvers don’t waste any time or money on advertising. Those in the know watch their Facebook page for Elaine’s posts that the garlic is ready or that different varieties are running out.

Right now, the Korvers’ earliest harvest is undergoing a two-week curing rest in their four-car garage (which has never had a car in it). They fill it with garlic four times each season.

Bob is responsible for nipping the leaves and stems from the rested bulbs before Elaine takes a cheapo toothbrush to them to banish clinging dirt. Bob helps out with that task, too, when he is waiting for dinner or hiding from the heat.

Last year, there was more scrubbing to do. The Korvers had 50 cultivars of garlic. A few of those didn’t do so well in the increasing heat of western Colorado.

Bob could easily have replaced those with some of the new allium cultivars he ogles in seed catalogues during the winter, but “she said enough,” he explains while cutting his eyes toward Elaine.

She levels a hard stare at him over a grin: “Enough is right!”

Trading the classroom for the field

The Korvers, both in their early 70s and married for 37 years, never saw garlic taking over their lives back in the day.

Bob moved with his third-generation agricultural family to a farm just down the road from Green Acres when he was 4 years old. He grew up picking peaches and trying to listen to his father who warned him: “If you want to make a million dollars in farming, start out with $2 million.”

He went off to the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, then on to Colorado State University where he earned a master’s in guidance counseling. He taught English and journalism and coached volleyball and track as well as serving as a counselor at schools in Columbus, Nebraska, on the Eastern Plains of Colorado and eventually in Steamboat Springs.

Elaine first met Bob in Greeley where she was attending college to earn a degree in library science. She describes herself as a city girl. She had grown up in Omaha, Nebraska, and after college aspired to teach in larger places like Denver and later Grand Junction.

The two came together like garlic and bread when Elaine was doing a librarian stint in Rifle during the oil shale boom. Friends invited her along to watch a volleyball game in Steamboat.

In between games, she spotted a guy in the bleachers who was busy grading papers, oblivious to the hubbub around him. His briefcase was beside him. Bob!

Their conversation led to a connection and eventually to Green Acres after they both decided they would retire from their professions and farm together. They would grow fruits and vegetables without using pesticides and herbicides and showcase rows of lavender.

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They proved they could master lavender when their oils won two first-place prizes in an international lavender competition last year in Australia.

Neither one remembers exactly how they came to decide that the fragrant lines of waving lavender could be neighbors to a garlic plot. It has something to do with saving water. Garlic does not require much water.

Bob’s years of classroom planning made him well suited to garlic farming. Garlic is an easy thing to grow. Home gardeners can plunk cloves in loose soil and create a bulb. But the way Bob does it requires complicated charts and graphs and timing schedules. Locations, planting dates, size of cloves, names are all neatly printed out on papers spotted with sweat and dirt, and snapped onto a clipboard that resides in the garlic field while Bob is working there.

His colored charts correspond to brown, pink, blue, red, green, orange and yellow flags that flutter at the end of rows in the recent air-fryer heat.

“We wouldn’t want anyone to think they were getting one kind of garlic and get another,” Elaine explains about all that paperwork. She is, she admits, “the queen of handouts.”

Each garlic bulb sold or given away at Green Acres comes with one of Elaine’s cheat sheets of information about that particular cultivar. Elaine staples the info to the brown paper bags that she stresses are the only proper receptacles for storing garlic. Her slips include information on variety, taste, storage, cooking, how many cloves should be in one bulb, where the garlic originated and where the seed to grow it came from.

Elaine’s taste descriptions require a passel of adjectives, including mellow, complex, spicy, musky, hot, full-bodied and even explosive. 

Beyond supermarket garlic

“I never knew there were that many varieties. It’s insane,” says Katie Henderson, a dedicated garlic customer at Green Acres who claims to cook with garlic every day.  When she runs low on Green Acres garlic, she asks the Korvers to scrounge around for scraps. Even a couple of cloves will do, she says, to keep her from having to buy grocery store bulbs that she now writes off as bland.

Julie McSherry of Omaha waits every year at this time for a box of garlic from Green Acres.

“I get about 15 types. The variety is exceptional,” she says. “Pungent is a good word for it.”

Pungent is a good word for it.

— Julie McSherry, an Omaha resident who gets a yearly box of garlic from Green Acres

Jarrett Nelson says Green Acres garlic has become a favorite at the Gypsum Fire Protection District where he works with the Korvers’ son.

“I am not a garlic taste-tester expert, but I can definitely tell the difference,” he says of the many varieties he has tried and used in his firehouse meals of lasagna and carne asada. This year, he has found more recipes to showcase garlic. He also plans to roast it, store it in olive oil and turn it into a butter.

Sherrie and Scott Hamilton who own Red Fox Cellars say they also cook with it regularly. They welcome garlic wafting over to mingle with the top notes of cabernet franc and merlot at their winery.

“A lot of my customers see Bob out there working in his field and they ask us, ‘What is it that he’s doing?’” she says.

A crop with deep roots

If wine tasters wander over to talk to Bob, they can get a garlic lesson.

Garlic is one of the oldest crops tended by humans. It is believed to have evolved and spread from south central Asia and was carried around the Mediterranean and European continents by nomadic tribes.

Garlic appears in the oldest written language, Sanskrit, in writings from 5,000 years ago. The Egyptians used garlic with its loads of sulfides for food and medicine. They revered it so much they entombed garlic with their dead.

There are two subgroups of garlic — hardneck and softneck. The hardneck varieties send up a flower stalk that is known as a scape (a tasty morsel on the grill or in a pickle jar). Hardnecks do better in colder climates, and they often pack the spiciest punch.

Softneck garlic (the kind you will see in those fancy garlic braids) has no tough stem.

Beyond those neck differences, there are 13 sub-varieties of garlic. Bob holds up one called an artichoke. The name comes from the fact that the cloves resemble artichoke petals. The cloves on the outside are large, and they get smaller toward the center.

Bob has also grown sub-varieties of porcelains, purple stripes and creoles.

He didn’t do great with the latter, he says, because he failed to figure out that something called creole would do better in Southern climates.

 “I’m kind of slow sometimes. I learn some things the hard way,” Bob says, garnering an indulgent smile from Elaine.

Garlic’s future 

There are other vegetable farms around Colorado that grow garlic. The Rocky Mountain Garlic Farm near Salida grows about a quarter-acre on an agricultural operation that has gone in the opposite direction of Green Acres and pivoted to more vegetables. Several other small Colorado garlic farms have closed in recent years.

Trisha Nungester with Tagawa Gardens in Centennial says Tagawa sells about 40 varieties — mainly for seed. Their garlic comes from multiple sources, including the motherlode of U.S. garlic, Filaree Farms in Washington state. When Tagawa announces that garlic is ready for sale, there is always a line out the door with people clamoring for favorite varieties.

In terms of homegrown variety in Colorado, the Korvers take the odiferous prize.

They grouse about maybe wanting to plant less. They both have had health problems in recent years.

But their seed-saving practices say cutbacks won’t happen soon.

They are already at work picking out 300 pounds of the fattest bulbs that will be saved to seed next year’s crops.

And there is always one new garlic variety to try, one more wheelbarrow load to sort, one more giant bulb to marvel over, and one more group of kids who come to Green Acres to get a farming lesson from a librarian and a teacher who can’t drop those old habits.

Bob won’t tell many of them one of the deepest, darkest secrets of Green Acres: He really doesn’t like to eat garlic.

Boulder is one of six finalists to host the Sundance Film Festival beginning in 2027. 

After asking potential host cities to submit proposals, the Sundance Institute on Friday announced six potential new locations for the 10-day festival, which has been held in Park City, Utah, since it was created in 1985 by Robert Redford as a venue for up-and-coming filmmakers. 

In a statement, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Boulder resident, said he was “so excited” that Boulder made the cut for final review. 

“With the beautiful backdrop of the Flatirons, Boulder’s historical ties to the Redford family, and the capacity to support a growing, inclusive festival, we are confident that Boulder, Colorado, is the right home for the Sundance Film Festival,” Polis said. “I am thrilled the Sundance Institute recognizes the potential in relocating to my hometown and look forward to the many benefits this would bring to the entire state, as well as to the festival.”

Boulder is competing against bids from Atlanta, Cincinnati, Louisville, Kentucky, and Santa Fe, and a combined proposal from Park City and Salt Lake City. 

Ebs Burnough, the chair of the Sundance Institute board, and Amanda Kelso, the acting CEO of the institute, issued a statement saying the six finalists offer a sustainable future for the festival and “build upon its legacy while continuing to support the next generation of storytellers and highlight bold new works of art.”

“For over 40 years, Sundance has supported, sustained, and helped shine an essential spotlight on independent filmmakers and their work,” reads the joint statement, which noted that Sundance organizers would soon visit each of the cities. 

The Colorado Economic Development Commission last month gave Boulder organizers a $1.5 million grant to help lure the Sundance Festival for 10 years beginning in 2027. The Boulder coalition includes Visit Boulder, city officials, the Boulder Chamber, the University of Colorado and the yet-to-be-built Stanley Film Center at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. 

Last year, state economic boosters put up $300,000 to help the hotel and Estes Park land the Sundance Institute Directors Lab for the next two years.

Last month, Polis said “the evolution from Park City to Boulder is a logical one” for the film festival, noting that Redford attended CU Boulder. 

Film industry champions in Colorado say the Sundance Film Festival could bring 40,000 to 50,000 visitors to Boulder and Denver in the middle of the typically slow season of late January and early February. The event could generate $5 million in annual tax revenue for Boulder with economic impacts reaching $50 million a year as attendees explore Colorado’s winter landscapes beyond the festival.

The Office of Economic Development and International Trade said that number could be closer to $100 million, based on economic reports from Park City. 

This is a breaking news story that will be updated.

NOTE: The Bellvue monolith has been removed because of the “overwhelming influx of people” to Morning Fresh Dairy Farm, a statement posted to Facebook says.

BELLVUE — On top of a hill prickly with dry grass and cacti is a four-sided structure that looks like the sky, the hills and the small crowd of people standing next to it, but it’s none of those things. It’s not a riddle, it’s a monolith. Perhaps the 247th spotted worldwide since 2020. 

It appeared unexpectedly on Sunday in Bellvue, northwest of Fort Collins, on the expansive property of Rob and Lori Graves, who own Morning Fresh Dairy Farm, a Noosa Yoghurt factory, and the Howling Cow Cafe. A cafe manager spotted the structure in the distance as she arrived at work in the morning, but didn’t think anything of it until a customer came in and asked to be pointed toward “the alien structure.” 

The Howling Cow has been part of the farm property since 2014, and has become a popular cycling stop that serves the dairy’s fresh creams and yogurts. As of Monday, though, it’s become a gathering place for bagel sandwiches and hypotheses about alien life. 

On a chalkboard menu, drink names have been given an extraterrestrial spin. Order the “Beam Me Up” for a cold brew with a double shot, or a “Radio Wave” for an Italian soda with cold foam. The monthly ice cream flavor, orange juice shake, has been relabeled the “Cow Abduction.” Alien figures drawn on the menu have thought bubbles that read: “beep beep boop beep.”

“They probably just weren’t getting enough business,” one diner offered.

Marketing ploy or not, the shiny metal monolith, bolted to a slab of concrete, certainly hasn’t hurt business.

By 11 a.m. Thursday a line had formed in the cafe from the counter to the door, a dozen customers long, and didn’t let up until well after noon. A second rush arrived around 2 p.m.

“Been busy?” a customer asked a barista from the line.

The barista nodded and laughed. “Where’s the monolith?” she said mockingly. Then she softened. “Actually, it’s kind of cool. I just can’t say that word anymore.”

Then she pushed a milky green beverage onto the counter: “Crop Circle!” she yelled into the crowd, the cafe’s new name for a matcha latte with vanilla. 

Monolith #1

The monolith mysteries began in November 2020, when a crew from the Utah Department of Public Safety was flying over remote, desert backcountry counting bighorn sheep. They spotted an unusual metal gleam deep in a slot canyon, and landed the helicopter to investigate. There they found the first mysteriously placed monolith, a roughly 10-foot-tall prism lodged into the red earth.

Photos and videos from the incident were posted to the agency’s blog. “Please don’t try and visit the site as the road is not suitable for most Earth-based vehicles,” the Utah BLM tweeted. 

But this was late 2020, six months into deep pandemic isolation. Internet sleuthing was at an all-time high and the prospect of visiting a remote site in the desert where few people had been, and were unlikely to be, was simply too tempting. 

A subreddit sprung up, r/FindTheMonolith, and more than 3,000 people joined it to theorize about its origin and locate the Utah phenomenon. In less than 24 hours a location was pinpointed and posted to Reddit, and some users used Google Earth imagery to determine that it was placed sometime in late 2015 or early 2016. To some, the timeline added to the appeal of the piece. It was still possible, in an age of satellite imagery and social media stunts, to leave a mark that went completely undetected for years. 

Less than two weeks after its viral debut, the monolith was gone — hauled away in the night by a group of four men concerned with the environmental impact of so many visitors on the delicate Utah backcountry. 

But while the men trucked the monolith out of the desert, something strange was happening halfway around the world — the same day the Utah monolith came down, a second monolith was reported on a plateau near Piatra Neamt in Romania. Days later a third popped up in Atascadero, California. 

Over the course of 2020, dozens more monoliths were reported to monolithtracker.com, a mix of hastily placed copycats and “S-Class” monoliths, or “significant monoliths, well made, with zero explanations of appearance,” according to the website’s six-part classification system. The original Utah monolith and the quick Romanian follow-up are two of three “S-Class” monoliths in the world. The third appeared in Spain in April 2021.

According to The Associated Press, the Bureau of Land Management is still actively investigating the Utah case.

Colorado’s monolith culture

In Colorado, three monoliths have been spotted and reported to the site. The first showed up in December 2020 at the Spaceport in Watkins. It was reported to have been fabricated by Bill Zempel, the owner of neighboring Mile High Aircraft Services, making it a “K-Class” monolith, or a monolith of “known origin.”

The next two showed up days later, at Sunlight Mountain near Glenwood Springs and Chautauqua Park in Boulder. Though their origin hasn’t yet been determined, they are deemed “Q-Class,” or “questionable monoliths,” likely to be knockoffs “considering their origin or appearance.”

Monolith spotting slowed down into 2021 and the site went all but dormant until March this year, when one showed up in Wales. Earlier this month, a second monolith appeared outside of Las Vegas, but was promptly removed by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department — just a day before the one showed up at the dairy in Bellvue. The Las Vegas and Bellvue monoliths have not been classified yet.

“I know a lot of people are in a hurry to get here because they’re afraid it’s going to disappear,” Graves said. “I kind of hope it stays, I mean it’s kind of pretty.” 

There are a lot of maybes that hover around monoliths. Maybe it’s an ad. Maybe it’s a TV prop. Maybe it was placed there by a prankster, an artist, a mischievous neighbor, the U.S. government. Maybe it was placed on Earth by aliens. Maybe we’re the aliens. 

Of course, part of the fascination depends on not having the answer to its origin. The most likely “maybe” with the monoliths is that maybe few people want to know in the first place.  

By Thursday afternoon Graves was getting reports that some Instagram commenters had turned against the monolith. “Not so favorable posts,” one of the baristas texted her. “I didn’t even know we had a picture of it on our Instagram,” Graves said.

Meanwhile, a steady stream of visitors made their way up the hill, took photos with it, speculated about whether it would be struck by lightning or start a wildfire. 

The baristas, for their part, were feeling worked, despite having bumped their staffing up to accommodate the weeklong rush. They were out of sandwich bread. A compressor was on the fritz. “We can’t really sustain this,” Graves said. “I think it’s going to be a blip.”

But until the hype dies down or the pillar gets beamed up, the Howling Cow Cafe will keep serving Monolith Mochas.

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Shyam and Shanti Shrestha have seen Denver’s 16th Street Mall change dramatically in the years since they opened Mt. Everest Imports of Himalaya in 1995. They were around when the Denver Pavilions was built in 1998, when the mall was extended to meet Union Station in 2002, and when the 2014 Union Station redevelopment sparked a downtown building boom. 

But today, the Shresthas say they wonder if their business will survive the current, seemingly interminable renovation of the 16th Street Mall and, if it does, whether it will fit in as a new version of downtown takes shape. 

The 16th Street Mall may be one of the most iconic stretches of real estate in Denver, but its status as a retail hub and public hangout has been threatened by the massive — and delayed —  reconstruction project that pedestrians have experienced as a stifling maze of construction fences and detours for nearly two years. Large national chains that for decades anchored the mall, including McDonald’s, TJ Maxx, Hard Rock Cafe and Banana Republic, shuttered their stores, along with local retailers such as Tea With Tae Cafe, citing factors ranging from declining sales to public safety.

Ongoing construction, fluctuating public transportation options, and concerns about safety are just a few of the reasons why pedestrians are avoiding the mall. Together, these factors could reshape the mall’s landscape long before the final pavers are replaced along the 13-block stretch of downtown. 

An evolving hallmark

The 16th Street Mall was once a hallmark of the city’s growth. When it was built in the 1980s, it gave workers in the Central Business District a reason to stay downtown after their shifts. It also created an attraction that welcomed millions of tourists and helped fuel the growth of Denver’s transit lines. 

That function seems to be changing, at least in theory. Denver has floated two seemingly contradictory ideas for the mall’s next phase. On one hand, the city wants to add apartments and playgrounds to attract families. It also wants to expand its retail and entertainment options to attract tourists. 

Maybe we can survive until July.
But at this point, I don’t know.

— Shyam Shrestha, co-owner of Mt. Everest Imports of Himalaya on the 16th Street Mall

However, appealing to families and tourists alike requires the city to create a distinct space on the mall for each group, which could complicate its overall synergy. This is all happening at a time when the city’s downtown office vacancy rate is at a historic high and pedestrian visits to downtown seem stuck well below pre-pandemic norms.  

So, how can Denver balance its two visions of the 16th Street Mall? 

Sarah Wiebenson, vice president of economic development at the Downtown Denver Partnership, says it’s about highlighting the mall’s “individual character” to create a distinct sense of place that could attract new residents. One such place is near Skyline Park, where roughly 400 housing units could be added in an area of town currently dominated by offices. Great Outdoors Colorado on Friday announced a $1 million grant to the city for improving the park, which spans three city blocks along Arapahoe Street between 15th and 18th streets. The hope is redesigning the space to create better opportunities for year-round recreation and community connection will provide “a catalytic spark that adds vibrancy to Denver’s downtown,” Jolon Clark, the city’s Parks and Recreation director, said in a news release.

DDP also envisions adding urban grocery stores nearer to Broadway along with amenities like day care centers, dog groomers, dry cleaners and “whatever people need within a walking distance” of their home, Wiebenson said. 

But the uniqueness and sense of place Wiebenson refers to seem to be what’s at risk amid the massive facelift project as business owners like the Shresthas struggle to stay afloat. 

“Maybe we can survive until July,” Shyam said, referring to the date that construction near his store at the corner of 16th and California streets is supposed to be completed. “But at this point, I don’t know.”

A tale of two malls

Shyam Shrestha says he and his wife chose to open their store at the corner of 16th and California because it was the best place for retailers at that time. Mt. Everest Imports of Himalaya sells cultural gifts like woven tapestries, religious idols and Tibetan prayer flags. 

Over the past 29 years, Shyam says his store has attracted customers from as far away as Nepal. “When they come to Colorado,” he said, “they come to see us.” 

But those days feel like a distant memory. Shyam says the store’s sales have declined by roughly 50% since work began on the mall in late 2022. As construction crews have worked to relocate underground utilities and upgrade the water and storm sewers just outside of their store, the Shresthas say they have had to use roughly $60,000 from their retirement accounts and max out a credit card to keep the business open. Sales have been so slow that they’ve also delayed making payments on more than $75,000 of inventory that they purchased earlier this year. 

When construction started, Shyam said Mt. Everest received a $2,000 mitigation grant from the city. They received another $15,000 stabilization grant in February. But he said the money didn’t go far given their overhead, which includes monthly rent of $6,000. Shyam had to let two of his three employees go. 

“We had no idea our business would be impacted like this,” said Shanti Shrestha, Mt. Everest’s managing director.

Pedestrians who would once peer into Mt. Everest Import’s widows or meander into one of the several nearby restaurants have been forced off the mall by intersection closures at Larimer and Stout streets and Glenarm Place. The free MallRide buses that used to zip people from one end of the 1.25-mile shopping and dining district to the other now run in a loop, down 15th Street and back up 17th Street. All of this change was to make way for construction crews to renovate the more than 40-year-old tourist attraction by widening the sidewalks, improving drainage, and adding trees to create a more shady walk.

One of the most time-consuming parts of the project has been the transitway upgrades. Crews are removing the pedestrian walkway between the two bus lanes to make way for wider sidewalks that could make the mall more inviting for pedestrians. They are also replacing the nearly mile-long grid of red, black and gray granite pavers that resemble a Navajo rug or the back of a rattlesnake to address drainage issues on the street. The pavers, a key element of the mall’s original modernist design by famous architect I.M Pei, had an initial life span of roughly 30 years and cost the city about $1 million to maintain each year. The work is about six months behind schedule because crews unearthed underground utilities and a century-old, brick-lined sewer underneath 16th Street.

Some of the barriers have come down, on the block near the Tabor Center between Larimer and Lawrence streets. But the roughly $170 million project — which is funded through a combination of federal, state and local dollars — was initially scheduled to be completed at the end of 2024, but now has a summer of 2025 completion goal.

Sense of place

Not only has the renovation project disrupted businesses along the mall, it has also unwound its sense of place. 

The Downtown Denver Partnership’s recent ground-floor retail activation strategy included the results of surveys showing that 53% of respondents are avoiding downtown because of the 16th Street Mall project. Younger respondents added the lack of transportation options downtown is their biggest impediment to visiting, while higher-income folks cited cleanliness, public safety and parking costs.  

These issues have been compounded by other challenges outside of the city’s control, like the adoption of remote and hybrid work options. In the past year, the office vacancy rate in downtown grew to a record high of 32%, data from CBRE shows. Meanwhile, pedestrian visits are approximately 24% below their pre-pandemic levels, according to data from the Downtown Denver Partnership.  

To business owners like Edwin Zoe, who owns Dragonfly Noodle at 1350 16th Street Mall, these challenges illustrate the need for a new neighborhood concept like the one Denver has proposed near the mall. “Anytime you can identify a certain culture or place, I think that’s a positive,” Zoe said. 

We’re not really trying to address a headwind — we’re facing a hurricane.

— Edwin Zoe, owner of Dragonfly Noodle and Zoe Ma Ma

Right now, those dreams are less valuable than the dollars Zoe needs to keep his store open. Zoe said his Denver store, which opened in 2022 — the same year he was a semifinalist for a prestigious James Beard Award — generates 70% less revenue than his other Dragonfly Noodle location on Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall. Zoe also operates the Zoe Ma Ma noodle restaurant near Union Station and said he remains optimistic that more people will return downtown after the construction ends. 

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s administration has issued more than $1.2 million in grants to support 106 local businesses impacted by the 16th Street construction project. The city also issued another $1 million in Business Impact Opportunity Funds in 2023 to 70 downtown businesses that were impacted by homeless encampments. The mayor also plans to extend the Downtown Denver Authority, a financing mechanism that was used to revitalize Union Station in 2014, to attract new private investment and businesses to the mall. 

But these efforts feel like a drop in the bucket compared to the issues that lie ahead. 

“We’re not really trying to address a headwind — we’re facing a hurricane,” Zoe said. 

A new downtown

Reviving a sense of place along the 16th Street Mall seems to be a top-of-mind issue for city officials. 

Denver’s 2023 adaptive reuse survey identified 10 commercial buildings within one block of the 16th Street Mall that could be converted from office to residential. Some of those buildings include the University Building at 910 16th St. and The Colorado Building at 1615 California St.

If completed, the new micro-neighborhood that emerges along the mall could resemble an urbanized version of Tennyson Street in the Highlands neighborhood or South Pearl Street in Platt Park. Not only would this give Denver an opportunity to repurpose the aging commercial buildings that dot the city skyline, but it could also help bring people downtown to support the ailing local businesses along the mall, according to Doug Tisdale, the District H director for the Regional Transportation District, which is a partner agency for the mall upgrade.

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Tisdale added that improving the transportation infrastructure is key to making Denver’s plans work. That’s how people living along the mall can travel between different areas of the emerging neighborhood, “whether by foot, bike or scooter,” he said. The free RTD MallRide shuttle that cruises between transit hubs at Union Station and Broadway could also help move people between the different districts along the mall once the upgrades are complete. 

Homes and transportation options aren’t the only way to bring people back to downtown. There also have to be entertainment options. DDP’s ground-floor retail activation strategy calls for Denver leaders to improve the area’s nighttime economy through music, events and unique retail options. These activities would likely be located near the west end of the mall, closer to LoDo and Union Station, where a lot of entertainment already happens.

Wiebenson added that DDP is also developing four prototype kiosks — each about 100 square feet — to provide affordable options to attract local retailers along the mall. The goal is to “welcome new concepts that are looking for an opportunity to establish a foothold downtown.” 

The kiosks would function similarly to the Partnership’s Popup Denver program, which the city piloted in 2022 and 2023. It was intended to connect entrepreneurs with affordable retail space along the mall, although none of the businesses that participated became full-time tenants on the mall. The new kiosks are expected to be completed later this summer and installed by Labor Day, she said, though where they will be and how much they will cost to lease has not been determined.

But increasing foot traffic with new businesses, entertainment options and tourist attractions is seemingly at odds with creating a neighborhood vibe, which relies on feelings of safety. 

To balance the two visions, Wiebenson said, the city could create “different pockets with amenities for where people are in their lives,” so that the area is no longer thought of as a commercial monolith. She added that the project could help link the mall to distinctive neighborhoods like the Golden Triangle and Upper Downtown, both of which are anchored by local businesses and a distinct arts community. 

“We’ve already got this cool pattern beginning to emerge of these characteristics,” Wiebenson said, “and we can strengthen that by the kinds of businesses we bring in.”