The Evans School as seen on Friday, April 18th. (Matt Geiger/BusinessDen)
For the first time in a half-century, school is in session at the Evans School in the Golden Triangle.
Only the classrooms are offices. The students have been replaced by millennials on their laptops. And the cafeteria is a beer garden.
“This whole place is kind of like a park with a concession stand,” building owner Joe Vostrejs said.
The co-founder of Denver-based City Street Investors is opening up the first part of his 35,000-square-foot redevelopment of 1115 N. Acoma St. on Monday. It’s called Schoolyard Beer Garden and Schoolyard Café.
Inside Schoolyard Café on Friday, April 18th. The space was open for a soft opening. (Matt Geiger/BusinessDen)
The businesses, which Vostrejs’ firm owns, span the ground floor of the 121-year-old building, a longtime elementary school that closed in 1974 and has sat largely vacant since. Now, there’s a beer garden and restaurant in one room and a coffee-shop-meets-ice-cream-parlor and date night cafe spot in another.
Work on the building, supported by $3 million in tax increment financing, isn’t done yet.
On the second floor, Vostrejs is turning the school’s auditorium into an event space, big enough to accommodate 150 people for a dinner or 300 patrons for a cocktail party. The classrooms are getting converted to retail spaces, averaging about 1,000 square feet. The building’s third floor will be used for future office space.
And on the outside, there’s plenty of seating and green space for patrons to enjoy — a rarity in the Golden Triangle. Vostrejs said to “ask me in two years” what the final build-out cost will be.
“We’re still doing stuff and spending money, and I don’t really know, but it’s been several million dollars,” he said.
So far, only a handful of tenants have entered the building. Jerry and Fred Glick’s real estate firm Columbia Group has an office there, moving from 1600 Wynkoop St.; the father-son duo own a stake in the building, too. A “high-end” flooring showroom is going into a unit across the hall.
“We haven’t even started on that leasing effort yet because I want to wait until people can actually come in and see the building activated,” Vostrejs said.
It’s a big pivot from Vostrejs’ initial plan to turn the building into a coworking space and full-service restaurant. City Street and Columbia Group purchased the property in December 2019 for $11 million.
Then the pandemic struck. The office sector was hit hard, and suddenly Vostrejs’ plan didn’t seem viable going forward.
“I didn’t know what to do because we had a plan, and now, during COVID, everything was changing every day,” Vostrejs said.
Stuck with an empty school building amid a global pandemic, Vostrejs decided to ask for help. He went to the neighbors seeking input.
During the summer of 2020, he held a number of focus groups with neighbors. A “couple hundred” folks attended these sessions, and two things stood out.
First, the people wanted the building to be open to the public. And second, they wanted ice cream.
“I think it was No. 1 or No. 2 on the list of required uses … the neighborhood said we don’t have an ice cream shop,” Vostrejs said. (The closest spot is Colfax and Cream, on the Cap Hill side of 11th Avenue and Broadway.)
The entire setup operates by counter service, cutting down on labor costs tremendously. Vostrejs is able to serve an $11 burger; he laments that he has to sell them for $18 at another restaurant of his. Roughly 60 people work at the Evans School’s food and beverage spots, most part time.
“I agonize over the cost of stuff at our full-service restaurants. … I have crunched the numbers every which way. I can’t sell a burger for less than $18. I will just lose money. The cost of the facility, the cooks, the servers. I mean, servers make $15.79 an hour. You can’t get enough profit in a burger,” Vostrejs said.
Inside the beer garden space, where a portion is located downstairs in the school’s old boiler room. (Matt Geiger/BusinessDen)
In fact, he’s sort of soured on the idea of doing full-service restaurants.
“If we’re going to do full-service restaurants, I’m going to find a tenant,” Vostrejs said. “I don’t want to do any more myself. They’re 10 times more work for 10% of the returns. The future is in this kind of format.”
The entire setup, he added, lends itself to being much more of a community space. A place where you’re free to come and go without ordering anything, but with the flexibility to choose from a wide variety of food and beverage options. The cafe, for instance, has several sections and menus, opening first at 7 or 9 a.m. as a coffee shop dishing out pastries before switching to a lunch menu of deli sandwiches, finally closing at 9 or 10 p.m. as a wine and charcuterie board spot.
“If you live in this neighborhood, you know you can come here, you can hang out, do whatever, meet your friends, work from your computer, read a book, bring your dog. We don’t care,” Vostrejs said.
Elsewhere in town, he’s wrapping up another beer garden in Arvada, slated to open in June. It’ll be his fifth one since opening a Lowry spot in 2012.
“After that, I think I’m going to take a break,” Vostrejs quipped.
The Evans School as seen on Friday, April 18th. (Matt Geiger/BusinessDen)
For the first time in a half-century, school is in session at the Evans School in the Golden Triangle.
Only the classrooms are offices. The students have been replaced by millennials on their laptops. And the cafeteria is a beer garden.
“This whole place is kind of like a park with a concession stand,” building owner Joe Vostrejs said.
The co-founder of Denver-based City Street Investors is opening up the first part of his 35,000-square-foot redevelopment of 1115 N. Acoma St. on Monday. It’s called Schoolyard Beer Garden and Schoolyard Café.
Inside Schoolyard Café on Friday, April 18th. The space was open for a soft opening. (Matt Geiger/BusinessDen)
The businesses, which Vostrejs’ firm owns, span the ground floor of the 121-year-old building, a longtime elementary school that closed in 1974 and has sat largely vacant since. Now, there’s a beer garden and restaurant in one room and a coffee-shop-meets-ice-cream-parlor and date night cafe spot in another.
Work on the building, supported by $3 million in tax increment financing, isn’t done yet.
On the second floor, Vostrejs is turning the school’s auditorium into an event space, big enough to accommodate 150 people for a dinner or 300 patrons for a cocktail party. The classrooms are getting converted to retail spaces, averaging about 1,000 square feet. The building’s third floor will be used for future office space.
And on the outside, there’s plenty of seating and green space for patrons to enjoy — a rarity in the Golden Triangle. Vostrejs said to “ask me in two years” what the final build-out cost will be.
“We’re still doing stuff and spending money, and I don’t really know, but it’s been several million dollars,” he said.
So far, only a handful of tenants have entered the building. Jerry and Fred Glick’s real estate firm Columbia Group has an office there, moving from 1600 Wynkoop St.; the father-son duo own a stake in the building, too. A “high-end” flooring showroom is going into a unit across the hall.
“We haven’t even started on that leasing effort yet because I want to wait until people can actually come in and see the building activated,” Vostrejs said.
It’s a big pivot from Vostrejs’ initial plan to turn the building into a coworking space and full-service restaurant. City Street and Columbia Group purchased the property in December 2019 for $11 million.
Then the pandemic struck. The office sector was hit hard, and suddenly Vostrejs’ plan didn’t seem viable going forward.
“I didn’t know what to do because we had a plan, and now, during COVID, everything was changing every day,” Vostrejs said.
Stuck with an empty school building amid a global pandemic, Vostrejs decided to ask for help. He went to the neighbors seeking input.
During the summer of 2020, he held a number of focus groups with neighbors. A “couple hundred” folks attended these sessions, and two things stood out.
First, the people wanted the building to be open to the public. And second, they wanted ice cream.
“I think it was No. 1 or No. 2 on the list of required uses … the neighborhood said we don’t have an ice cream shop,” Vostrejs said. (The closest spot is Colfax and Cream, on the Cap Hill side of 11th Avenue and Broadway.)
The entire setup operates by counter service, cutting down on labor costs tremendously. Vostrejs is able to serve an $11 burger; he laments that he has to sell them for $18 at another restaurant of his. Roughly 60 people work at the Evans School’s food and beverage spots, most part time.
“I agonize over the cost of stuff at our full-service restaurants. … I have crunched the numbers every which way. I can’t sell a burger for less than $18. I will just lose money. The cost of the facility, the cooks, the servers. I mean, servers make $15.79 an hour. You can’t get enough profit in a burger,” Vostrejs said.
Inside the beer garden space, where a portion is located downstairs in the school’s old boiler room. (Matt Geiger/BusinessDen)
In fact, he’s sort of soured on the idea of doing full-service restaurants.
“If we’re going to do full-service restaurants, I’m going to find a tenant,” Vostrejs said. “I don’t want to do any more myself. They’re 10 times more work for 10% of the returns. The future is in this kind of format.”
The entire setup, he added, lends itself to being much more of a community space. A place where you’re free to come and go without ordering anything, but with the flexibility to choose from a wide variety of food and beverage options. The cafe, for instance, has several sections and menus, opening first at 7 or 9 a.m. as a coffee shop dishing out pastries before switching to a lunch menu of deli sandwiches, finally closing at 9 or 10 p.m. as a wine and charcuterie board spot.
“If you live in this neighborhood, you know you can come here, you can hang out, do whatever, meet your friends, work from your computer, read a book, bring your dog. We don’t care,” Vostrejs said.
Elsewhere in town, he’s wrapping up another beer garden in Arvada, slated to open in June. It’ll be his fifth one since opening a Lowry spot in 2012.
“After that, I think I’m going to take a break,” Vostrejs quipped.
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