Bob Katz is passing his Sunnyside corner store along to the next generation.
The 80-year-old Denver native worked at Sunnyside Drug all his life before closing it when the pandemic hit. Earlier this month, he and his brother, Andy Katz, sold its building at 4600 Lipan St. for $650,000 to a trio of fellow locals: Monica and Beau Speicher and their friend Caine Knapp.
The deal works out to $158 a square foot for the 4,100-square-foot shop.
“We used to have lines all day long at the store — lines to get in on a Tuesday, Wednesday. And especially Friday nights at the drug store was a complete zoo,” Bob Katz said.
The Katz brothers have three months to move their stuff out. Then the new owners will fix up the building and lease it out.
“You can’t completely pick and choose who you’d put in there, but I definitely would prefer somebody that has that nostalgic piece that’s hoping to do something somewhat related,” Monica Speicher said, adding that her husband, Beau, was a frequent visitor to Sunnyside Drug in his youth.
The store opened in 1947. After closing it, Bob Katz thought about selling it on numerous occasions, but it wasn’t until the group of locals approached him that a deal came together.
It started with Solomon Stark, a real estate broker with NAI Shames Makovsky. He’s a third-generation Denverite and gave the Katz brothers an estimate on the property’s value last year after cold calling them. But he wouldn’t get the listing. That went to a lifelong friend of the store owners, Alex Kishinevsky.
“These guys, they’ve been my friends for 50 years or so. Me and Andy were friends in high school. I used to go there (to Sunnyside Drug) and hang out on weekends. I would have breakfast, lunch at the store,” Kishinevsky said.
The list price was sliced in half because the building needs work and the buyers were paying cash, said Stark, who represented the buyers in the deal.
“From being under contract to close, it was two weeks,” he said.
The Katz brothers’ dad and uncle launched the store almost 80 years ago.
“When my dad opened that store, they were busy. … He had a way of talking to people that they’d want to come back,” Bob Katz said.
At first, Sunnyside Drug was located in a house across the street, he said. His dad and uncle built the store at 4600 Lipan in 1951. The original counter, four booths and 13 stools are all still there.
Bob Katz used to sell penny candy, and was ecstatic when he got his shot to run the soda fountain. The kitchen was always cooking up something new: Triple cheeseburgers and ribs and steak burritos were for sale.
“It was like a general store. If you need groceries on Sunday, they’re closed, we’re open. … We used to tell people, ‘If we don’t have it, you don’t need it,’” he said.
For the bulk of its history, the shop was open every day except Christmas from 6 a.m. to midnight. Hours would eventually shift to open later and close earlier, and Bob Katz pushed to have it close on Thanksgiving. Traffic in the evening slowed, and the neighborhood changed.
By the time the pandemic hit, working at the store was no longer as fun for the aging shopkeeper, he said. The closure was only supposed to be temporary, but the doors never reopened.
“We were ridiculously inexpensive, and that was my fault,” Bob Katz said of the place.
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