The party is over at Riot House.
The nightclub at 1920 Market St. in LoDo closed for good over the weekend, just under two years after making its debut on New Year’s Eve in 2023.
“Due to ongoing market challenges, it became too difficult to maintain sustainable operations,” said Lissa Druss, a spokeswoman for Riot Hospitality Group, the club’s Arizona-based owner.
She declined to specify those challenges. The sole remaining Riot House is in the company’s home base of Scottsdale.
Riot House is one of two bar concepts that Kenneth Monfort of Monfort Cos. brought to the 1900 block of Market Street. The stretch is just a block from Coors Field, where his father and uncle are majority owners of the Colorado Rockies.
The first was Dierks Bentley’s Whiskey Row, another concept from Riot Hospitality.
It opened at the end of 2021 at 1946 Market St., after Monfort redeveloped the former LoDo’s Bar and Grill. Monfort sold the real estate in March 2022 but still owns a stake in the business.
In April 2022, Monfort announced he would turn the adjacent 1920 Market building, once featured on MTV’s “The Real World,” into Riot House. It had recently been bought by a buyer Monfort described as on board with the redevelopment.
Monfort was an investor in Riot House’s Denver spot.
One harbinger of possible financial struggles came in October, when commercial kitchenware firm Boelter sued Riot Hospitality and Monfort Cos., saying it hadn’t been paid $80,000 of a $705,000 contract to supply and install kitchen equipment for the nightclub. It called the project “grossly undercapitalized.” The case is pending.
In a statement, Monfort said he still believes “deeply in the future of this block.”
“With its proximity to the ballpark, transit and some of the neighborhood’s most iconic architecture, this corner of downtown holds extraordinary opportunity, and we’re committed to supporting a mix of uses that elevates the district for years to come,” he said.
Monfort is already working on a third project along the block, on the corner at 1320 20th St. and 1962 Market St. The former was previously a bar called the Giggling Grizzly, while the latter once housed the legendary local jazz club El Chapultepec, which closed in 2020.
Monfort bought the buildings in 2022. After some negotiations with the nonprofit Historic Denver, he settled on a design that involves demolishing nearly all of El Chapultepec and installing a rooftop deck on the Giggling Grizzly building that extended over the El Chapultepec lot.
This past April, Monfort Cos. asked Denver’s Downtown Development Authority for $4.2 million for the project, which it said would cost $20.1 million in all. The company said it hoped to break ground July 1.
But those plans changed when it became known that any DDA funds would come as a loan, not a grant.
“The terms of the loans offered did not pencil in our capital stake,” Monfort said via a spokeswoman. “They were not financially feasible for us.”
As a result, Monfort now plans to scale back his third project on the block, including retaining some walls instead of building new ones and removing the rooftop component entirely, cutting the footprint by about 4,000 square feet.
“These modifications materially reduce total project cost while maintaining the building’s character and neighborhood relevance,” he said.
Monfort has never specified what business would ultimately operate in the corner redevelopment. But he indicated this week that it will not be a nightclub.
“The concept for 1962 Market will center on a daytime-forward destination designed to support a more diverse and sustainable flow of activity,” he said.
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