The Secret Garden opened last summer.
Chelsey Dequaine-Jerabek
Last summer, City Street Investors debuted Secret Garden Bar & Café in the historic Tears-McFarlane House in Cheesman Park, but on Friday, October 10, it closed abruptly.
On October 7, employees received an email from City Street announcing that Secret Garden would close for the season on October 19 due to “budget reasons,” according to Sophia Gulley. Some of those employees had begun working with UFCW Local 7 to unionize over three months ago; at 9 a.m. this morning, they started asking customers to sign a petition and began picketing.
Half an hour later, the doors were locked.
It had taken years to make the cafe a reality. In 2021, the nonprofit Capitol Hill United Neighborhoods (CHUN) and City Street Investors teamed up on a major makeover of the circa 1899 mansion at 1290 Williams Street, o the edge of Cheesman Park. It had been purchased by the City of Denver in 1977 and turned into the Capitol Hill Community Center. CHUN, which was formed in 1969 by local activists fighting to save the history and character of their community, moved into the property and began managing it in 2005, then took it over entirely in 2015.
However, the financial burden of maintaining the aging mansion was too great for the nonprofit organization, which ultimately decided to seek a partner to help improve the building. That’s when City Street got involved.
“We held a long series of focus groups and did surveys of the neighborhood and really did this super deep dive into the needs and the desires of that neighborhood over there by Cheesman Park,” Vostrejs told Westword when the project was announced. “Like, ‘What do you want to have happen to the property? What’s missing? What can we provide here?’ And so the vision that came out of that was to certainly renovate the building and the grounds, but maybe do something with that annex building, and they really wanted some food and beverage uses.”
Three years later, the cafe became a reality — for just over a year. Plans are reportedly in the works to revision the space to make it more financially feasible.
City Street Investors owns and operates several other food and drink businesses in town, including Terminal Bar, Schoolyard Beer Garden and La Loteria; it’s also part of a proposed deal to become a co-owner of The Fort early next year.
This is a developing story that we will update as more information becomes available.
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