May 28, 2025 • 19 mins
HOW'S BUSINESS ON 16TH STREET? I've got Derek Friedman, the owner of Sportsfan and Sock Em' Sock Emporium downtown on at 1 to talk about the reality of doing business on what is now just 16th Street. I was downtown last night and I'm going to tell you it looks SO MUCH better than it has in years. Downright CLEAN. We saw ONE tent in ONE park. It was like downtown when we moved here! And we drove around quite a bit. I'm excited for what is possible in downtown Denver right now, we'll see if Derek shares my enthusiasm at 1pm.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I am pleased his punch just to have in the
studio with me a business owner that we're going to
talk to in just a second. But I want to
take just one moment and give you guys an idea
of what I saw last night in downtown Denver. So
my daughter wanted to go see Alex Warren at Mission
Ballroom and I did not want to go see Alex
Warren in Mission Ballroom. So we dropped her off at
(00:20):
Mission Ballroom, Chuck and I did, and then we drove
to a restaurant not too far but a good bit away,
multiple blocks too far to walk kind of thing. And
then after that we drove again to a different part
of downtown Denver so we could go to a pool
hall and play some billiards while my daughter was at
this concert. And as we were driving back to Mission
(00:41):
Ballroom when the concert was over, by the way, if
you want to send your kids to an early concert,
send them to a concert of a YouTuber, because that
thing got over at nine o'clock. And yeah, it was fantastic,
but nonetheless, and Chuck and I were both struck by
how clean Denver is.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Again, it is remarkable.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
It felt like when I first came to Denver many,
many years ago. I remember driving through downtown and thinking
about how beautiful it was, and how clean it was,
and how welcoming it felt, and how much it was
just a lovely, lovely city. And that's part of the
reason that I've been so disappointed over the last seven
years to see what has become of downtown Denver. And
(01:25):
as much as I criticize Mayor Mike Johnston, I feel
like I should give him credit because when he said
on the news, if you think downtown is still a hellhole,
he didn't say this, I'm paraphrasing, it is a hellhole.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
You need to come downtown, And he's right. Can I
say that.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
I know we did have a conversation when we did
park about whether or not our car would be safe there,
so that perception still exists.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
But we briefly dipped.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Onto part of the sixteenth Street mall and it looks
absolutely lovely. And joining me now in the studio is
a business owner who owns two stores on the sixteenth Street.
I got to stop saying the who owns two stores
on sixteenth Street, because I mean, we've paid one hundred
k for the brand rebrand. I gotta get it right.
He owned sports Fan and Sockham Sock Emporium, and Derek
(02:13):
Friedman's joined me today to talk about it.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Now.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Derek, you sent me a rather salty email and said, Manny,
it would help if snarky talk show hosts did not
talk about this in such.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
A negative way.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
And I said, come on and talk about what your
experience st are. First of all, pull that microphone right
up to your face until it's almost uncomfortably close.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yeah, but welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Well, thank you very much.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
And first of all, that text was actually directed at
the audio that you had in me before that, which
is a personality on news ah gotcha. Oh yes, not
necessarily at you, although you were repeating the lite.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Well it was funny. I mean it was kind of funny.
Let's talk about your experiences. How long have you owned
a business, these two shops on sixteenth Street.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Yeah, so I bought sports Fan in twenty fourteen, So okay,
so it's been a lot of ten years.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
You have a good you have been for the whole arc, right, It's.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
Been a bit of a roller coaster, so ups and
downs all together. So yeah, seeing the entirety of it.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
So I'm guessing in twenty fourteen when you bought this,
you bought a business that had positive cash flow and
was doing well, because very, very rarely to someone buy
an unsuccessful business unless they plan on bringing.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
It back to glory.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
When did you start to notice problems of any real significance.
I'm not talking about little you know, little ticky taggy subm.
At what point did you go, hm, we may have
a situation here.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
Yeah, in twenty fourteen, when I bought the business, I
would say it was kind of normal in terms of
the level of choplifting, and I mean, it's just something
that you have in retail, right, So we've got four stores,
two of them on Sixteenth Street, and it's just sports
fan and everything was was great and normal. Twenty nineteen,
(04:02):
probably about halfway through the year, is when I started
to see a turn and some change in the dynamics.
Certainly on the heels of that. About nine months later
we ran into COVID and then George Floyd where things
got really out of control, and then you know, a
couple of years into construction and all those things. So
(04:25):
it was really kind of the middle of twenty nineteen.
I think there were some decisions that were made politically
about how they were going to enforce shoplifting. And there's
so few people who commit crime that if you're not
enforcing it, those people are just gonna be out there
and they're going to do it again and again again.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
So but that was the timing.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
So since twenty nineteen, what do you think, And of
course we're talking about a whole stew of things that
have gone wrong, increase shoplifting, no enforcement, which just encourages
more shoplifting. When did things really start to go Did
you ever get a point where like, I'm not sure
that we're going to be able to continue.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
Yeah, I think it was probably on the on the
heels of George Floyd. And into twenty twenty one, we
had between our stores on sixteenth and our store right
next to the Broncos Stadium, we had eight break ins
looting from George Floyd and and and you know we
(05:25):
lost six figures in terms of merchandise.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
And so.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
You know those were you insured, because that's the big
thing they got insurance was all that covered by insurance.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
So that is a typical refrain the first couple of times, yes,
after that, because they were right in sequence with each
other just a week apart or so. The next incident,
the insurance agent said, you're freed to to submit claims,
but I got to drop it. Nervous about whether or
(05:58):
not you're going to have insurance you need it, So yeah,
they're going to drop us potentially, and so after that
I stopped submitting them.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
How much did you come out of pocket for all this?
Do you know?
Speaker 3 (06:08):
It was six figures? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (06:11):
What is it about those stores? What is it about
Sixteenth Street that makes you want to stay there? Because
we've seen a pretty good exodus by other businesses who say, look,
it's just not sustainable, whether they're a large chain restaurant
or whether they're a small mom and pop. We've seen
efforts by the city to bring these pop ups in,
only to find out at the time they're like, we
can't ensure the safety of our employees, let alone our customers.
(06:35):
So you've seen these things come and go. What is
it about being on Sixteenth Street that you've committed to?
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Yeah, I think it's a little bit of what you
were talking about in terms of what you saw. It's
a beautiful area when it's not under construction, when there's
not Yeah, George Floyd, you know, protests, and it's also
a place that draws a lot of tourists. And so
for our business on the Sox side, tourists are big,
and then sports.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
I mean, you've got four stadiums.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
That's very very rare for a big city to have
four stadiums that are all kind of walkable from each other, right,
And so you know, we get so much traffic from
tourists and convention goers and sports goers that it ends
up being super attractive for our particular business, and then
for restaurants and all those other businesses down there, they
(07:27):
enjoy the same.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
So last night one of the things I did notice,
because then once I started looking around, I was like, okay,
let's do a little recon of what's downtown. I would
say probably well over fifty percent of the license tags
of cars on the road we're from out of state easily.
Now that's not necessarily a bad thing because those many
times are tourist dollars and things of that nature.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
But what do you think, as a.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Person who lives in the metro area, what do you
think is going to be the catalyst to bring people
from Littleton and Parker and our Vada back to downtown Denver.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
I think you said it it's just experience it or
re experience it, because you know, perceptions reality. For all
those folks they went down there, they had a bad situation,
or I think more importantly, you know, where's the media
point in the camera, and they're certainly not pointing it.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
At normal behavior, right.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
People just coming in, buying something, being happy and then leaving.
It's the kind of stuff that we saw in twenty
twenty twenty one, and so those images last a long
time with people's memories, and they need to come back
see it for themselves, and once they do, I think it'll,
you know, completely refame for them what the downtown experience
(08:51):
is like.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Have you felt an increase in police presence since the
mayor announced the public safety initiative about two months ag
go roughly, have you noticed an increase in police officers?
And conversely, have you noticed a decrease in a less
desirable patron on the sixteenth on the sixteenth Street.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Yeah, So the answer to that is yes and no.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
So the yes is there are more police versus what
used to be in twenty twenty twenty twenty one on
the heels of defund right, So but it's not two
weeks ago, three weeks ago. It's actually going back a
little bit further than that. So that transformation began to happen.
(09:42):
And the reason why I say no is because it
looks like what it looked like in twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Right, So back to normal almost.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
There's an announcement of hey, this is all new investment,
and this is all you know, new officers and horses
and people on motorcycles. But that's what I had in
twenty fourteen, right parked outside of my store, and so
that's what I thought was normal and usual, and people
would just interact with the horses and it would be,
you know, a great experience, but you know, talking about
(10:13):
it as some kind of you know, major breakthrough and different.
It is different than twenty twenty twenty one, but not
different than where it's been historically.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
You can text us questions at five sixty six nine
oh on the Common Spirit Health text line. I want
to read this text message, Mandy. I walked them all
daily on workdays. No, you walked sixteenth Street, sir or madam.
We paid one hundred thousand dollars. We're going to get
our money's worth out of that. Today I saw one
motorcycle cop coming out of a back alley and a
little later two.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Cops on foot.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
It's so good to see cops on the mall again,
which leads me to my second part of that question.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Do you cause the last time I walked down.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
The Sixteenth Street mall now great, it was under construction,
there's fences everywhere. It did not feel safe at all.
The only other people that I saw there were homeless people,
one of whom appeared to be in the throes of
some kind of drug situation. I did not feel safe
at all, and I kind of mentally was like, well,
that's not going to happen again by myself, like, I
(11:16):
just did not feel comfortable. What have you seen in
terms of the number of people that maybe are homeless
or maybe you know, having a drug issue or addiction issue.
Are you seeing fewer of those people and more kind
of normies? What's the balance there now?
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Well, it's completely changed.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
I would say during construction, I didn't really see anybody.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
You know, nobody likes.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
To hang out near the noise and bother of construction,
homeless or not. But you know, in the early twenty twenty,
twenty twenty one. That's where I saw the most that
you could possibly see. So everything that you you know
is discussed about, you know what happens in big cities.
(12:03):
I pretty much thought everything except for except for a death. Well,
and so you know, I because I have three stores
along that sixteenth Street, I'm there almost every hour.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
I have been either in a day yea.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
And so if you're there any hour, you could probably
see anything.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
And so I did.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
But right now and over the course of and I
would go back to actually November of last year where
I really started to feel like, well this is this
is actually more like twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen. So it
was a Saturday night and I was making a delivery
to one of my stores and they had just cleared
(12:49):
the construction right in front of there, and there were
three little kids and they had just bought a Broncos
football from my store, and they were just on Sixteenth.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Street just throw the football and.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
The three dads were there just chatting, and I was like, yeah,
this is pretty normal because they were going to the
game the next day. And that's when I started to think,
all right, it could.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Maybe exhale just a little bit y what percentage? And
this is un just ballpark me. Here of the storefronts
are available right now, meaning they're empty.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
You know, the numbers that I've seen are I think
anywhere between twenty and thirty percent. It's going to vary
a little bit depending on where you are along sixteenth Street.
You know the blocks, one of the blocks that I'm on,
it's a good chunk, are actually full. And oh that's
(13:46):
good for you. I mean, yes, it's great for me.
We have two stores in that particular block. It's Curtis
to Champa and along that you've got a bunch of
local folks as well.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
So that's the other question that I was going to
ask as a follow up question, because I remember the
first time we moved here in twenty thirteen, and my
first trip to the sixteenth Street made was in the
day and then like a week later back at night,
and there was a vibe both times.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Right, sometimes you end.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Up with just bars and restaurants, or you don't, you know,
you just end up with shopping and the stores close
at seven. It had a great mix and it had
a lot of local stuff in it. Are we seeing
those local stores? Are we going to end up with
a bunch of chains. Again, what's going to happen there?
Speaker 4 (14:27):
Yeah, So you know a lot of folks kind of
went out in as construction started to happen, because if
your lease was up, that became an opportunity and not
have to live through all the construction.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
And it's harder as a small business to sort of
keep those costs under control when you can't defer it
over multiple properties like a chain can exactly.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
And so I am expecting that there should be a
good mix coming back in. We will, undoubtedly we'll see
big chains come in. But I was at a meeting
a few weeks ago where the mayor was talking to
business folks from all around the Front Range and in
(15:09):
the mountains who were looking at Sixteenth Street, and you know,
they were a mix of food and retail and theater
and kind of really fun concepts and all local. And
I would expect that, you know, not all of them
would join, but a bunch of them will.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
I think that's nice that they're they're doing outreach specifically too.
And I was going to ask, are you part of
the downtown Development Organization or what kind of what kind
of meetings do you guys have Are they working with
the businesses that are already there, and do you have
a window into some of the things that the Downtown
Development Partnership is planning to actually bring people back to
(15:48):
Sixteenth Street are they Are they planning events?
Speaker 4 (15:51):
I have relationships with folks there. I'm not a member.
It's kind of expensive for small business.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
But.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
Might have great relationships. They have events actually coming this weekend.
There's a bunch of stuff as they formally kind of
grand reopened sixteenth Street, and then a bunch that are
coming along the entirety of the summer.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
And I don't know all this.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
When is the rest of the fencing going to be down,
because there's still there's still fencing up, there's still construction
going on.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
What is the timeline for that? Do you know?
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (16:26):
I think you know by the end of summer everything
will be done. Okay, it is my understanding, and you
know there's been delays, but hopefully they'll be all done
wrapped up by the end of summer.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Somebody just asked, did they get rid of the urine
smell on Sixteenth Street as of last night? Now, granted
it has been raining a lot lately, but I did
not see or smell anything that was remotely New York
City subway like. It was actually rather pleasant and quite enjoyable.
So I'm excited about this. Somebody else had is the
(17:00):
light reel still bringing in undesirable patrons? Wouldn't that be
the place to start? With more police presence? And I'll
answer this one that is a separate police force. RTD
has its own police force, so now they coordinate with
Denver police and all of those things.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
But I'm just not sure.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
I know.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
I'm going to ask you this question and you can
answer it if you want to.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Derek, this person said, regardless of downtown is better or not,
I can't bring myself to spend my money in a
city that strongly supports sanctuary policies and liberal spending.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Do you want to respond to that?
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Yeah, I'd love to respond to that.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
I would say there are likely points where I differ
significantly from the administration in terms of the policies that
I would choose. By the same token, there are a
lot of great things that you would miss, you know,
that have nothing to do with the policies. And there
(17:57):
are a lot of folks like my business is and
Trompo bakery, and you know mod market costat Tequila's folks
who are all local, who really and frankly need you
to come down and re experience it and spend your money.
And you know, whether it goes to support that administration specifically,
(18:21):
that's a fraction, right, You're talking about sales tax. I'm
not talking about the lion's share of a restaurant, you know,
bill that you're paying, or the tips for the folks
who are there. So, I mean, I get it. And
so I've got stores in Park Meadows in Douglas County
as well. But you know, the downtown Denver area is
completely different. And and I would understand if people choose
(18:45):
not to, but would encourage them to at least give
it a try.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
I agree with you on that second part.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Last question, and we're almost out of time, but I
white asked this, what kind of a difference did it
make when they finally took down the construction in terms
of foot traffic?
Speaker 2 (18:58):
What are you seeing?
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Yeah versus right? For that?
Speaker 4 (19:00):
Yeah, you know, once once the fences come down on
your block, then you know traffic goes up thirty fifty
seventy percent just because people are realizing, oh, I'm not
going to be confronted by an inability to kind of
navigate that block.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
So really really simple.
Speaker 4 (19:19):
When it's wide open, people love to be there, and
it is clean and it is nice, and it's not
perfect because it's a big city and so you don't
search for perfection there, but you can search and find
really really great experiences restaurants, retail, theater, everything downtown.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
If you need anything sports memorabili well, i'd say sportswear,
meaning your teams, you should go see Derek Sportsman and
sock them Sock and Porium because with nothing else, you
at least know Derek is a listener of this show
as well. Derek, I so appreciate you coming down today.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Thank you so much early. It was great to meet
you and love interacting with your listeners.
I am pleased his punch just to have in the
studio with me a business owner that we're going to
talk to in just a second. But I want to
take just one moment and give you guys an idea
of what I saw last night in downtown Denver. So
my daughter wanted to go see Alex Warren at Mission
Ballroom and I did not want to go see Alex
Warren in Mission Ballroom. So we dropped her off at
(00:20):
Mission Ballroom, Chuck and I did, and then we drove
to a restaurant not too far but a good bit away,
multiple blocks too far to walk kind of thing. And
then after that we drove again to a different part
of downtown Denver so we could go to a pool
hall and play some billiards while my daughter was at
this concert. And as we were driving back to Mission
(00:41):
Ballroom when the concert was over, by the way, if
you want to send your kids to an early concert,
send them to a concert of a YouTuber, because that
thing got over at nine o'clock. And yeah, it was fantastic,
but nonetheless, and Chuck and I were both struck by
how clean Denver is.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Again, it is remarkable.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
It felt like when I first came to Denver many,
many years ago. I remember driving through downtown and thinking
about how beautiful it was, and how clean it was,
and how welcoming it felt, and how much it was
just a lovely, lovely city. And that's part of the
reason that I've been so disappointed over the last seven
years to see what has become of downtown Denver. And
(01:25):
as much as I criticize Mayor Mike Johnston, I feel
like I should give him credit because when he said
on the news, if you think downtown is still a hellhole,
he didn't say this, I'm paraphrasing, it is a hellhole.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
You need to come downtown, And he's right. Can I
say that.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
I know we did have a conversation when we did
park about whether or not our car would be safe there,
so that perception still exists.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
But we briefly dipped.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Onto part of the sixteenth Street mall and it looks
absolutely lovely. And joining me now in the studio is
a business owner who owns two stores on the sixteenth Street.
I got to stop saying the who owns two stores
on sixteenth Street, because I mean, we've paid one hundred
k for the brand rebrand. I gotta get it right.
He owned sports Fan and Sockham Sock Emporium, and Derek
(02:13):
Friedman's joined me today to talk about it.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Now.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Derek, you sent me a rather salty email and said, Manny,
it would help if snarky talk show hosts did not
talk about this in such.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
A negative way.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
And I said, come on and talk about what your
experience st are. First of all, pull that microphone right
up to your face until it's almost uncomfortably close.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yeah, but welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Well, thank you very much.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
And first of all, that text was actually directed at
the audio that you had in me before that, which
is a personality on news ah gotcha. Oh yes, not
necessarily at you, although you were repeating the lite.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Well it was funny. I mean it was kind of funny.
Let's talk about your experiences. How long have you owned
a business, these two shops on sixteenth Street.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Yeah, so I bought sports Fan in twenty fourteen, So okay,
so it's been a lot of ten years.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
You have a good you have been for the whole arc, right, It's.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
Been a bit of a roller coaster, so ups and
downs all together. So yeah, seeing the entirety of it.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
So I'm guessing in twenty fourteen when you bought this,
you bought a business that had positive cash flow and
was doing well, because very, very rarely to someone buy
an unsuccessful business unless they plan on bringing.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
It back to glory.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
When did you start to notice problems of any real significance.
I'm not talking about little you know, little ticky taggy subm.
At what point did you go, hm, we may have
a situation here.
Speaker 4 (03:39):
Yeah, in twenty fourteen, when I bought the business, I
would say it was kind of normal in terms of
the level of choplifting, and I mean, it's just something
that you have in retail, right, So we've got four stores,
two of them on Sixteenth Street, and it's just sports
fan and everything was was great and normal. Twenty nineteen,
(04:02):
probably about halfway through the year, is when I started
to see a turn and some change in the dynamics.
Certainly on the heels of that. About nine months later
we ran into COVID and then George Floyd where things
got really out of control, and then you know, a
couple of years into construction and all those things. So
(04:25):
it was really kind of the middle of twenty nineteen.
I think there were some decisions that were made politically
about how they were going to enforce shoplifting. And there's
so few people who commit crime that if you're not
enforcing it, those people are just gonna be out there
and they're going to do it again and again again.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
So but that was the timing.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
So since twenty nineteen, what do you think, And of
course we're talking about a whole stew of things that
have gone wrong, increase shoplifting, no enforcement, which just encourages
more shoplifting. When did things really start to go Did
you ever get a point where like, I'm not sure
that we're going to be able to continue.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
Yeah, I think it was probably on the on the
heels of George Floyd. And into twenty twenty one, we
had between our stores on sixteenth and our store right
next to the Broncos Stadium, we had eight break ins
looting from George Floyd and and and you know we
(05:25):
lost six figures in terms of merchandise.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
And so.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
You know those were you insured, because that's the big
thing they got insurance was all that covered by insurance.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
So that is a typical refrain the first couple of times, yes,
after that, because they were right in sequence with each
other just a week apart or so. The next incident,
the insurance agent said, you're freed to to submit claims,
but I got to drop it. Nervous about whether or
(05:58):
not you're going to have insurance you need it, So yeah,
they're going to drop us potentially, and so after that
I stopped submitting them.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
How much did you come out of pocket for all this?
Do you know?
Speaker 3 (06:08):
It was six figures? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (06:11):
What is it about those stores? What is it about
Sixteenth Street that makes you want to stay there? Because
we've seen a pretty good exodus by other businesses who say, look,
it's just not sustainable, whether they're a large chain restaurant
or whether they're a small mom and pop. We've seen
efforts by the city to bring these pop ups in,
only to find out at the time they're like, we
can't ensure the safety of our employees, let alone our customers.
(06:35):
So you've seen these things come and go. What is
it about being on Sixteenth Street that you've committed to?
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Yeah, I think it's a little bit of what you
were talking about in terms of what you saw. It's
a beautiful area when it's not under construction, when there's
not Yeah, George Floyd, you know, protests, and it's also
a place that draws a lot of tourists. And so
for our business on the Sox side, tourists are big,
and then sports.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
I mean, you've got four stadiums.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
That's very very rare for a big city to have
four stadiums that are all kind of walkable from each other, right,
And so you know, we get so much traffic from
tourists and convention goers and sports goers that it ends
up being super attractive for our particular business, and then
for restaurants and all those other businesses down there, they
(07:27):
enjoy the same.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
So last night one of the things I did notice,
because then once I started looking around, I was like, okay,
let's do a little recon of what's downtown. I would
say probably well over fifty percent of the license tags
of cars on the road we're from out of state easily.
Now that's not necessarily a bad thing because those many
times are tourist dollars and things of that nature.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
But what do you think, as a.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Person who lives in the metro area, what do you
think is going to be the catalyst to bring people
from Littleton and Parker and our Vada back to downtown Denver.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
I think you said it it's just experience it or
re experience it, because you know, perceptions reality. For all
those folks they went down there, they had a bad situation,
or I think more importantly, you know, where's the media
point in the camera, and they're certainly not pointing it.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
At normal behavior, right.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
People just coming in, buying something, being happy and then leaving.
It's the kind of stuff that we saw in twenty
twenty twenty one, and so those images last a long
time with people's memories, and they need to come back
see it for themselves, and once they do, I think it'll,
you know, completely refame for them what the downtown experience
(08:51):
is like.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Have you felt an increase in police presence since the
mayor announced the public safety initiative about two months ag
go roughly, have you noticed an increase in police officers?
And conversely, have you noticed a decrease in a less
desirable patron on the sixteenth on the sixteenth Street.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Yeah, So the answer to that is yes and no.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
So the yes is there are more police versus what
used to be in twenty twenty twenty twenty one on
the heels of defund right, So but it's not two
weeks ago, three weeks ago. It's actually going back a
little bit further than that. So that transformation began to happen.
(09:42):
And the reason why I say no is because it
looks like what it looked like in twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Right, So back to normal almost.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
There's an announcement of hey, this is all new investment,
and this is all you know, new officers and horses
and people on motorcycles. But that's what I had in
twenty fourteen, right parked outside of my store, and so
that's what I thought was normal and usual, and people
would just interact with the horses and it would be,
you know, a great experience, but you know, talking about
(10:13):
it as some kind of you know, major breakthrough and different.
It is different than twenty twenty twenty one, but not
different than where it's been historically.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
You can text us questions at five sixty six nine
oh on the Common Spirit Health text line. I want
to read this text message, Mandy. I walked them all
daily on workdays. No, you walked sixteenth Street, sir or madam.
We paid one hundred thousand dollars. We're going to get
our money's worth out of that. Today I saw one
motorcycle cop coming out of a back alley and a
little later two.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Cops on foot.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
It's so good to see cops on the mall again,
which leads me to my second part of that question.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Do you cause the last time I walked down.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
The Sixteenth Street mall now great, it was under construction,
there's fences everywhere. It did not feel safe at all.
The only other people that I saw there were homeless people,
one of whom appeared to be in the throes of
some kind of drug situation. I did not feel safe
at all, and I kind of mentally was like, well,
that's not going to happen again by myself, like, I
(11:16):
just did not feel comfortable. What have you seen in
terms of the number of people that maybe are homeless
or maybe you know, having a drug issue or addiction issue.
Are you seeing fewer of those people and more kind
of normies? What's the balance there now?
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Well, it's completely changed.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
I would say during construction, I didn't really see anybody.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
You know, nobody likes.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
To hang out near the noise and bother of construction,
homeless or not. But you know, in the early twenty twenty,
twenty twenty one. That's where I saw the most that
you could possibly see. So everything that you you know
is discussed about, you know what happens in big cities.
(12:03):
I pretty much thought everything except for except for a death. Well,
and so you know, I because I have three stores
along that sixteenth Street, I'm there almost every hour.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
I have been either in a day yea.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
And so if you're there any hour, you could probably
see anything.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
And so I did.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
But right now and over the course of and I
would go back to actually November of last year where
I really started to feel like, well this is this
is actually more like twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen. So it
was a Saturday night and I was making a delivery
to one of my stores and they had just cleared
(12:49):
the construction right in front of there, and there were
three little kids and they had just bought a Broncos
football from my store, and they were just on Sixteenth.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Street just throw the football and.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
The three dads were there just chatting, and I was like, yeah,
this is pretty normal because they were going to the
game the next day. And that's when I started to think,
all right, it could.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Maybe exhale just a little bit y what percentage? And
this is un just ballpark me. Here of the storefronts
are available right now, meaning they're empty.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
You know, the numbers that I've seen are I think
anywhere between twenty and thirty percent. It's going to vary
a little bit depending on where you are along sixteenth Street.
You know the blocks, one of the blocks that I'm on,
it's a good chunk, are actually full. And oh that's
(13:46):
good for you. I mean, yes, it's great for me.
We have two stores in that particular block. It's Curtis
to Champa and along that you've got a bunch of
local folks as well.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
So that's the other question that I was going to
ask as a follow up question, because I remember the
first time we moved here in twenty thirteen, and my
first trip to the sixteenth Street made was in the
day and then like a week later back at night,
and there was a vibe both times.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Right, sometimes you end.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Up with just bars and restaurants, or you don't, you know,
you just end up with shopping and the stores close
at seven. It had a great mix and it had
a lot of local stuff in it. Are we seeing
those local stores? Are we going to end up with
a bunch of chains. Again, what's going to happen there?
Speaker 4 (14:27):
Yeah, So you know a lot of folks kind of
went out in as construction started to happen, because if
your lease was up, that became an opportunity and not
have to live through all the construction.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
And it's harder as a small business to sort of
keep those costs under control when you can't defer it
over multiple properties like a chain can exactly.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
And so I am expecting that there should be a
good mix coming back in. We will, undoubtedly we'll see
big chains come in. But I was at a meeting
a few weeks ago where the mayor was talking to
business folks from all around the Front Range and in
(15:09):
the mountains who were looking at Sixteenth Street, and you know,
they were a mix of food and retail and theater
and kind of really fun concepts and all local. And
I would expect that, you know, not all of them
would join, but a bunch of them will.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
I think that's nice that they're they're doing outreach specifically too.
And I was going to ask, are you part of
the downtown Development Organization or what kind of what kind
of meetings do you guys have Are they working with
the businesses that are already there, and do you have
a window into some of the things that the Downtown
Development Partnership is planning to actually bring people back to
(15:48):
Sixteenth Street are they Are they planning events?
Speaker 4 (15:51):
I have relationships with folks there. I'm not a member.
It's kind of expensive for small business.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
But.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
Might have great relationships. They have events actually coming this weekend.
There's a bunch of stuff as they formally kind of
grand reopened sixteenth Street, and then a bunch that are
coming along the entirety of the summer.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
And I don't know all this.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
When is the rest of the fencing going to be down,
because there's still there's still fencing up, there's still construction
going on.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
What is the timeline for that? Do you know?
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (16:26):
I think you know by the end of summer everything
will be done. Okay, it is my understanding, and you
know there's been delays, but hopefully they'll be all done
wrapped up by the end of summer.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Somebody just asked, did they get rid of the urine
smell on Sixteenth Street as of last night? Now, granted
it has been raining a lot lately, but I did
not see or smell anything that was remotely New York
City subway like. It was actually rather pleasant and quite enjoyable.
So I'm excited about this. Somebody else had is the
(17:00):
light reel still bringing in undesirable patrons? Wouldn't that be
the place to start? With more police presence? And I'll
answer this one that is a separate police force. RTD
has its own police force, so now they coordinate with
Denver police and all of those things.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
But I'm just not sure.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
I know.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
I'm going to ask you this question and you can
answer it if you want to.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Derek, this person said, regardless of downtown is better or not,
I can't bring myself to spend my money in a
city that strongly supports sanctuary policies and liberal spending.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Do you want to respond to that?
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Yeah, I'd love to respond to that.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
I would say there are likely points where I differ
significantly from the administration in terms of the policies that
I would choose. By the same token, there are a
lot of great things that you would miss, you know,
that have nothing to do with the policies. And there
(17:57):
are a lot of folks like my business is and
Trompo bakery, and you know mod market costat Tequila's folks
who are all local, who really and frankly need you
to come down and re experience it and spend your money.
And you know, whether it goes to support that administration specifically,
(18:21):
that's a fraction, right, You're talking about sales tax. I'm
not talking about the lion's share of a restaurant, you know,
bill that you're paying, or the tips for the folks
who are there. So, I mean, I get it. And
so I've got stores in Park Meadows in Douglas County
as well. But you know, the downtown Denver area is
completely different. And and I would understand if people choose
(18:45):
not to, but would encourage them to at least give
it a try.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
I agree with you on that second part.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Last question, and we're almost out of time, but I
white asked this, what kind of a difference did it
make when they finally took down the construction in terms
of foot traffic?
Speaker 2 (18:58):
What are you seeing?
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Yeah versus right? For that?
Speaker 4 (19:00):
Yeah, you know, once once the fences come down on
your block, then you know traffic goes up thirty fifty
seventy percent just because people are realizing, oh, I'm not
going to be confronted by an inability to kind of
navigate that block.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
So really really simple.
Speaker 4 (19:19):
When it's wide open, people love to be there, and
it is clean and it is nice, and it's not
perfect because it's a big city and so you don't
search for perfection there, but you can search and find
really really great experiences restaurants, retail, theater, everything downtown.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
If you need anything sports memorabili well, i'd say sportswear,
meaning your teams, you should go see Derek Sportsman and
sock them Sock and Porium because with nothing else, you
at least know Derek is a listener of this show
as well. Derek, I so appreciate you coming down today.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Thank you so much early. It was great to meet
you and love interacting with your listeners.
The Mandy Connell Podcast News
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