Wow, can you believe it?! It’s been 15 years since Kevin Koernig took the leap to entrepreneurship, launching Studio K2, after many years designing for landmark projects while at larger, established firms. Kevin started his venture into entrepreneurship with an office on the second floor of Union Station, before its redevelopment. We are still in LoDo today, in a 160-year-old building near the 16th Street Mall. For years Kevin worked in corporate firms on large milestone projects like airports, courthouses, university buildings and government institutions, some with budgets up $500 million.
Since then, we have carved out a niche for SK2, breathing new life into buildings such as the Saddlery Building, 2801 Welton, and uniquely Denver spaces such as the Blake Street Tavern. We’ve also grown a national restaurant practice designing PF Chang’s, True Foods and many other gathering spaces, as well as multifamily projects, corporate headquarters and indoor agricultural facilities. In the last 15 years, we’ve helped more than 600 projects become reality with the help of 23 current and former employees and the many others involved on project teams. Now we enter a new chapter as Geneva Kowalski has taken over as majority shareholder. It is rewarding to see a second generation of ownership develop. Here’s to the next 15 years. Thank you to all our wonderful clients for your continued support.
Geneva is a Denver International Airport BDTA 200 Graduate!
We are so very proud of our fearless leader Geneva Kowalski, who graduated from the Denver International Airport – City & County of Denver Dept of Aviation Business Development Training Academy 200 yesterday. BDTA exists to supports small businesses at DEN by providing trainings and a systematic approach to providing services such as architecture, construction and concessions services at DEN. The three primary goals of the Training Academy are to create, educate and cultivate an environment where small businesses can grow and connect with other businesses and industry groups.
BDTA 200 is the second tier course in the program that helps small businesses understand the proposal process and interviewing. It’s the follow-up course to BDTA 100, which covered everything from the software systems used at the airport to safety security and other protocols.
Congratulations to Geneva and her team and all the BDTA 200 graduates!
BV Development The Crossing Commits to 50 Percent Housing Affordability
Studio K2 has been helping developer Paul Andrews make The Crossing, his development in Buena Vista, as sustainable and community-focused as possible. The development will help solve a critical affordable housing need in our mountain communities. Studio K2 Architecture provided urban design and community development design standards, which decode historic forms found in the valley, for this project. The first phase will include 114 residences, community parks and trails including, 22 preserved pinon pine trees, and 47 new trees. SK2 is currently working on housing prototypes in collaboration with local agencies to develop sustainable strategies throughout. Official groundbreaking for Phase 1 is scheduled for June 27th, 2024!
A developer wants to turn the Stanley Mines near Idaho Springs into a new adventure park.
West of Idaho Springs, just off Interstate 70 is a landmark Bruce Russell said can’t be missed.
“This is one of the most iconic sites,” Russell said. “Everyone from I-70 sees it.”
It’s the Stanley Mine, and Russell is working on an idea to take the rundown area dating back to the late 1800s, and spend $15 million transforming 40 acres into Colorado’s newest adventure park.
“We’re building on that historic core – it’s fun, it’s a very exciting kind of project,” Russell said.
While a lot of the work will be to preserve the history, there are also plans to build a zip ride with an alpine coaster, and a mine drop that would send people plummeting 700 feet.
“You have to be able to entertain people, and that’s what they’re willing to pay for,” Russell said.
The palette of Denver’s palate deepens and broadens today when Goed Zuur opens in Five Points, serving not just a vast spectrum of complex sour and wild ales, but a sophisticated range of small plates and unusual dishes.
Set inside a 120-year-old brick building with a carefully restored 1930s-era mural on the side, Goed Zuur, which means “good acid” in Dutch, boasts an interior look best described as Steampunk meets European chic. Long tables with elevated platforms for meat-and-cheese boards run along one side, while an artsy clock covers an entire wall on the other. In the middle is a copper-topped bar and custom draft tower made of industrial pipe, wood and lightbulbs.
But it’s the menu that is going to change the game in Denver. Not only will Goed Zuur serve only sour and wild ales — becoming what is probably the first such bar in the nation — but it will pair those often polarizing, often exquisite niche beers with a complementary menu of charcuterie, hand selected cheeses and housemade bread.
On the food side, co-owner and chef Anthony Lopiccolo will prepare dishes like duck cassoulet and tonno di maiale, which is made with pork leg rather than the traditional tuna, and preserved and served in a jar of olive oil. Curated, upscale pairing menus like this aren’t often found in Colorado beer bars.
There will also be a huge focus on the cheese, since “that is what pairs best with sours,” says co-owner John Fayman. “Then you need the meat side of it to counteract the acid in the beers with fatty food.”
While Goed Zuur would be perfectly at home in San Francisco, Portland or New York, co-owner John Fayman thinks it will find its best audience in Denver, where beer drinkers are educated and ready — ready to enjoy beers that are challenging and high-priced, often because they are rare and among the most difficult for brewers to make.
“If you put our breweries here that make those beers – and the amount of knowledge that the people making them have – against any other market in the country, and maybe in the world, we would come out ahead,” says Fayman, who owns Backcountry Pizza and Taphouse in Boulder and Backcountry Pizza in Nederland.
As a result, Fayman will line up local stars like Crooked Stave, Casey Brewing & Blending, Avery Brewing, Trinity Brewing and Epic Brewing alongside national players like Russian River, Almanac Beer, Prairie Artisan Ales and Jester King, and international powerhouses like Tilquin, Cantillon and Brasserie Dieu du Ciel. There will always be 24 to 26 beers on tap, along with a large cellar of bottled beers that Fayman is still putting together.
“The ratio of Colorado beers to everyone else will depend on what I have available. I always want to be pouring the best selection across the board that I can get, but I am certainly focusing on a lot of local stuff,” he says. “It’s rare to find a Colorado brewery today that isn’t doing some form of sour, kettle sour or mixed-fermentation beer. And everyone is doing a lot better job and producing more. We will probably be half local at all times.”
The beers will all be served in three stylish logo glasses specific to different kinds of beers: barrel-aged sours, for instance, will get large tulip glasses, while goses will be poured into taller, thinner vessels. All of the glasses are sixteen ounces, but the pours will be closer to ten so that people can enjoy the nose and aroma of each one. Most of the beers will also be available in 25-ounce decanters, which will be used for serving and pouring.
The bottled beers and kegs will be stored in a large stone- and brick-lined 1,200-square-foot cellar that includes a modern lift to the main floor. The basement, which stays at a cool 49 degrees even on hot summer days, was a real selling point for Fayman, who is used to seeing his European counterparts storing beer that way.
The building, at 2801 Welton Street, had been home to a variety of bars, restaurants and markets over the decades since it was built sometime around 1895. Most recently, it housed BJ’s Port, which closed in 2007.
While the building was being renovated in 2015, developer Star Mesa Properties discovered an old mural, or “ghost sign,” as they are called, underneath a beige stucco exterior. In accordance with a city rule for historic buildings, the sign, which advertises the Yuye Cafe and Coca-Cola, was preserved
Goed Zuur, with seating for eighty to one hundred people, opens at 3 p.m. today (May 8) and plans to feature a special beer tapping at 6 p.m. each night this week. Keep reading for more photos.
The 56-unit, eight-story Julian Heights condo project recently got a green light from the city of Denver.
Julian Heights is slated to be built near Cheltenham Elementary School, northwest of the
Construction at 1515 Julian St. (Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite)
West Colfax Avenue and Julian Street intersection. The project is the latest planned for Denver’s changing West Colfax neighborhood.
Denver-based Aussie Developments LLC purchased the property in November 2015 for $2.2 million. Studio K2 Architecture is designing Julian Heights. The Denver architecture firm did not return multiple calls about the project.
Julian Heights will contain ground floor retail spaces and units ranging from 420-square-foot studios with mezzanines to 1,400-square-foot two-level condos, according to K2’s website.
Community leaders in West Colfax are encouraging revitalization of their neighborhood. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema is expected to open in the neighborhood in May and anchor the roughly 20-acre area between West Colfax and West 17th avenues being branded as Sloans. The development is less than a mile away from Julian Heights. The condos are replacing a vacant field where it appears a house once stood.
Goed Zuur expects to begin pouring life back into a more than 120-year-old spot in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood starting this spring.
The pub focused solely on sour and wild beers is tentatively set to open April 7. Goed Zuur would be the latest draw along the historic, reinvigorated Welton Street Corridor and occupy a building that’s sat dormant since 2011.
“What I’m hoping is us coming into the neighborhood, along with Spangalang and Rosenberg’s, helps bring businesses and jobs back to the area and makes the area more like RiNo where there are so many places to go,” said Cody Boll, future general manager at Goed Zurr.
Boll is currently the GM at Backcountry Pizza & Tap House in Boulder. The owner of the pizzeria, John Fayman, announced last year he was opening Goed Zurr — “good acid” in Dutch — in the building at the north corner of 28th and Welton streets.
After being built in 1895, the building at 2801 Welton St. served as a tavern, hotel and apartments. The property was once home to Rice’s Tap House, a notable establishment active in the Five Points’ jazz scene, according to the Denver Urban Renewal Authority.
In 2015, DURA agreed to put $350,000 in taxpayer dollars toward the $1.5 million needed to redevelop the two-story, 5,000-square-foot building. Goed Zurr is expected to occupy an 80-seat pub on the first floor. The second floor provides office space for lease.
During the renovation, an old 1940s era mural for Yuye Café and Coca-Cola was discovered on the exterior of the building and restored.
Boll is hoping there are enough beer lovers and nerds in Denver to support a pub dedicated exclusively to sour and wild beers. Wild beers are typically made using a certain kind of yeast (brettanomyces) that’s found in lambic and gueuze Belgian beers.
“The beer community is not as diverse in Boulder as it is in Denver,” Boll said. “There are so many restaurants and foodies in Denver, there’s a just bigger population for us to take a hold of.”
Goed Zurr plans to launch with about 70 beers on its bottle list, 24 to 26 taps and a few food options to pair them with like fine cheese, charcuterie and fresh breads.
A ghost sign is being restored on the building that will house Goed Zuur.
With more than 300 breweries making some of the most well-regarded, well-known beers in the United States, Colorado is frequently referred to as the Napa Valley of Craft Beer. But Colorado is home to some of the country’s best sour and wild beer brewers as well. So, are we also the Belgium of the New World?
John Fayman thinks so. “It is what we do best in Colorado. If you put our breweries here that make those beers – and the amount of knowledge that the people making them have – against any other market in the country, and maybe in the world, we would come out ahead,” says Fayman, who owns Backcountry Pizza and Taphouse in Boulder and Backcountry Pizza in Nederland. “People realize it to a certain degree, but in the next ten years, they will really understand it. And I just want to showcase that.”
That’s why Fayman plans to open Goed Zuur, an eatery and taproom pouring only wild and sour beers from Colorado, the United States and around the world, paired with small plates, charcuterie and cheeses.
Five years ago, a taproom serving only sour and wild beers probably wouldn’t have worked, both because this style of beer – and its higher price point – might have turned people off. “But beer education has come a long way on the Front Range,” Fayman says.
Located at 2801 Welton Street in Five Points, Goed Zuur, which means “good acid” or “good sour” in Dutch, will have twenty taps at all times. But the real gem will be the dirt-floored bottle cellar, which will begin with 150 different bottles and could eventually reach 500. “Some of these are made is such small amounts that it is easier to get them in bottles than draft,” Fayman explains.
The 1,200-square-foot basement cellar stays at a cool 49 degrees even on the hottest days in Denver, he adds, and that feature was a big part of why he chose to lease the space.
Goed Zuur could open at 2801 Welton Street in time for the Great American Beer Festival.
“All of my friends’ spots in Belgium – cellaring lambic and gueuze is a big part of what they do. So we built this with that in mind,” Fayman says. The building had been home to a variety of bars, restaurants and markets over the decades, most recently BJ’s Port, which closed in 2007. But the basement hadn’t been used in a long time; Fayman says there was still a wooden cooler down there and beer kegs dating back to the 1940s or ’50s.
The lambic and gueuze styles are both examples of sour beers, which are made using a variety of bacterias and wild yeast strains. Wild beers are made with Brettanomyces yeast that lends them numerous funky flavors. These beers are typically associated with Belgian breweries, but are also made in other European counties, and in the U.S.
In Colorado, New Belgium, Odell, Avery, Crooked Stave and Trinity Brewing are all known for their well-regarded sour and wild ales, but other small and medium-sized breweries in Colorado have also developed strong sour and wild programs, including TRVE Brewing, Casey Brewing and Blending, Epic Brewing, Former Future’s Black Project and Dry Dock. Even the tiny Our Mutual Friend got on the map last fall when it won a silver medal for a sour beer at the Great American Beer Festival.
“Everyone is jumping on this, and it is all good. We have so much of it around here,” Fayman says. “So I really think that having a place for people to drink only sour beer in a high-end environment is important to the scene here. As the brewery scene progresses, it needs to get more specialties. I think there should be IPA bars or barrel-aged bars, too.”
Fayman came to Colorado from Kansas and bought Backcountry Pizza in Nederland in 2006, immediately changing over many of the handles to craft beer. After noticing how few bars in Boulder focused on craft beer, he opened Backcountry Pizza & Taphouse in that town in 2011. The spot now boasts 68 taps full of craft specialties and is often one of the first or only bars to land very rare and sought-after kegs.
The building in Five Points, which was built around 1895, is being completely renovated and restored by its new owner, Star Mesa Properties. The company, which will put offices upstairs, is also restoring two old murals – known as ghost signs – that were discovered on the side of the building’s brick after a stucco coating was removed.
Star Mesa principal Bob Cardwell says the Welton Street corridor, which is developing quickly, has “a fabulous future” and that Goed Zuur will attract people not just from the surrounding area but from all over Denver and elsewhere, because of the ever-increasing popularity of sour beers. “This is the kind of thing we were looking for,” he adds.
Fayman will take possession of his space in April and hopes to be open in time for the Great American Beer Fest in October.
Thirteen buildings across Colorado received the tax credits through a new program to preserve historic commercial buildings
DENVER, CO – MARCH 29: Mitch Seeley, left, and Russell Pope of Spectrum General Contractors, continue work on the exterior of the building. State tax credits are going to companies that are rehabilitating historic buildings around the state, like the former Rice’s Tap House in the historic Five Points neighborhood. This funding is expected to help increase development in surrounding areas. (Photo by Kathryn Scott Osler/The Denver Post)
Workers stripping a layer of stucco from the exterior walls of a late-19th century building on Welton Street, exposed a Coca-Cola advertisement along with the name “Yuye Cafe.”
The ghost sign will remain, preserving mid-20th century nostalgia as 2801 Welton St. in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood is renovated.
Once known as Rice’s Tap Room & Oven, the red brick building in the Welton Street historic corridor is one of 13 structures across Colorado that received income tax credits this year through a new program to preserve historically valuable commercial buildings.
“The goal of the new tax credit was to not only restore and preserve historic commercial buildings in Colorado, but also to provide an opportunity to stimulate economies across the state,” state historic preservation officer Steve Turner said.
In Five Points, once known as the “Harlem of the West,” the Welton Street Corridor is undergoing a rebirth.
“The Welton Corridor is an evolving corridor. What we see today and what we will see in five years, is significant change,” said Bob Cardwell, a partner in Star Mesa properties, which is renovating the building at 28th and Welton streets.
The building was a touchstone in the Five Points jazz scene when it housed the Tap Room, a jazz club.
Star Mesa received preliminary approval for a $165,000 historic building tax credit, to help with the $1 million renovation, Cardwell said. The renovated building will hold a restaurant and office space.
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The tax credits, which will be awarded each fiscal year, offer a dollar-for-dollar reduction in the amount of tax owed to the government.
To qualify, a building has to be an income-producing property, and must be designated as a local, state or national historic landmark or be located in a historic district, History Colorado’s architectural services manager Joe Saldibar said.
The credit replaces an earlier historic preservation credit that was capped at $50,000. This meant massive preservation projects, like the $54 million restoration of Denver Union Station, got little in the way of preservation tax credits, Saldibar said.
The new, transferable state income tax credits are part of the Job Creation and Main Street Revitalization Act, which became law in 2014.
Final approval comes when the project is complete, and meets state standards for historic preservation.
The Tap Room restoration wouldn’t have been economically feasible without the credit and unrelated tax increment financing, Cardwell said.
As crews removed stucco covering the exterior of a building, they found this Coca-Cola ad, which they worked to preserve. (Kathryn Scott Osler, The Denver Post)
“We had to have those tax credits to make this thing work. Zoning would have allowed us to tear it down and put in a building with a number of stories,” he said. “We were throwing the dice to make something that would have a reasonable return on the investment.”
About 6-miles away, at 2501 Dallas St. in Aurora, work on the 62 year-old Stanley Aviation building, another of the project granted a tax credit, is expected to be complete this summer.
Flightline Ventures began renovating the 140,000-square-foot building in 2015.
Fifty tenants are already lined up for space in the building, which will be called Stanley Marketplace, and it is expected to be full the day it opens, Flightline Ventures partner Mark Shaker said.
Reviving the 22-acre aircraft ejection seat factory campus to include a beer garden, restaurants and other businesses has already sparked interest in the long neglected surrounding neighborhood.
“The interest in that area has gone up about 82 percent over the past year,” said Tim Gonerka, retail specialist for the City of Aurora. “There is a lot of interest from new developers, especially folks who specialize in infill, and from retailers who would never have taken a look at that area before.”
The Stanley property lies just across Westerly Creek from Denver’s booming Stapleton neighborhood.
But the Aurora side of the municipal boundary has long been stagnant, said Nadine Caldwell, a former Aurora City Councilwoman.
The upstairs space in the Welton Street building will be used for office space. State tax credits are going to companies rehabilitating historic buildings. (Kathryn Scott Osler, The Denver Post)
Now “we hear stories of folks walking down the street knocking on doors looking for folks that want to sell their homes,” Aurora city manager George Noe said.
Vacant since 2006, the Stanley campus is located in an “opportunity triangle” that connects Stapleton, the mixed-used Lowry neighborhood and the 578-acre Fitzsimons campus, which includes the Anschutz Medical Campus and the Fitzsimons Innovation Campus.
Eventually, city officials expect young professionals to flock to the Stanley area, much as they have to the Highlands neighborhood in Denver, Gonerka said.
In Greeley, a plan to turn the Greeley Ice House on the east side of downtown, into a historic loft apartment complex, with a new building of affordable housing, qualified for $978,287 in tax credits.
The surrounding neighborhood is an “edgy old agricultural area,” near the city’s historic downtown district, said Pam Bricker, executive director of Greeley’s Downtown Development Authority.
“I still talk to people who remember going there to pick up blocks of ice,” Bricker said of the almost 90-year-old building.
Downtown attractions are within walking distance, and the Ice House abuts the Sunrise neighborhood, a diverse area that flourished in the first half of the 20th century.
“We expect this will increase development,” Bricker said.
In recent years, Greeley has made improvements to the neighborhood, recently installing a metallic arch to welcome residents and visitors.
Also approved for the credits, are the Cannery Lofts and Buddhist Temple, both in Brighton; Cathedral High School, and the Alliance Center, in Denver; the Odd Fellows Building, in Englewood; E.A. Schlitcher House, in Fort Collins; the Home Light and Power Building, in Greeley; the Pearson building in Louisville; Riverside Block in Pueblo; and the Trinidad Opera House in Trinidad.
