Colorado Mills was hit especially hard by Monday's thunderstorm, with flooding forcing a temporary closure at the shopping center.
It's unclear when the shopping center near West Colfax Avenue and Interstate 70 will reopen. The owner of the mall, Simon Property Group Inc., said Colorado Mills will be closed at least through Tuesday.
"We are currently assessing the damage from the hail storm earlier today. Our team is working to ensure the property is safe and the extent of needed repairs for our retailers to get back to business as soon as possible," the Indianapolis-based company told Denverite.
The storm that dumped hail and rain on metro Denver on Monday afternoon broke windows and damaged buildings and cars throughout the area. The full extent of the damage is still being tallied.
"I'm pretty sure our whole store was destroyed," said Cheyenne Jene Lowrie, an employee at GameStop in the mall.
Lowrie said "it started raining in" GameStop on Monday afternoon and within five minutes the store had three to five inches of water in it. She expects her team of about five to be out of a job there for at least a week — maybe longer.
"It wasn't just GameStop," Lowrie said. "The whole Colorado Mills mall was hit pretty hard. ... I feel like the whole mall is going to be closed at least a week."
Colorado Mills has over 200 stores and restaurants including the Lego Store, Saks Fifth Avenue OFF 5TH, H&M and Yard House. It's unclear how many of those stores were impacted by the storm.
"We would direct specific inquiries to corporate retailer contacts at this time, as they would be the best sources of information on the topic," Simon Property Group Inc. said.
Business & data reporter Adrian D. Garcia can be reached via email at [email protected] or twitter.com/adriandgarcia.
