Just nine short months after Jake's Sports & Spirits closed for good at 38th and Walnut streets, RiNo Beer Garden is open for business.
Silver Gordon and Storm Ireland, founders and owners of Historian’s Ale House, are now running the spot on the edge of the residential Cole neighborhood, where their patio backs up to a park and their front door is a short walk from the 38th and Blake light rail station.
"We'd been looking for a new spot ... and Silver and Storm were out perusing the area and they actually stopped in Jake's just to eat and talk about the properties that they'd seen and somehow it came up that they (EXDO Management) were looking to get out," said Kevin Duerbusch, general manager at RiNo Beer Garden and Historian's.
Back when Jake's closed in March, EXDO Management partner Andrew Feinstein told Denverite, "It’s very popular and it’s a bittersweet moment, but we’ve really turned our focus more and more to real estate ventures and we’re just not restaurant people."
The new team changed everything but the shell — all the way down to the pipes and wiring.
Here's a before-and-after look:
It's still a good spot to watch sports, with four TVs inside and 12 outside, and they want it to be a good place for all ages.
"We're all family men and we built this for our families," Duerbusch said. "We want everybody to be welcome here. Young, old — it doesn't matter to us. The same thing that's going on at Historian's, we want that to transfer here. We've already gotten that. We've gotten a little bit older crowd and we've had probably 10 babies in here already."
RiNo Beer Garden opened quietly on Wednesday, and Duerbusch said they're already seeing a positive response from the neighbors.
"It's a good feeling and that's what we base our success on, is that everybody likes the bar," he said.
Take a quick tour:
