Tivoli Brewing Company is ending its 10-year run on the Auraria Campus in Denver.
The taphouse has been closed since Dec. 16, but the campus and the beer company said they were working on a new lease.
That never happened, and the closure of the taphouse became official with a joint announcement on Tuesday.
“We appreciate Tivoli Brewing Company’s contributions over the years and extend our best wishes for their future endeavors,” read a statement from the Auraria Campus, which is home to CU Denver, Community College of Denver and MSU Denver.
Tivoli's location posed challenges
Ari Opsahl, the CEO of Tivoli Brewing Co., previously said it could be difficult to operate a bar on a college campus.
“Parking can be a challenge. Most of our business is driven by either students on campus, obviously above 21, or events at Ball Arena,” Opsahl told Denverite earlier this year. “When those two things are not there, it is extremely difficult to pull consumers and customers into the taphouse.”
The taphouse was a popular spot for Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche fans on their way to Ball Arena.
The Tivoli name has a long history on the campus.
The “Colorado Brewery” was the first brewery in the state when it opened in Auraria in 1864, according to the Colorado Encyclopedia. It was later renamed as the “Tivoli” brewery, housed in a “one-of-a-kind” structure with “a unique combination of Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque, and Rococo influences,” according to the encyclopedia.
The historic brewery building later became a shopping center and then, in the 1990s, it was transformed into the Tivoli Student Union, serving students of the Auraria Campus.
More recently, Tivoli Brewing Company was resurrected by local entrepreneurs in 2012 and opened a taphouse in the Tivoli Student Union building in 2015.
Tivoli Brewing made beer on-site for several years after opening the taphouse, but moved production to La Junta in 2023.
“The Tivoli Student Union and the Tivoli Quad names will remain the same,” campus spokesperson Devra Ashby wrote in an email. “The Auraria Campus is in talks with a potential partner about the space. We will release more information when we are able.”
The Tivoli building is on the National Register of Historic Places.
