The End Of An Era

The Tattered Cover Bookstore in Lower Downtown Denver (LoDo) closed it's doors on the 16th Street Mall yesterday, and will reopen, sometime in May, at a new location a few blocks north, at McGregor Square, adjacent to Coors Field, the home of the Colorado Rockies baseball club. The 16th Street Mall location (seen in the photograph on the left) opened back in October of 1994, and just two years later expanded to 20,000 square feet of retail space, with an events center that seated 300. 

It was on the way to that events center that I took the photo on the right out the window of an upstairs hallway. As I recall, the LoDo bookstore was originally three stories, then was reduced to two, and finally in March of 2014 reduced to just the first floor. Back in 1994, LoDo was still gentrifying, and rents were fairly reasonable. Now, however, this is the hottest part of the city, and the rent and maintenance costs for a retail operation, especially a bookstore, is untenable. That fact, combined with fierce competition from Amazon, dictated the move. It will be sad to abandon the ambiance of that 19th century structure, but hopefully moving to a development owned by one the members of the Tattered Cover's new ownership group will ensure their success in the new location. The end of an era, but perhaps the start of a new one.