Jen Sevcik is playing defense on West Colfax.
Sevcik, along with her husband and two friends, purchased a 1,500-square-foot retail condo for $120,000 on the ground floor of the Circa West condominium building at the southwest corner of West Colfax Avenue and Vrain Street earlier this month.
Sevcik said the group stepped up to buy it after another deal, which would have seen the space become a laundromat that sells beer, fell through.
“To me, that was not necessarily going to change the trajectory of West Colfax … This play for us is as defensive as it is offensive,” Sevcik said.
The businesswoman and president of the West Colfax Business Improvement District runs three businesses across the street from the real estate she just bought. She wants to create a community-oriented space for creatives that is also a flexible event space.
One corner will serve as a dedicated photo and video studio, which can be rented by the hour. Adjacent to that will be an area for working and meetings. Sevick anticipates that it will draw a crowd of self-employed marketing and advertising professionals.
“[It’s] a community hub that centers around marketing, branding and PR, that has modular components that can offer small events,” Sevcik said.
Sevcik is teaming up with her husband, Tim Samp. The pair run Duality, a fitness studio across the street where “Orangetheory meets CorePower.” Next door is her cafe, Side Pony, serving up coffee and cocktails. And on the other side is Original Glam, a medical spa.
“All my businesses over there need a space to conduct their meetings … I’m at Side Pony talking about my staff that’s working behind the bar, and it’s not private and it’s loud,” she said.
Sevcik said they only need to make about $1,000 a month to cover the space’s expenses, so there’s less pressure to refine the plan before opening. Instead, she plans to “reverse engineer” the place a bit, letting her clients and customers use it and tell her what it needs. It’ll cost about $150,000 to build out the spot.
“This place doesn’t have to make a lot of money,” she said.
The other duo behind the buy are Chelsea and Juan Forero;, who run a local marketing company Forero Creatives. They plan to provide a wide range of services to companies and individuals looking to do advertising.
“Our little tagline that we have right now is ‘cultivating spaces for creatives,’” Chelsea said.
“It’s a place where businesses and people in this corridor can come and collectively work together and build whatever they’re building a little bit more.”
Circa West was developed by local firm Flywheel Capital out of a former assisted living facility called Golden Manor. An executive with Denver’s Bow River Capital signed the sale paperwork on behalf of the Flywheel-formed LLC. Flywheel and Bow River didn’t respond to requests for comment.
A pair of Flywheel development sites flanking the building landed in foreclosure last year after its Arizona-based lender initiated the proceedings. That process has yet to be resolved.
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