Jevon Taylor is following the footsteps.
The 30-year-old CEO of Green Spaces, a coworking, events and retail marketplace, is closing his RiNo location at 2590 Walnut St. next week to go all-in on the 16th Street Mall.
“It just makes a lot more sense to have a business there than a Walnut Street with no foot traffic and vacancies,” he said.
Taylor said the location will shut down March 16. In a few months, it will be replaced by a new storefront on the corner of 16th and Welton streets. The young entrepreneur received a $2.7 million grant from the Denver Downtown Development Authority to fill the entire corner, formerly home to a RadioShack, Taco Bell and Jimmy John’s. He’s subleasing space at a discounted rent to five new local shops and restaurants, thanks to the DDDA funds.
At its core will be the Green Spaces Market, an 18,000-square-foot cafe and event space with several retailers inside.
“I feel like we get to see the full vision through on 16th Street, and the RiNo location was more of a proof of concept,” Taylor said.
Taylor purchased the Green Spaces brand in early 2022, back when it was solely a coworking space. He poured $600,000 into the 13,000-square-foot building and launched the retail and event space the following year. Taylor had previously been using Green Spaces as a coworking space for his clothing brand, which had a storefront down the street.
The RiNo spot has been home to seven retailers, from an art supply store to a candle shop to a tattoo parlor. Taylor said he helped six of them relocate.
The seventh, Migas Coffee, will follow him to anchor the new cafe on the mall, which will also be home to record shop City Records, art shop Fruits of Our Labor, Sushi Kuro and Matter bookstore.
The downtown location won’t make its debut with coworking, although Taylor said it could be added later.
“The retail portion of it is why I originally took over Green Spaces. … The coworking is what I inherited,” he said.
In RiNo, Taylor is paying a lump sum fee to break his lease, he said, which ran about $42,000 in monthly rent.
“When I first took over, we were one of three coworking spaces in the area, and now we’re one of 10. … Itap very saturated,” he said.
In the time between purchasing the spot and remaking it in his image, neighboring 10 Barrel Brewing and Epic Brewing closed their doors. In 2024, nearby local eatery Park Burger closed. Last year, self-serve beer hall First Draft shuttered across the street, and wine bar Noble Riot one block away followed suit a few months later.
National retailers Arc’teryx and Patagonia flank Green Spaces on opposite corners of 26th and Walnut. To the north, Oakley and FreePeople, another pair of national chains, have recently added locations.
Most of the storefronts flanking Walnut between 26th and 27th streets are owned by Edens, a Washington, D.C.-based real estate investment firm that bought into the neighborhood in 2018.
“It really felt like a thriving ecosystem, and then somewhere along the way it started dwindling,” Taylor said.
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