Two building owners hoping to bring the Museum of Ice Cream to LoDo have seen those dreams melt away.
At a Wednesday board meeting of Denver’s Downtown Development Authority, Dan Huml and Garrett Baum pleaded their case for the quasi-governmental entity to provide a $6.6 million loan for the project.
“Denver has the opportunity to add a globally recognized, family-friendly destination that activates historic buildings, drives daily foot traffic, generates new tax revenue and signals that downtown is not just recovering — it is evolving,” Huml said at the meeting’s public comment portion.
But the next day, the DDDA sent a notice to the two applicants that it was declining their application. It never directly voted on the matter.
“There was a view that the Museum of Ice Cream was an expensive proposition,” said Bill Mosher, Denver’s chief projects officer.
Mosher said that the board would have voted down the project, but that a simple notice to decline allows the two to submit another application “under a new set of circumstances,” if desired.
Huml, of Denver-based Magnetic Capital, owns the 1523 Market St. building, which has been vacant since before the pandemic. Baum owns 1525 Market St. next door, which is partially occupied but has struggled because of an unusual layout.
In an October application, Huml and Baum said the project would cost $25 million. They asked the DDDA to chip in $7.6 million.
The following months were filled with back-and-forth negotiations. Huml said he decreased the amount of financing requested by $1 million to make the project more acceptable to the DDDA.
“When this program was first announced, it was, ‘We are going to provide grants.’ And then it turned into, ‘We’re just going to provide financing.’ And then what it turned into was, ‘Not only do we want payback on all this, but we want collateral, we want guarantees.’ We have acquiesced to everything that they’ve asked us, yet still, they won’t even take a vote,” he said.
The attraction is not a traditional museum but instead offers unlimited ice cream and desserts in a series of Instagram-friendly and pink-heavy “playscapes,” including what it calls a sprinkle pool, according to its website.
It operates in Boston, Chicago, New York, Miami and Singapore, with a location coming soon in Orlando, according to its website. While not a requirement of the application process, the two sent in dozens of letters from parents and children supporting the project.
“I know this probably won’t change your minds, but please let the Museum of Ice Cream come to Denver,” one child’s letter reads. “Me and my friends would be so excited to jump into the pool of sprinkles.”
The Market Street properties are currently subject to frequent vagrancy and vandalism.
“If itap not graffiti, itap a razor blade. … There’s the yeller across the street. There’s the sleeper in 1523,” said Baum, Huml’s partner in the deal.
“The investment could bring hundreds of thousands of families downtown. That could truly change the perception of downtown and whatap happening.”
Mosher, who negotiated directly with the partners, acknowledged the block’s condition.
“I understand the landlords’ situation, that block of 15th and Market is tough,” he said.
But ultimately, the DDDA turned down the application on the basis that it was too costly despite Huml lowering the asking price. Other concerns included the fact that the authority had already approved an ice cream shop for $750,000 on the other end of downtown at 16th and Glenarm. The use as a museum was also too specific, and the DDDA was worried that buildings wouldn’t be easily repurposed if the plan fell through, Mosher said.
“The DDDA is a tax-increment based entity … we have limited resources,” he added.
Huml said the Museum of Ice Cream, outside of the pandemic, has never closed a location for poor performance. He was upset that the authority approached the projectap cost on a per-square-foot basis rather than on the investment it could generate.
“I’ve had other tenants reach out to me and saying, ‘Do you have more space? Can we be next to the Museum of Ice Cream?’” he said. “We’re talking about buildings that are untenantable right now, and the Museum of Ice Cream was really going to be this catalyst.”
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