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A historic gay bar in Denver is ceasing operations after its owners said rampant crime and open drug use in a sprawling homeless camp drove customers away.
The Triangle Bar, which dates back to the late 1970s and was reopened in 2017 by brewery heir Scott Coors, will close for good after a final toast on Sunday afternoon.
“I was tired of putting my staff at risk, and I was tired of putting my customers at risk,” Coors, the great-grandson of brewing magnate Adolph Coors Sr., said. Westworld.
He explained that the final straw came in late September, when city officials, after months of pressure and pleas from the business community, cleared the encampment, only to have it spring up again within 24 hours.
“We called the city and said, ‘You guys have to get rid of this (again),” Coors said. ‘Nothing. Nothing.’
The Triangle Bar, due in 2021, is closing after the owners of the historic Denver gay bar said the homeless encampments had gotten out of hand and made the business unviable
The Triangle Bar, which dates back to the late 1970s and was reopened in 2017 by brewery heir Scott Coors (above), will close for good on Sunday
The bar announced the closure in an email to customers on Thursday, with a survey showing that more than 60 percent of their customers were visiting less often due to the homeless encampments surrounding the watering hole.
“It is with heavy hearts that we announce that Triangle Denver is closing indefinitely, effective immediately, largely due to the ever-growing encampments that have surrounded and suffocated businesses in our neighborhood,” the email said. DenverPost.
“We regularly inject money into the bar to keep the doors open while we pressure the media and the city to take corrective action, which finally happened on September 27,” the email added.
‘For one afternoon we had our neighborhood back. Less than 24 hours later, the camps returned and despite our pleas, the city took no action to stop the redoubt.”
Coors explained to Westworld that the investigation was critical to the decision to close because it allayed his fears that the sharp drop in sales was due to customer dissatisfaction with the bar’s events or product offerings.
He said sales for 2023 were down about 30 to 40 percent from the previous year, and the bar had never turned a profit since paying $2.4 million for the building in 2017.
Coors said the homelessness problem exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic, when people set up camp in a gated area near the Triangle Bar “and turned it into a gated community for themselves.”
“There was a whiteboard out the front with drug deals posted, there was prostitution, there was trafficking going on, there was a murder happening there,” he told Westworld.
Across the street from the Triangle Bar are tents, which the owners say are now surrounded by encampments, open drug use and crime
Coors said the homelessness problem exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic, when homeless people moved into a gated area near the Triangle Bar.
“There was a whiteboard out the front posting drug deals, there was prostitution, there was trafficking going on, there was a murder happening there,” he said.
The problem worsened in May when a tire shop across the street closed and the sidewalk in front of it was taken over by tents. “That was the main hallway where people used to come to the bar, and that’s where business stopped,” he said.
Jarred McClain, manager at The Triangle Bar, shared KUSA TV the closure was “heartbreaking” for himself and for Denver’s LGBTQ community.
“We are surrounded on four sides by homeless encampments, crime and filth. And the problems that persist with these embedded encampments affected us and the guests who wanted to come here,” McClain said.
The manager said the encampments were the source of ongoing problems, including break-ins to steal liquor and attempts to tamper with the bar’s gas line, threatening an explosion.
Open since the late 1970s, the Triangle Bar has served as a refuge and recreation for Denver’s LGBTQ community for decades.
McClain explained that during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, some mortuaries or families refused the ashes of gay people who died of the disease, and the bar became their final resting place.
“That’s something that really affects me too, is that if this is redeveloped or changed to someone else’s vision of what this corner should be, other than what our community wants it to be, that this could be lost. And now that will only exist in our memories.’