05-28-25 Interview - Derek Friedman - How's Business on 16th Street?

I am pleased his punch just to have in the studio with me a business owner that we're going to talk to in just a second. But I want to take just one moment and give you guys an idea of what I saw last night in downtown Denver. So my daughter wanted to go see Alex Warren at Mission Ballroom and I did not want to go see Alex Warren in Mission Ballroom. So we dropped her off at Mission Ballroom, Chuck and I did, and then we drove to a restaurant not too far but a good bit away,

Again, it is remarkable.

It felt like when I first came to Denver many, many years ago. I remember driving through downtown and thinking about how beautiful it was, and how clean it was, and how welcoming it felt, and how much it was just a lovely, lovely city. And that's part of the reason that I've been so disappointed over the last seven

You need to come downtown, And he's right. Can I say that.

I know we did have a conversation when we did park about whether or not our car would be safe there, so that perception still exists.

But we briefly dipped.

Onto part of the sixteenth Street mall and it looks absolutely lovely. And joining me now in the studio is a business owner who owns two stores on the sixteenth Street. I got to stop saying the who owns two stores on sixteenth Street, because I mean, we've paid one hundred k for the brand rebrand. I gotta get it right. He owned sports Fan and Sockham Sock Emporium, and Derek Friedman's joined me today to talk about it.

Now.

Derek, you sent me a rather salty email and said, Manny, it would help if snarky talk show hosts did not talk about this in such.

A negative way.

And I said, come on and talk about what your experience st are. First of all, pull that microphone right up to your face until it's almost uncomfortably close.

Yeah, but welcome to the show.

Well, thank you very much.

And first of all, that text was actually directed at the audio that you had in me before that, which is a personality on news ah gotcha. Oh yes, not necessarily at you, although you were repeating the lite.

Well it was funny. I mean it was kind of funny. Let's talk about your experiences. How long have you owned a business, these two shops on sixteenth Street.

Yeah, so I bought sports Fan in twenty fourteen, So okay, so it's been a lot of ten years.

You have a good you have been for the whole arc, right, It's.

Been a bit of a roller coaster, so ups and downs all together. So yeah, seeing the entirety of it.

So I'm guessing in twenty fourteen when you bought this, you bought a business that had positive cash flow and was doing well, because very, very rarely to someone buy an unsuccessful business unless they plan on bringing.

It back to glory.

When did you start to notice problems of any real significance. I'm not talking about little you know, little ticky taggy subm. At what point did you go, hm, we may have a situation here.

Yeah, in twenty fourteen, when I bought the business, I would say it was kind of normal in terms of the level of choplifting, and I mean, it's just something that you have in retail, right, So we've got four stores, two of them on Sixteenth Street, and it's just sports fan and everything was was great and normal. Twenty nineteen, probably about halfway through the year, is when I started to see a turn and some change in the dynamics.

So but that was the timing.

So since twenty nineteen, what do you think, And of course we're talking about a whole stew of things that have gone wrong, increase shoplifting, no enforcement, which just encourages more shoplifting. When did things really start to go Did you ever get a point where like, I'm not sure that we're going to be able to continue.

Yeah, I think it was probably on the on the heels of George Floyd. And into twenty twenty one, we had between our stores on sixteenth and our store right next to the Broncos Stadium, we had eight break ins looting from George Floyd and and and you know we lost six figures in terms of merchandise.

And so.

You know those were you insured, because that's the big thing they got insurance was all that covered by insurance.

So that is a typical refrain the first couple of times, yes, after that, because they were right in sequence with each other just a week apart or so. The next incident, the insurance agent said, you're freed to to submit claims, but I got to drop it. Nervous about whether or not you're going to have insurance you need it, So yeah, they're going to drop us potentially, and so after that I stopped submitting them.

How much did you come out of pocket for all this? Do you know?

It was six figures? Yeah?

What is it about those stores? What is it about Sixteenth Street that makes you want to stay there? Because we've seen a pretty good exodus by other businesses who say, look, it's just not sustainable, whether they're a large chain restaurant or whether they're a small mom and pop. We've seen efforts by the city to bring these pop ups in, only to find out at the time they're like, we can't ensure the safety of our employees, let alone our customers.

Yeah, I think it's a little bit of what you were talking about in terms of what you saw. It's a beautiful area when it's not under construction, when there's not Yeah, George Floyd, you know, protests, and it's also a place that draws a lot of tourists. And so for our business on the Sox side, tourists are big, and then sports.

I mean, you've got four stadiums.

That's very very rare for a big city to have four stadiums that are all kind of walkable from each other, right, And so you know, we get so much traffic from tourists and convention goers and sports goers that it ends up being super attractive for our particular business, and then for restaurants and all those other businesses down there, they enjoy the same.

So last night one of the things I did notice, because then once I started looking around, I was like, okay, let's do a little recon of what's downtown. I would say probably well over fifty percent of the license tags of cars on the road we're from out of state easily. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing because those many times are tourist dollars and things of that nature.

But what do you think, as a.

Person who lives in the metro area, what do you think is going to be the catalyst to bring people from Littleton and Parker and our Vada back to downtown Denver.

I think you said it it's just experience it or re experience it, because you know, perceptions reality. For all those folks they went down there, they had a bad situation, or I think more importantly, you know, where's the media point in the camera, and they're certainly not pointing it.

At normal behavior, right.

People just coming in, buying something, being happy and then leaving. It's the kind of stuff that we saw in twenty twenty twenty one, and so those images last a long time with people's memories, and they need to come back see it for themselves, and once they do, I think it'll, you know, completely refame for them what the downtown experience is like.

Have you felt an increase in police presence since the mayor announced the public safety initiative about two months ag go roughly, have you noticed an increase in police officers? And conversely, have you noticed a decrease in a less desirable patron on the sixteenth on the sixteenth Street.

Yeah, So the answer to that is yes and no.

So the yes is there are more police versus what used to be in twenty twenty twenty twenty one on the heels of defund right, So but it's not two weeks ago, three weeks ago. It's actually going back a little bit further than that. So that transformation began to happen. And the reason why I say no is because it looks like what it looked like in twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen.

Right, So back to normal almost.

There's an announcement of hey, this is all new investment, and this is all you know, new officers and horses and people on motorcycles. But that's what I had in twenty fourteen, right parked outside of my store, and so that's what I thought was normal and usual, and people would just interact with the horses and it would be, you know, a great experience, but you know, talking about it as some kind of you know, major breakthrough and different.

You can text us questions at five sixty six nine oh on the Common Spirit Health text line. I want to read this text message, Mandy. I walked them all daily on workdays. No, you walked sixteenth Street, sir or madam. We paid one hundred thousand dollars. We're going to get our money's worth out of that. Today I saw one motorcycle cop coming out of a back alley and a little later two.

Cops on foot.

It's so good to see cops on the mall again, which leads me to my second part of that question.

Do you cause the last time I walked down.

The Sixteenth Street mall now great, it was under construction, there's fences everywhere. It did not feel safe at all. The only other people that I saw there were homeless people, one of whom appeared to be in the throes of some kind of drug situation. I did not feel safe at all, and I kind of mentally was like, well, that's not going to happen again by myself, like, I

Well, it's completely changed.

I would say during construction, I didn't really see anybody.

You know, nobody likes.

To hang out near the noise and bother of construction, homeless or not. But you know, in the early twenty twenty, twenty twenty one. That's where I saw the most that you could possibly see. So everything that you you know is discussed about, you know what happens in big cities. I pretty much thought everything except for except for a death. Well, and so you know, I because I have three stores along that sixteenth Street, I'm there almost every hour.

I have been either in a day yea.

And so if you're there any hour, you could probably see anything.

And so I did.

But right now and over the course of and I would go back to actually November of last year where I really started to feel like, well this is this is actually more like twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen. So it was a Saturday night and I was making a delivery to one of my stores and they had just cleared the construction right in front of there, and there were three little kids and they had just bought a Broncos football from my store, and they were just on Sixteenth.

Street just throw the football and.

The three dads were there just chatting, and I was like, yeah, this is pretty normal because they were going to the game the next day. And that's when I started to think, all right, it could.

Maybe exhale just a little bit y what percentage? And this is un just ballpark me. Here of the storefronts are available right now, meaning they're empty.

You know, the numbers that I've seen are I think anywhere between twenty and thirty percent. It's going to vary a little bit depending on where you are along sixteenth Street. You know the blocks, one of the blocks that I'm on, it's a good chunk, are actually full. And oh that's good for you. I mean, yes, it's great for me. We have two stores in that particular block. It's Curtis to Champa and along that you've got a bunch of local folks as well.

So that's the other question that I was going to ask as a follow up question, because I remember the first time we moved here in twenty thirteen, and my first trip to the sixteenth Street made was in the day and then like a week later back at night, and there was a vibe both times.

Right, sometimes you end.

Up with just bars and restaurants, or you don't, you know, you just end up with shopping and the stores close at seven. It had a great mix and it had a lot of local stuff in it. Are we seeing those local stores? Are we going to end up with a bunch of chains. Again, what's going to happen there?

Yeah, So you know a lot of folks kind of went out in as construction started to happen, because if your lease was up, that became an opportunity and not have to live through all the construction.

And it's harder as a small business to sort of keep those costs under control when you can't defer it over multiple properties like a chain can exactly.

And so I am expecting that there should be a good mix coming back in. We will, undoubtedly we'll see big chains come in. But I was at a meeting a few weeks ago where the mayor was talking to business folks from all around the Front Range and in the mountains who were looking at Sixteenth Street, and you know, they were a mix of food and retail and theater and kind of really fun concepts and all local. And I would expect that, you know, not all of them would join, but a bunch of them will.

I think that's nice that they're they're doing outreach specifically too. And I was going to ask, are you part of the downtown Development Organization or what kind of what kind of meetings do you guys have Are they working with the businesses that are already there, and do you have a window into some of the things that the Downtown Development Partnership is planning to actually bring people back to Sixteenth Street are they Are they planning events?

I have relationships with folks there. I'm not a member. It's kind of expensive for small business.

But.

Might have great relationships. They have events actually coming this weekend. There's a bunch of stuff as they formally kind of grand reopened sixteenth Street, and then a bunch that are coming along the entirety of the summer.

And I don't know all this.

When is the rest of the fencing going to be down, because there's still there's still fencing up, there's still construction going on.

What is the timeline for that? Do you know?

Yeah?

I think you know by the end of summer everything will be done. Okay, it is my understanding, and you know there's been delays, but hopefully they'll be all done wrapped up by the end of summer.

Somebody just asked, did they get rid of the urine smell on Sixteenth Street as of last night? Now, granted it has been raining a lot lately, but I did not see or smell anything that was remotely New York City subway like. It was actually rather pleasant and quite enjoyable. So I'm excited about this. Somebody else had is the light reel still bringing in undesirable patrons? Wouldn't that be the place to start? With more police presence? And I'll

But I'm just not sure.

I know.

I'm going to ask you this question and you can answer it if you want to.

Derek, this person said, regardless of downtown is better or not, I can't bring myself to spend my money in a city that strongly supports sanctuary policies and liberal spending.

Do you want to respond to that?

Yeah, I'd love to respond to that.

I would say there are likely points where I differ significantly from the administration in terms of the policies that I would choose. By the same token, there are a lot of great things that you would miss, you know, that have nothing to do with the policies. And there are a lot of folks like my business is and Trompo bakery, and you know mod market costat Tequila's folks who are all local, who really and frankly need you to come down and re experience it and spend your money.

I agree with you on that second part.

Last question, and we're almost out of time, but I white asked this, what kind of a difference did it make when they finally took down the construction in terms of foot traffic?

What are you seeing?

Yeah versus right? For that?

Yeah, you know, once once the fences come down on your block, then you know traffic goes up thirty fifty seventy percent just because people are realizing, oh, I'm not going to be confronted by an inability to kind of navigate that block.

So really really simple.

When it's wide open, people love to be there, and it is clean and it is nice, and it's not perfect because it's a big city and so you don't search for perfection there, but you can search and find really really great experiences restaurants, retail, theater, everything downtown.

If you need anything sports memorabili well, i'd say sportswear, meaning your teams, you should go see Derek Sportsman and sock them Sock and Porium because with nothing else, you at least know Derek is a listener of this show as well. Derek, I so appreciate you coming down today.

Thank you so much early. It was great to meet you and love interacting with your listeners.