But the Paramount is now known for a different kind of music. The theater has been an important stop for musicians in the early stages of their careers — and they often enjoy coming back toward the end of their careers, says Scheck, who worked at the place even before Kroenke took over.
"In this day and age, laying your hands on a piece of history...is rare. You would never be able to build something like this today," he points out. "This is what it was like if my great-grandparents came to a show and were here in 1930 when it opened. It's a true gem." — Sam Levin
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Before the mall, 16th Street's top attraction was Zeckendorf Plaza and its hyperbolic paraboloid, built in 1958.
Ian Marzonie (left) and John Scheck of Kroenke with an old projector at the Paramount Theatre.
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Denver's second-oldest continuously operating brewery is part of a national chain of similar operations. It features a "concept" that these days is found more often in suburban shopping centers than in urban cores, and it was recently bought out by another chain — one with its corporate headquarters in Tennessee.
But it wasn't always that way.
The Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery opened on the ground floor of the Prudential Building, at 16th and Curtis streets, on November 1, 1991, three years after the Wynkoop Brewing Company started serving beer in LoDo and two years before the Colorado Rockies came to town. Its founders, entrepreneurs Frank and Gina Day, were already involved in the Boulder Beer Company and wanted something similar in Denver.
They jokingly named it after its spot in the building that housed the Prudential insurance company, which used a Rock of Gibraltar logo and the slogan "Own a Piece of the Rock."
"We've been through a lot of renovations and some corporate mergers, but the main idea has stayed the same," says Daniel Langhoff, who was working the host shift on a recent afternoon. The idea: to make good food and to brew good beer.
A local actor, performer and musician, Langhoff started coming to Rock Bottom when he was in high school to check out the bands that would play on a loft-like landing above the brewhouse that's on display in the center of the restaurant. "They would climb ladders to get up there and we would sit over there," he says, pointing toward what is now Rock Bottom's main entrance.
Over the years he returned again and again, celebrating his thirtieth birthday at Rock Bottom and finally taking a job as a host here in 2008. "I've always liked the 16th Street Mall," he says. "Everything downtown centers around the mall but doesn't crowd it."
Lunchtime during the week, as well as Friday and Saturday nights, are when the Rock Bottom sees its biggest regular rushes, but it normally takes a convention or a major sporting event to fill all 438 seats and 100-plus patio spots. Rock Bottom's own events, like its summer music series and its once-a-month Thursday beer releases, also help attract customers. Oh, and at those beer releases, anyone who shows up between 6 and 6:30 p.m. gets a free pint.
You can watch that beer being made at Rock Bottom. That's because the kettles themselves are located in the middle of the space, with big windows to look through. A system of steel pipes connects the kettles to fermentation and storage tanks, which are located in three highly visible places.
"It was designed for show, not for functionality," says John McClure, who has been brewing at this Rock Bottom for fifteen years this week, all the while using the same equipment. Not that that has impeded his skills. McClure has won numerous awards and medals for his beers, including a gold at the prestigious World Beer Cup last May for his Baltic Gnome Porter — which, by the way, is currently on tap here.
He brews around 2,400 barrels of beer each year and has helped design some of the recipes for beers that are now featured at Rock Bottom's other thirty-plus locations.
When the Wynkoop Brewing Company — Denver's oldest brewpub — was founded in LoDo in 1988, it was credited as the brewpub that built a neighborhood.
But Denver's second-oldest brewpub — founded when the 16th Street Mall was only nine years old — has been doing the same thing on the other end of downtown. — Jonathan Shikes
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From Chestnut Place, a street that runs from the very end of the 16th Street Mall up to 20th Street and is lined with chain-link fences and construction equipment, it's possible to imagine what the redeveloped Denver Union Station will look like when it's done. It's a multi-layered daydream: To the west is the new light-rail station, neat and gleaming but nearly deserted at noon on a weekday except for the snaking line of free 16th Street Mall shuttles queuing up to turn around for another circuitous trip.
To the east is where the most exciting stuff is happening, though much of it is underground. Skylights poke up between the public gardens and beside the walkways on top of the two-block-long, 22-bay subterranean bus depot being built underneath 17th Street. Those walkways lead straight from Chestnut Place to the eventual location of eight street-level commuter rail tracks that will sit behind Union Station and someday take passengers to Boulder, Thornton, Wheat Ridge and Denver International Airport.
