Photo by Justin Criado
Audio By Carbonatix
On July 13, Denver City Council advanced a bill to update how entertainment businesses in the Mile High are licensed, the first major revision of the rules since the 1980s. The vote was 10-1 in favor of the proposal, and if the council gives one more blessing on July 20 as expected, some of the regulations will go into effect immediately, with the rest slated for implementation on April 1, 2027.
Stephen Brackett, a founding member of The Flobots and executive director of ONE Denver, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that describes itself as “Denver’s liaison for the nightlife industry, community and city agencies,” considers the current bill to be a “skeleton” for the final set of edicts. However, Molly Duplechian, executive director for the Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection (formerly the Department of Excise and Licenses), sees things a bit differently.
“There’s definitely a lot of the details that are still left to be figured out in rulemaking,” she concedes. “It feels way more than a skeleton based on how much work it’s taken to get to this point. But I do agree with the analogy of putting more meat on the bones.”
Much of the media coverage about the revamp has focused on a tweak that would allow bars to stay open until 4 a.m. if they stop serving alcohol at 2 a.m., as has long been the city standard. The policy has been hyped as a way to diminish the negative impacts of let-out by spreading it over a longer period, rather than having thousands of likely inebriated revelers hitting the streets in places such as LoDo at the same time. But Brackett considers this spin to be considerably overstated. “Especially in this clickbait era, it’s so much easier to say, ‘Denver bars can now be open until 4 a.m.,’ but that’s not the case,” he maintains.
To clarify: Local watering holes that want to regularly stay open longer must be granted special permission, but Brackett seriously doubts that most will choose this path. “In the first year, we’ll probably see only two or three places apply for it,” he speculates. “The fact of the matter is, there’s not a lot of money to be made when you’re not selling liquor. … You’d have to do it at such a scale that ticket pricing and other stuff, like food and non-alcoholic drinks, are sufficient to bring in a profit. And that’s not going to be easy.”
Other venues that want to extend their hours occasionally won’t need a late-night pass to take advantage of the opportunity. Duplechain notes that “limited entertainment businesses can provide entertainment until 2 a.m. for up to 12 times a year. They just have to inform our department up to 72 hours in advance and post that on their premises to let the community know they’re going to do that.”
Photo by Molly Martin
This approach is emblematic of the bill’s goal to simplify the licensing procedure. By Duplechian’s count, there are currently 14 different venue license types, but under the new regs, that total will be reduced to three: limited entertainment businesses, nightlife entertainment businesses, and adult entertainment businesses.
Several directives from the plan’s first draft that had raised concerns for Brackett have been modified, much to his relief. “Earlier, it required bonded security staff to be there. For a lot of clubs that are smaller, below 250 people, requiring them to do that would be such a huge expense that it would make it almost impossible for nighttime programming. And they were also requiring metal detectors. Now it’s a little more wishy-washy. It can be interpreted as having someone at the door to make sure no one brings weapons in, which they already do.”
Duplechian clarifies that “we will require nightlife businesses to approve a security plan, but we don’t know what that will look like yet. There’s been a lot of discussion with security experts, but an example would be that venues over a certain size would have to have a certain number of security guards.”
Another significant change cited by Duplechian involves “having some responsibility for having orderly conduct outside licensed businesses. We started with a 100-foot radius, which went down to 50 feet, and it’s now down to 25 feet from the ingress to the egress. We wanted to prevent unlawful activity, but that has been narrowed down to making sure patrons are not congregating in a disorderly fashion within 25 feet. And we’ve also added some specific language making sure that admission and dispersal is being conducted in an orderly fashion.”
The idea, she goes on, is that “if a fight starts in the bar, we don’t want them to just shove it out the door. Maybe they can have one party leave, and the other party stays and calms down, rather than pushing the problem out of the business and washing their hands of it.”
Brackett, who was among the ONE Denver crew to consult with the department, would love to see some further tweaks, such as loosening the noise ordinance to allow for more amplified music under certain circumstances. But he’s keeping his expectations realistic. “This is kind of old hat for any kind of activist: You don’t fight the good fight thinking you’ll get everything you want,” he admits. “But I can’t sing the praises highly enough of the staff at the [DLCP] office. They’ve been truly transparent, open and willing to talk to folks. And in what was approved, they did get rid of a lot of things we were very worried about as far as red flags, and some other things were mitigated.”
Moreover, he believes additional improvements can be made even after the July 20 city council vote. “The main way this ordinance could end up being garbage is if people operating in nighttime don’t show up and make sure it’s right,” he says. “We’re not working with some dark enemy cabal that wants all of Denver’s nightlife to be like Dave & Buster’s. I think this was drafted with the best of goodwill in mind — but if we don’t get active during the rulemaking, it’s not going to resemble what we need as cultural programmers to make this stuff work.”
Business owners and residents will have multiple chances to let their voices be heard over the next several months, Duplechian emphasizes: “They can be formally part of a working group or they can just send in comments during a rulemaking hearing or email. We’ll take that input in whatever way people want to send it to us. We’re open to that feedback and want to hear from our customers. We think this will improve the safety and accountability of nightlife businesses, and if there are any unintended consequences or something that doesn’t play out the way we anticipated, we’re committed to looking at it again and making any changes we need to make.”
Overall, Duplechian is confident that “we’ve shaped a really good, high-quality piece of legislation as a result of the input we’ve received. And we’re not done.”
