The Pearl Is Closing Its Doors This Month

The Pearl just marked its one-year anniversary at 2199 California Street, the longtime home of the legendary Mercury Cafe. But the past year has been challenging, with rising costs and a few controversies.

Last month, for example, Denver’s poetry community was shaken when a longstanding Friday night poetry open mic was switched to Sundays. According to Pearl co-owner Ashlee Cassity, that was a strategic move in the new owners’ efforts to keep the venue’s doors open as they navigated financial struggles.

Those financial struggles were apparently worse than Cassity let on.

In an April 11 Instagram post, The Pearl announced that April will be its last month: “We have worked tirelessly to find solutions and do everything in our power to avoid this conclusion. Unfortunately, we are just not in a position to continue with our doors open while also ensuring our staff and beloved performers, entertainers, djs, and event producers are properly compensated.”

After more than two decades of venue moves, Marilyn Megenity finally bought a permanent home for the Mercury Cafe in 1990; it remained a space where artists (like the late Colorado poet laureate Andrea Gibson) and others found their footing and a community that shared enjoyment of unique events and food made from local ingredients.

Wanting to retire, in 2021 Megenity sold the building and business to a team comprising entrepreneur Danny Newman, his wife, Christy Kruzick, and business partner Austin Gayer, but by August 2024, they’d put the Merc up for sale after encountered their own slew of challenges. While the building remained for sale, last spring Cassity and business partner Dom Garcia leased it, renaming it The Pearl after their last venture, a lesbian speakeasy called Pearl Divers in Capitol Hill.

While Cassity and Garcia worked hard to preserve the Merc’s aesthetic and its iconic activities while also adding new ones, like pole dancing and sapphic events, keeping the place going was a struggle, Cassity told Westword last month.

“We run into the same things that the Mercury ran into, as far as putting all of the money that we make back into the building so that it can stay up to code and really high operating costs because of how big the building is,” she said.

And ultimately, they just couldn’t make it work. “They cranked for a year,” says Newman. “But Denver conspires against anything interesting or unique right now.”

Like Cassity, he cites the high costs of running a business, including increased costs and property taxes of $60,000; the neighborhood remains rough.

“We’re currently looking for an angel investor to help us purchase the building from the landlords because they are trying to sell the building,” Cassity said last month, adding that they were worried the legendary venue would be demolished and replaced with a parking lot. “They can sell it to whoever they want.”

But Newman says he shares the desire to find “some community, arts-focused savior” to keep 2199 California Street going, adding that he’d hoped he could be that person, but that things just didn’t work out. “We’re hoping to find somebody who would like to come in and buy the whole building and make it a nonprofit, or partner with all of us.”

After all, it just happened for Curious Theatre, which sold its longtime home, the Acoma Center, to realtor David Spira, who plans to restore the space for the theater.

If Curious found its angel, can The Pearl find its pearl?