After operating at 6853 Leetsdale Drive for almost ten years, the Center moved into the building at 600 South Broadway earlier this year; it opened to the public on November 11 with a grand-opening bash. Located just north of Denver's dispensary-laden stretch of South Broadway, often dubbed the Green Mile, the Center also happens to sit right on Center Avenue.
"That's a total coincidence, but we weren't mad about it," operations director Cory Lewis says of the new location. "We're kind of in an area before Green Mile and all of those other shops, which can be advantageous, but it doesn't have as much traffic. We're still getting support from our old Leetsdale customers, though."
The Center operated on Leetsdale as Wellness Center of the Rockies for seven years before rebranding. Known primarily for affordable cannabis, the dispensary is trying to reach more customers at the new store, which cost over $3 million to purchase and renovate.
According to sales manager Travis Loyd, the Center is making a concerted effort to stock product tiers of all kinds, from $12 eighths of flower to craft growers like Iion and LoCol Love as well as rosin makers such as Big Heads Little Necks and Soiku Bano.
"Those craft brands are the companies we thrive with and want to partner with — and if you ever have any recommendations, we're all ears," Loyd says. "We want this place to be warm and welcoming to everybody. We don't want it to be stagnant or corporate or like a doctor's office. Whether it's a $12 eighth or $200 ounce, it's going to be the same experience."
That experience will now involve a little history, too. Over 130 years ago, a volunteer fire station was hastily built at 600 South Broadway, according to the Denver firefighter historians at 5280Fire.com. The original station was demolished in the 1890s and replaced soon after with the brick building that served as Denver Firehouse #13 until the mid-1970s, when the department moved into a new station at South Yosemite Street.
A 1916 photo of 600 South Broadway during the building's days as a Denver Fire Department station.
Denver Public Library
The old station building went on to house a marketing firm and was in "pretty good condition," Lewis notes, but the Center's staff still spent several months working on a brand-new interior that includes slick wooden countertops, marble columns and a mural in the waiting room by local artist Chelsea Lewinski.
There's exposed brick inside, and the Center kept an original firehouse door in the back of the retail area. The upstairs serves as a business operations area, but Lewis hopes to host networking events or mixers in the future. He also wants to partner with nearby restaurants and stores on promotional deals, such as a pizza and joint coupon deal.
As Colorado's cannabis industry continues to battle against declining dispensary sales and struggling wholesale prices, Lewis concedes that moving across town and adopting a newer look is a risky move, However, the Center's stretch of South Broadway is next to a light rail station and a handful of residential development projects.
"After moving from where we had been for so long, it's hard to say what the future holds," Lewis says. "We'll never see the dispensary sales numbers we did in 2020 and 2021, because there was such a confluence of factors going on then. Colorado's an interesting cannabis market, and we're all just trying to hold right now. You've got to keep working and trying to build bridges, which is what we're doing here."
