Riot House Brings High-End Nightlife Venue to Former Real World: Denver House

The 16,000-square-foot building at 1920 Market Street is about to be packed with people whose partying will rival that of the cast of The Real World: Denver, which was filmed in the same place back in 2006. Riot Hospitality Group bought the structure in 2022 and has been renovating it alongside its partners, Monfort Companies and MAR Ventures; RHG worked with those same partners to open Dierks Bentley's Whiskey Row at 1946 Market Street on New Year's Eve 2021.

And it'll be another New Year's Eve extravaganza when the group opens Riot House on Sunday, December 31, with a lineup of to-be-announced DJs and a midnight countdown with views of the fireworks at Coors Field. "This is really part of our investment in Denver and how much we believe in Denver and what we want to do in Denver," says Lissa Druss, who leads RHG's government relations, industry relations and external communications for its thirteen locations across four states. "This is not by accident — this is a long-term plan for us."

RHG CEO Ryan Hibbert had been eyeing Denver's market for some time before he put the company's fifth Whiskey Row in the Mile High, she adds, and Riot House is a part of RHG's expansion in the area. "We saw LoDo, and from the very beginning, that's what drew us to invest in Denver," she says. "The area now is not the LoDo we first came to; crime has been a huge concern of ours...but we're doing everything we can with our neighbors to turn LoDo around so that all of us can be prosperous, safe, healthy, and have a great place to go, because that's how much we are committed."

RHG had a firsthand bout with downtown Denver's high (but dropping) crime rates when a seventeen-year-old opened fire outside Whiskey Row on September 16, injuring five people. "At Riot Hospitality Group, we believe in being woven into the fabric of where we operate, so we join neighborhood associations and get to know our local school, local councilmembers, our resident and business neighbors — and we already had these relationships in place when the unfortunate incident happened back in September," Druss says. "That has grown organically into this grassroots group — it's not a formal group — of business owners and residents in the area. We collectively come together, and we've had substantial conversations with the city mayor's office, our councilmembers, the Denver police, just on, 'Okay, this is not good for LoDo. How can we all work together to improve this area?'"

Opening a new venue might help, she notes, since it will add more foot traffic and energy to the neighborhood. That's the same mindset adopted by the owners of Stay Tuned, which opened nearby in the Ballpark neighborhood at 2162 Larimer Street in mid-December.

In the meantime, Riot House promises offerings that will make people want to make the trip to LoDo anyway. "Riot House on Market Street is a sophisticated, high-end, hybrid restaurant and nightlife venue," according to Druss. "I mean, it's 16,000 square feet. It has a 300-square-foot LED wall. The lights and the audio are top of the line: VIP service, private booths, national DJs. We really want to elevate the nightlife in LoDo, and we believe in it. Riot House will be one of those concepts that elevates the nightlife."

The two-floor venue in a transformed, century-old warehouse includes a rooftop patio for outdoor partying. And the performers Riot House plans to bring in will be top-notch. "The latest and greatest and the best national DJs we fully intend to appear here," Druss says.

"With both of our venues, we are hopeful that the tide will change and that people will come back to LoDo in strong numbers," she concludes. "And we're stronger together than divided apart. If all of our venues are doing well, then all of LoDo is going to do well."

Riot House opens at 9 p.m. Sunday, December 31, at 1920 Market Street. Reservations (recommended) can be made here.