Catie Cheshire
Audio By Carbonatix
Jovanina’s Broken Italian is waving the white flag. More accurately, the LoDo restaurant isn’t waving a flag at all, after Denver officials required owner Jake Linzinmeir to take down a banner jutting out from the 1520 Blake property. “They said, ‘If you don’t take it down, we’re going to start citing you and it’s going to end up being thousands of dollars,’ so I took it down and I’m spending over $13,000 on a new sign,” he says.
Finding a sign that Linzinmeir and the city could agree on has been a years-long challenge. When he originally started developing Jovanina’s back in 2018, Linzinmeir had a historic, restored cafe sign that he wanted to put on the building, but the city nixed that idea.
Instead, Linzinmeir installed a window decal sign with the Jovanina’s name. But he needed something people could see from 15th and 16th streets, especially during the pandemic. But now the pandemic is over…and the flag is down. Says Anneliese:
The city wouldn’t allow the restaurant to put up a historic, restored cafe sign in the first place years ago? A sign like that sounds really cool! God, no wonder Nu Denver looks like **** now. The city can get stuffed.
Adds Brooke:
I’m confused because I walked by today and Honor Farm has a similar sign…such an insane thing for Denver to take issue with.
Counters Joe:
So a restaurant owner made a sign permitted temporarily, knew he kept it up way past temporary, had to take it down and is now whining “Denver’s not business-friendly”? What’s wrong with Westword? Never seen John Wick? Without rules, we live with the animals. What if all owners just made bigger and bigger flags? This is 2025: Do people find Jovanina’s by wandering Denver until they see a flag?
Responds Jeremy:
Gotta have your head in the sand or just have zero experience with doing business in Denver to think there’s nothing wrong with the city’s zoning, inspection or permitting.
Offers JJ:
I own a couple coffee shops and a roastery in Denver and Westminster, respectively. I am also a sign maker and restorer on the board of the preservation nonprofit organization Save The Signs. All that qualifying said, there is a long history of classism built into a city’s sign codes and national rhetoric about signs. The idea that animated or flashing signs or neon signs are a relic of the past and a sign of a bad neighborhood has been used to uphold a developer-forward policy in the zoning department. It’s why signage is overseen by zoning.
As a small business owner, I can say that in most ways signage code is just one of the ways zoning can make opening a small business more difficult. But this happens all through the “plan review” process with the city. In this situation, it is likely that the contention of zoning is that this owner is in a historic district that has its own independent rules that I tend to agree with. However, when you consider the same committee that approves those signs approved the replacement of a landmarked neon sign like the Benjamin Moore sign with cheap LED, you wonder what master are they serving? Wealthy property owners or the history itself?
Suggests Alexis:
The City of Denver hates small business. It literally does nothing to support any of us. All it does it try and prevent us from existing, and make everything a million times harder than it needs to be. Give it a couple more years: Denver will be nothing but corporate, boring, chain stores with no personality.
Replies Alex:
Just get rid of sign permits. Ridiculously oppressive. They create expensive rules and zoning laws so that only corporations with big cash can do business in Colorado.
Concludes Craig:
Feels like almost every single restaurant failure that Westword has ever covered has always been blamed on the city instead of the failure of the person running the business.
What do you think of Denver’s sign rules? The challenges of running a business in the city? Post a comment or share your thoughts at editorial@westword.com.
