"This is a freestanding building with a fully equiped Restaurant/Bar on the first floor," the listing notes. "The second floor is currently built out with European Style hotel rooms and a large common room. The upstairs could also easily be converted to office space."
But according to Scottie Ewing, the x-rated entrepreneur who opened the spot, the Sugar House business is staying put. And not only staying put in Denver, but opening in Vegas.
His real-estate partner wants to "move on and do something else," Ewing explains, so he's selling the building. "If I wasn't doing the Vegas thing, I'd just buy the building. I'm essentially selling half of it...but nothing is 100 percent certain right now."
Including the time frame of the Vegas deal. He hasn't yet closed on the building there, Ewing says, and once he does, there will be a million-plus renovation job that will "dwarf Sugar House here." Still, he doesn't anticipate running into any of the issues he encountered in Denver, where neighborhood groups opposed the more adult-oriented aspects of the Sugar House concept when he bought the building on Alameda in 2006. "They're hurting for business," he says. "And then again, it's Vegas."
But even in Denver, business has been sweet. "We're up 30 percent," Ewing says. "We're open, we're not closing, nothing's going to happen to Sugar House here."
