Golden City Brewery and Kelly Mansion Hit Market for $5.5 Million

After more than three decades of running Golden City Brewery, Janine Sturdavant is ready to retire. She started the brewery with her husband, Charlie, a fellow geologist, in 1993. Now Golden City, along with the family's home — the historic Kelly Mansion that's also on the 0.3-acre property —  is listed for sale for $5.5 million.

“A couple of years ago, we started to look around, seeing where we wanted to be when we retired and thinking more seriously about it,” says Sturdavant. “We’ve been thinking about it, and it was time."

The Sturdavants are planning to retire to Texas Hill Country, where they have a lot of friends. “It’s a beautiful place,” she says.

The mansion was built by Dr. James Kelly in 1879 for $8,000 (about $250,000 in today’s money); today, it is part of Golden's 12th Street Historic District. The original clawfoot tub is still in use, and most of the house is as the Kellys left it in the 1940s, with the exception of a modern kitchen and updated mechanical systems. A number of pieces of furniture are included in the sale.

More important, the adjacent Golden City Brewery is also included in the sale. “This is our best year ever, so there’s no better time to sell the business,” says Sturdavant. The brewery is known for beers like Legendary Red Ale and The Geologist, a doppelbock; its Vienna Calling was one of our top beers of 2024.

The sale includes an on-site winery, Golden City Winery, as well. Over the last decade, it's been used primarily to import quality wine from California to sell to patrons on-site; this has allowed the brewery to serve a better product at a lower cost than going through several middle sellers, Sturdavant notes.

Golden’s real estate market is hot right now, she adds. Just blocks from the brewery, lots are selling for over $700,000, and people are buying houses for over $1.5 million and then bulldozing them. “There are multiple cases of that,” she says.

But another factor that went into the price is the well-preserved mansion, where the family has lived since 1991.

Earlier this year, Golden City ended its wholesale distribution outside of the city of Golden. “It was so expensive,” explains Sturdavant. Even so, the brewery is on pace to hit about 1,200 barrels this year – an increase in sales volume with better in-house margins.

Sturdavant credits a lot of that success to Golden City’s long-awaited food truck, which is also included in the sale. “Having that food truck has really helped, with people sitting here and having food and a beer,” she says. “It took a long time to come out, but it’s working really well.”

The food truck helps, but they come for the beer. Her son Derek currently runs the brewhouse operations; he's willing to teach the new owners how to run the operation. And she hopes the new owners will want to.

Sturdavant says that her realtor, Brett Davis of Mile High Commercial Advisors, has been fielding a couple of vetted calls each day. “We’ve had quite a few showings with serious buyers," she adds, "and every single person, as far as I know, has been interested in keeping the brewery open.”