There may be a few lonely faces in the crowd at Rodney's restaurant in Cherry Creek, but Rodney's second outpost, in the Tamarac Square shopping center, is about to become a very lonely business.
As Developers Diversified — the owners of both the center and the land under it — prepare to raze the nearly empty mall to make way for new commercial and residential buildings, all businesses are being asked to move out by the end of the month. All, that is, except for Rodney's and the movie theater, which have longer-term leases. "I guess we'll be here until they tear down the shopping center at the end of the year," says Rodney Utz. "I guess they'll have the guy with the bulldozer hand me the check."
Utz has six years left on his lease, which the developer will have to buy out. But businesses that got word of the mall's imminent death started leaving last year, he says, cutting his revenues at this location in half. (The word that the rest will have to get out by August 31 came down in mid-July, surprising many of the remaining tenants who thought they were safe until the year's end.)
Utz has no plans to find a new spot for the southern Rodney's. Once it closes — after eighteen years of business – he'll focus on his Cherry Creek location, which, like so many of its regulars, will be suddenly single.
