Tommy's Thai May Have to Close Because of BRT Construction

The Bus Rapid Transit construction work along East Colfax Avenue could soon claim another business. Across the street from the former home of Middleman, which gave up in June, Tommy's Thai is suffering a drastic drop in business caused by the ongoing construction and confusing traffic flow along the major artery.

"It is very, very difficult," says Maud Schaefer, who manages the restaurant. Since construction reached this part of Colfax a few months ago, the Tommy's Thai website has featured a popup warning telling customers not to approach on Colfax: "Due to BRT construction, access to Tommy's is blocked off at Colfax. Please use either 13th or 14th Ave to Cook St for direct access to the restaurant."

Tommy's Thai opened at 3410 East Colfax Avenue in 1988 and quickly became a popular spot for Thai food — a relative rarity in Denver at the time, when Vietnamese eateries were far more common. The restaurant has received many accolades over the years, including Westword Best of Denver nods (and Readers' Choice awards), 5280 magazine's Top of the Town honors, a Mayor's Design Award for its 2002 remodel, and even a Good Neighbor Award from Capitol Hill United Neighborhoods.
Tommy's has changed hands over the decades, but it's been in the family the entire time. It was opened by Paul Santanachote, an immigrant from Thailand who died last year; he started the eatery in a former KFC location whose origins were easily identified — you could imagine Colonel Sanders' visage atop the building. But the food was solid Thai fare that belied the space's fast-food origins.

Santanachote moved on to open Sawaddee on Boulder's Pearl Street Mall a couple of years later, then moved on again, building Sri Thai in Fort Collins in 1996 when one of his daughters attended Colorado State University. Another daughter, Dhipanee Mays, eventually ran Sri Thai before she closed that restaurant in 2018.

After Santanachote opened in Boulder, he handed Tommy's Thai to his cousin, Somsak "Sam" Damrongsang, who was running a longtime Thai restaurant in Littleton, Wild Ginger. In 2002, Damrangsang gave the former KFC a much-needed makeover when a young architect named Ben Niamthet — yes, a family member — redesigned the building inside and out with clean modern lines and a welcoming dining area.

Damrongsang eventually handed over management of Tommy's Thai to his kitchen manager (another relative), and when she retired, Damrongsang's daughter, Maud Schaefer, stepped in last year to run the place. Her parents still own both Wild Ginger and Tommy's, where Schaefer has worked since she was a child. Like many children of immigrants who run restaurants, "I grew up there," she says, and laughs.
She's not laughing much now. Schaefer has been dealing with the nightmare of lost business, thanks to all that BRT construction. Currently, Tommy's is almost blocked off from passing traffic by a chain-link fence, concrete dividers, pipes and a large white arch that will be raised above the substation that will one day inhabit space on these street in front of the restaurant. She says that customers can't find parking (even though there's a lot across Cook Street, it's not well-marked); meanwhile, unhoused people have been camping in the fenced-off area on the street, leading to lots of trash piling up outside her business.

Even once construction is done, she worries that people may continue to camp out by the substation.

"There's a lot of people who come and hang out here now that it's closed off, like it's a camping area when we're closed Sunday and Monday," she says. "When we come here Tuesday morning, there's trash everywhere."
Some regular customers on foot are still finding their way to the restaurant's corner entrance — not as many as before the construction chaos began, but loyal fans find a way. They keep coming for the menu, which isn't that different from when Tommy's Thai opened 27 years ago. The kitchen serves everything from familiar dishes such as pad thai or pad kea mow drunken noodles to pad pphet fried rice, tom kha gai chicken coconut soup and satay peanut chicken or tofu. Tommy's also serves lesser-known staples, including Yum nua Thai beef salad, Panang curry and the seasonal dessert mango with sweet rice.

If Thai cuisine was a rarity in the area three decades ago, today a cursory search on websites like Yelp will find well over 100 Thai restaurants; Tommy Thai comes in at 3.7 out of 5 stars on Yelp. But that's not enough to inspire newcomers to fight the construction.

"The disruption started at the end of February or the beginning of March, and I knew it was coming, but it was ahead of schedule," Schaefer says. "The city really had a lack of communication of when it was going to start and what they were doing. I hear that from everybody. They just came and closed the street off one day."

She's been told the construction for the stretch of Colfax in front of Tommy's will be completed in August, but that's hard to believe when you look out at the street in front of the restaurant.
On top of all the other challenges of running a restaurant these days, the construction makes keeping Tommy's Thai open until the project is done seem almost impossible. The stress, Schaefer says, is "very real, with the high minimum wage of Denver, the cost of labor. It's very hard to be paying high salaries for people when we don't have any customers. And then property taxes, too. Just doing business in Denver is extremely expensive. It always has been, but the fact that the city is now actively hindering our customers is very crazy."

Tommy's applied for a Business Impact Opportunity fund grant for $15,000, which the city is awarding certain businesses affected by construction, but it hasn't received the money yet. To keep things going, Schaefer has launched a GoFundMe campaign, but by the beginning of August it had raised just $955 toward a $15,000 goal. "Yeah, it just started. I don't think the word's getting out," Schaefer says with a sigh.

Some of the most generous donors are some of her most loyal customers. "We've got great neighbors who donated and they live right behind us," she says. "We've seen them for decades."

But she wonders if even their support will be enough to keep the business open until construction is complete. The ties of loyalty can only stretch so far.

Tommy's Thai is located at 3410 East Colfax Avenue, and open Tuesday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and 5 to 9 p.m., and Saturday from 5 to 9 p.m. For more information and online ordering, go to tommysthaidenver.com. The GoFundMe for Tommy's Thai is at gofundme.com/f/support-tommys-thai-restaurant.