LoDo Restaurant Avelina Closes Suddenly

Three Saints Revival isn't the only restaurant that cites downtown office vacancies as part of the reason for calling it quits. Three days before that eatery behind Union Station closed, another restaurant — this one in LoDo — quietly shuttered, and its owner also blames a lack of business downtown.

Avelina opened in 2016 at 1550 17th Street, when that part of town was seeing a restaurant boom. "We allowed the place to become a special-occasion place — we never wanted that. Totally our fault," says Kevin Jennings of the North Carolina-based Urban Food Group, which owned Avelina, its only Denver venture. But that's just one item on a laundry list of issues the eatery faced.

"The minimum-wage increases have been unbearable," Jennings adds. The latest, which went into effect in January, boosted Denver's minimum wage from $17.29 to $18.29 per hour.

"Our sales have never recovered following COVID," he adds, citing a drop from $52,000 in sales per week before the pandemic to $26,000 per week after.

His list continues: "Our landlord was completely unwilling to attempt to assist with a resolution. LoDo is pretty empty following COVID — Denver downtown area is at 24 percent vacancy rate, much the same as other metro areas. Work from home is making that situation worse. Our building (125 attorneys with support staff) is only about 25 percent occupied on any Monday through Friday. This is not showing up in stats."

And that's not all, Jennings says: "Liberal policies are making urban areas worse. I appreciate the wanting to do good, but these policies only end up with the population all experiencing a lower quality of life. No one has figured out that the only winner in the raise-the-minimum-wage game is the government. They make more — minimum-wage earners make more — but then are faced with everything becoming more expensive. They don't get ahead. Only the [government] gets a raise. I think it's silly that wealthy libs don't get that."
Avelina's closure has not yet been announced on its website or social media channels, but one guest shared his frustration with the restaurant in a February 15 Yelp review: "My reservation I made weeks ago was canceled without any reason at random and now the restaurant is booked up for the time and we've been forced to last minute organize other plans. Don't cancel reservations without reason. Will not even attempt to come back here."

Jennings expressed some frustration of his own in a public response: "We lost thousands and thousands of dollars trying to stay open after COVID. LoDo offices are empty — we can't even do half of the sales we were achieving before COVID. We paid to keep the place open for the last two years — we are now closed for good — so no — we aren't booked. We lost our ass and are now done. All you idiots running this town can do is raise the minimum wage running small business owners out of business. Cry me a river about your dinner reservations."

Despite Avelina and Three Saints Revival both giving up the ghost, other local business owners are still betting on downtown. For example, Troy Guard is planning to open a massive outpost of his brunch concept HashTAG just a few blocks away from Avelina, at 1125 17th Street. And François Safieddine, the man behind ViewHouse and My Neighbor Félix, will soon debut Wonderyard at 2200 Larimer Street.

Still, one chef could be getting a taste of irony today. When Avelina closed, the kitchen was overseen by general manager and executive chef Kal Lawyer. Its much ballyhooed opening chef, though, had been John Broening — the chef at the helm of Three Saints Revival when that restaurant called it quits.