LowDown Brewery & Kitchen in Capitol Hill to Close September 30

It was about a year ago when the landlord at 800 Lincoln Street approached LowDown Brewery & Kitchen owner Scott O'Hearn with the bad news: He had a deal on the table to sell the building, and the new owner was likely going to build condos in the brewery's place — the location is zoned for up to an eighteen-story structure.

"The landlord said it in a very nice way," says O'Hearn, who adds that there were some options in the lease to potentially stay longer. "We just kind of went back and forth. We were at the end of our ten-year lease. We looked at the area, the changes post-COVID, and made a decision not to move forward, to pull the plug."

LowDown will close its doors for the final time on September 30. The lease actually concludes at the end of October, but O'Hearn and his team will spend that month clearing out the space and selling off equipment.

O'Hearn stresses that the brewery wasn't struggling. It was profitable, but the prospect of the future was a little too uncertain. "When you look five years [out], it becomes a little riskier. Not necessarily to lose money, but to not make enough to be worth staying open," he says. O'Hearn cites labor costs on the service side going up almost threefold, hefty property tax increases and even his age (he's 55) as factors. "I've been doing this for thirty years," he says, reminiscing about his time in the early ’90s at Rock Bottom.
In fact, O'Hearn's experience there served as inspiration for LowDown. "Our staff culture [at Rock Bottom] was irreplaceable. When we hired people, we wanted to make sure that it was a person that we'd have a beer with," he says. He talks about adoring the customer base, recalling how guests came back time and again for the staff, the decor and the overall vibe. "The way we made them feel, it wasn't uptight," he notes. "It was laid-back, a classic pub where you want to hang out and shoot the shit with your co-worker, neighbor, wife or friend." To that end, LowDown didn't take reservations, and it rarely blocked out full days or booked big parties.

Despite the closure, O'Hearn is actually optimistic about breweries entering the market. "I don't think the market [overall] is saturated," he says. "In all honesty, I think it's downtown that is suffering. Less conventions, less office traffic. The demographics have changed. People that work from home that live in the ’burbs are no longer coming downtown for happy hour." He points to the Cherry Cricket entering his hometown of Littleton, in addition to several brewery projects opening up in that suburban area.
He doesn't view everything as roses, however. "Brewery taprooms without a kitchen are saturated," he says. To that end, he's proud of the work his kitchen did, making everything from the pizza to the ketchup from scratch and often chasing down premium ingredients. He feels it made a big difference in the success of the business, which recouped its initial investment just a year after its February 2014 opening.

O'Hearn considered relocating the brewery, but says that it's not so easy to just pick up and move. "It would probably be a year of construction and fitting, and a lot of upfront investment," he says. He's not sure what he'll do next, but he expects it'll be a big change, whether that's consulting on the restaurant or brewing side, or something else entirely. He hasn't had a lot of time to think about it, with his focus on giving LowDown a proper closure.

While LowDown won't do its usual GABF tap takeover, it will throw a farewell party, though the details aren't ironed out yet. Look for updates on its Instagram and Facebook pages — it's sure to be a proper sendoff.