Onefold's Stolen Umbrellas Found at Homeless Encampment "Pop-Up Bar"

As new mayor Mike Johnston rolls out his homeless housing plan, backed by a budget of nearly $50 million, encampments continue to spring up around downtown, including one on the 2200 block of Champa Street, where a pop-up bar was spotted earlier this week.

According to a September 14 story on CBS Colorado, "the encampment featured displays of liquor bottles, numerous couches and lounge chairs, recliners and astroturf flooring. Large umbrellas offered shade, and dozens of empty liquor bottles were visible." Denver Police Patrol Division Chief Aaron Sanchez told CBS that "there had been complaints about the couches and tents being rented out for prostitution."

Those umbrellas, it turns out, came from the Union Station location of brunch restaurant Onefold. "It's pretty funny," says Mark Nery, who opened the original Onefold in Uptown in 2015 with his wife, Terese, and added the second location in 2021. "Kudos to them for getting it done and circumventing those loops."

The "loops" he's referring to is the process that legitimate bars and restaurants go through to get a liquor license. In an Instagram post about the stolen umbrellas, Nery wrote, "Our Union Station location won’t be serving alcohol this week since the department of licensing has lost our paperwork from two years ago."

"I just find it funny that a camp down the street could run a full bar and not charge sales tax while we get the runaround," Nery tells Westword. "We keep having to redo our fingerprints. My fingers are stained black from all the times we've had to do our fingerprints." Eric Escudero, a spokesperson for the Denver Department Excise & Licenses, has a different explanation as to why the Union Station Onefold cannot currently serve alcohol: "This business received a final decision tentatively approving their liquor license application on Sept 29, 2021. I say tentative because the license is tentatively approved for after they successfully pass the required inspections from Denver Fire, Community Planning and Development (for zoning and buildings inspection), and public health (DDPHE). When all those inspections are completed, a final inspection from Excise & Licenses is required. The city requires business license applicants to call and schedule their inspections so it can be done at their convenience and at a time that works best for them."

Escudero continues, "This business actually received in the mail a card with instructions on the inspections that was sent on June 29, 2021, before getting the tentative license approval in September of 2021. Despite getting the info in 2021, this license applicant did not call for any of the required inspections until June of this year, and they passed their fire inspection on June 30. They have scheduled the required building and zoning inspection for next week. They have not scheduled the inspection from Public Health yet. I had our team look over the licensing history, and there is no record of any issue with paperwork being lost or any city-caused delays in the licensing process. In an effort to support this business’s success, the city has extended their liquor license application twice, because businesses are required to finish the process in a year. If they don’t complete the process in a year, a liquor license applicant has to apply for an extension thirty days before their license application is administratively closed."

Nery is confident that the licensing issues will be cleared up in a week or so, and notes that he's hired a lawyer to help navigate the situation. In the meantime, the Uptown location can still serve alcohol — and, he adds, booze isn't a big revenue stream for Onefold, anyway.

As for the stolen umbrellas, he's not too concerned. "We had some spares in the basement that we pulled out," he says. "I thought about grabbing them for a minute, but they had holes and were all dirty."

Plus, "we've had worse stuff happen," he notes. "I don't even know where to begin. When we first opened, there were camps on both sides of Wewatta. We have a mechanical room behind the restaurant, and there was a couple living there with their dog." When the police showed up to help, the couple tried to escape through a ceiling vent, and one of them fell through, he recalls.

"But it's been better recently," he adds. Business has picked over the last couple of years, and Nery is maintaining a sense of humor through all the challenges as Onefold continues to serve one of the best brunches in the city.