The Secret Garden Is a New Cafe and Bar on the Edge of Cheesman Park

It's been over three years since the nonprofit Capitol Hill United Neighborhoods (CHUN) and City Street Investors teamed up on a major makeover of the historic mansion at 1290 Williams Street, right off Cheesman Park.

Plans included replacing the former annex building with a conservatory-style cafe. Now that cafe, called the Secret Garden, is open and serving coffee and light fare including sandwiches, salads and sharable snacks during the day, as well as cocktails and charcuterie in the evening.

The stately mansion was built in 1899 as a residence for socialite Daniel W. Tears; in 1937, it became the home of another Denver socialite, Frederick McFarlane, and later served as an office building. In 1977, the City of Denver purchased the structure and turned it into the Capitol Hill Community Center. CHUN, which was formed in 1969 by local activists fighting to save the history and character of their community, moved into the property and began managing it in 2005, then took it over entirely in 2015.

But that proved overly ambitious. Around 2017, Travis Leiker, who was the new president of CHUN at the time (he is no longer with the organization), realized that the nonprofit organization had taken on a large financial burden with the aging mansion; it was also seeing a major decrease in income from the annual People's Fair, which it had taken over in 1974. In fact, the 2018 People's Fair was the last.

But ending that event didn't stanch the losses. After some debate among CHUN boardmembers regarding whether to sell the house or keep it, the nonprofit decided to look for a partner to help improve the building, and reached out to City Street.

On June 1, 2021, CHUN closed on a deal with City Street, a community-oriented investing and operating firm that's been involved with everything from the revitalized Union Station to the ongoing work at the Evans School in the Golden Triangle, where the group plans to open another restaurant, possibly next spring.  According to Joe Vostrejs, co-founder and principal at City Street, the $1.85 million property was sold into the 50-50 partnership. CHUN left $850,000 in the deal; $1 million was used to establish an endowment.

Ensuring that the mansion's makeover would best serve the community was a focus of the project. "We held a long series of focus groups and did surveys of the neighborhood and really did this super deep dive into the needs and the desires of that neighborhood over there by Cheesman Park," Vostrejs told Westword when the project was announced. "Like, 'What do you want to have happen to the property? What's missing? What can we provide here?' And so the vision that came out of that was to certainly renovate the building and the grounds, but maybe do something with that annex building, and they really wanted some food and beverage uses."

After delays that became all too common during the pandemic, that vision is finally realized with the Secret Garden. In addition to the cafe, the property will also host private events and includes offices for rent in the upstairs rooms.

The Secret Garden is located at 1290 Williams Street and is open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily. For more information, visit secretgardenbarandcafe.com.