The Mercury Cafe is in retrograde.
The decades-old Denver restaurant and music venue, and its real estate at 2199 California St., was listed for sale last week with an asking price of $2.5 million. Owner Danny Newman, who is also open to leasing the property, told BusinessDen an unexpected family medical emergency has forced him to step away from the business.
“This is something that very much is the city’s — it is the community’s — and I would love to find, in some manner, the perfect next generation for this Denver institution,” he said.
Newman said he hopes someone will take the space and continue operating The Mercury Cafe, but realizes that isn’t a guarantee.
“It’s a different Denver than when this was first started, even pre-and post-COVID,” he said. “Me and (wife) Christy bought this place to save it. I think we’ve absolutely continued its legacy … We want nothing more than for it to be around.”
The “Merc,” as many regulars call it, has gone through different names and addresses since first opening on the Ides of March in the foothill town of Indian Hills nearly 50 years ago. It came to Cap Hill in the ’80s, routinely booking local alt-rock bands at 1308 Pearl St.
“Many nights, I’d drive back to Capitol Hill and make my way to the Merc to see and hear the crème de la crème of Denver music across a kaleidoscope of styles,” a former Westword music editor wrote in 2021.
But the Merc has always had a connection to the stars, moon, planets and the zodiac that connects them. On the exterior of the two-story building, there’s a map of the zodiac as it was on Oct. 31, 1990, the day when the cafe opened at its current location on the edge of Five Points.
Newman — who also owns My Brother’s Bar, the city’s oldest bar, and recently bought an old church in Uptown for $1.4 million — bought the business and its 10,000-square-foot building for $2 million from founder Marilyn Megenity on Tuesday, June 22, 2021 at 5:15 a.m. Megenity chose that time based on the positioning of the stars, The Denver Post reported at the time.
Since then, Newman said, he’s poured hundreds of thousands of dollars, potentially more than $1 million, into the business and property.
Months after buying the Merc, Newman and his wife unexpectedly discovered she was pregnant, after trying for years with no success. They had previously planned to “pour all of our time and energy into our mercury baby,” he said, referencing the cafe.
Asked how the business was doing, Newman said, “The current state of things, I’ll call it ‘fine.’”
“In our pre-kid and pre-health issues state, we were completely fine supporting it when we needed to,” he said. “I think there are very obvious tweaks and changes that should be made that will make it into an exceptional business. There were things we just didn’t want to touch, because that was our promise going into it.”
In Newman’s first year of ownership, he said he didn’t change much. Then in year two, he began to tweak some elements. His chef retired, and a new kitchen operator came in to run things.
In January, Newman told BusinessDen the cafe had yet to break even. He was awarded a $15,000 grant from the city intended to mitigate damages stemming from nearby homeless encampments. The Merc and surrounding Arapahoe Square were hit particularly hard. Newman was spending $7,000 a week on private security.
“(The encampment) really started to affect our business. We used to have an absolutely gorgeous outdoor patio; we’re known for our famous brunches. Fewer and fewer people were coming,” Newman said in January.
The conditions in the neighborhood have improved since, Newman noted.
Now that the building is listed, Newman is hoping someone will come out of the woodwork to take on the business. He hasn’t spoken to Megenity yet, but did note that she recently told him to expect big and important changes starting on Aug. 4.
That’s when the planet Mercury entered retrograde.
