City workers and a locksmith showed up at Ruby’s Good Shoes in Northeast Park Hill on Wednesday, served a warrant, and gave owner Hasena Williams just 30 minutes to wrap up orders and send her staff home before locking the doors over roughly $5,000 the city said she owed. About 20 diners were still eating when the tax compliance enforcers arrived. Hours later, the city reversed course and let the restaurant reopen.
According to Denverite, the workers moved to seize the property and lock Williams out over the roughly $5,000 debt. Williams told the outlet she had mostly been paying her taxes for Ruby’s and that the remaining balance came from late fees and fines, not unpaid tax principal. City officials declined to confirm the exact amount owed on the record, the outlet reported.
Ruby’s Good Shoes opened in Northeast Park Hill in July 2025 and now employs more than 20 people across the restaurant and an in-house croissant shop that also operates inside the building. Williams said running the small restaurant costs about $80,000 a month, and that she sank hundreds of thousands of dollars into renovating the building, including installing a rooftop heating system to comply with the city’s green building ordinances.
A Scramble to Keep the Doors Open
Williams said she’d been squeezed by the city and had nothing more to give. She told Denverite she was denied most of the loans she applied for, and that even some approved loan money hadn’t arrived yet because of the fees and interest owed. Faced with limited cash, she said she had to choose between paying her workers or paying the city…