The marquee of the Federal Theatre is glowing neon once again.
The venue’s grand opening on September 19 was marked by a free concert with two of Denver’s top Latin bands: Los Mocochetes and iZCALLi. A long line had formed at the venue by 7:30 p.m., and a notice on its website said it had reached enough RSVPs to be at full capacity.
The opening has been highly anticipated, as the venue at 3830 Federal Boulevard has been vacant for years. The former movie theater, which opened in the 1920s and received an Art Deco remodeling in 1948, had closed in the 1970s. “It was sort of largely nothing for fifty years,” co-owner Scott Happel told us. “A church utilized it as a space for the last ten or twenty years, but it’s not clear how much they used it. The church left in January 2023, and the landlords gave us a call.”
He and fellow owners, Andy Bercaw and Peter Ore, are no strangers to revamping Denver venues: They also own the Oriental Theater and HQ. And as we saw at the Federal’s grand opening, they’ve now made another slam dunk. The 650-capacity venue was packed to the brim, as concert-goers danced along the sloped, carpeted floor and soaked up the impressive sound system…