After a decade of pouring house-brewed beer beneath its rooftop patio in Jefferson Park, Briar Common Brewery + Eatery is shutting down. Owner Kent Dawson says the restaurant’s last day will be November 22, and he’s pointing to a familiar culprit for Denver’s restaurant scene: a lease that’s run its course and a business climate that no longer makes renewing one worth the risk.
Dawson said the lease on the Clay Street space is ending, according to BusinessDen, which first reported the closure. “Given the current economic climate, combined with the challenges of operating a full-service restaurant in Denver, we couldn’t justify signing a new lease,” Dawson said, per the outlet’s report.
Briar Common opened at 2298 Clay Street with a build-out that, at the time, signaled serious ambition for the Jefferson Park corridor. The spot featured a seven-barrel brewhouse, a state-of-the-art kitchen and a rooftop bar and patio, according to an earlier account from Westword. That combination of in-house brewing and full dining service helped define the brewpub’s identity in the neighborhood for the past ten years.
A Tougher Runway Than a Decade Ago
Dawson has described the economics of running a Denver restaurant today as fundamentally different from when Briar Common first opened. After closing Briar Patch, the Congress Park sister restaurant, after just 14 months, he said low traffic and a high cost of doing business made that spot unsustainable — the same report noted his broader reflection on how much the landscape has shifted. “Ten years ago when we opened Briar Common, the cost of doing business was a lot lower and the runway was a lot longer,” Dawson said, per the same BusinessDen account of the Congress Park closure…