When the founders of Boulder’s popular Rayback Collective decided to make the investment in opening a Denver location of their food-truck court/beer garden/co-working space, they had one major concern in mind — how to ensure it was not known also as “Rayback Collective.”
The similarities between that original business, opened in July 2015, and Improper City, which hosts its grand opening on Friday, go beyond just a reproduction of the concept. Version 2.0 is located in an old warehouse, has a large (12,000-square-foot) patio space and is in close proximity to Movement Climbing + Fitness, the Boulder gym whose owner, Mike Moelter, asked Rayback founders Justin Riley and Hank Grant to share part of the building in Denver’s River North neighborhood that he bought to open his third location.
But Riley knew that Boulder and Denver are not the same scenes, and so he didn’t want to make it feel like he just was exporting a concept from the unusual city up north. And so he came up with a new name — stealing a description of Denver from a 19th-century poet — laid out new options for Denver’s extensive co-working crowd and even drilled down to the level of putting walking paths onto the patio, figuring many more people would come straight from work than they do in Boulder and wouldn’t want to navigate gravel in high heels.
“The community here in Denver is different than Boulder, for better or for worse,” Riley said Monday at the soft opening of the space at 3201 Walnut Street. “Denver does have its own heartbeat. So we literally cleaned the slate.”
The result is a one-of-its-kind facility — a moniker that is rare to be bestowed on new businesses streaming into the Mile High City these days — that combines significant space for group gatherings, a local-craft-beer-heavy bar and an area where as many as six food trucks can pull up at a time in lieu of an in-house kitchen.
The patio, which remains under construction and likely won’t be open until September, is expected to be the centerpiece of Improper City. It will feature picnic benches, four fire pits and an array of outdoor games where guests can lounge while buying breakfast, lunch or dinner.
The 75-foot-long bar is the focal point of the 7,500-square-foot indoor space, and it will offer both cocktails and a rotating selection of Colorado craft beers. There is also a mezzanine lounge that can hold 75 guests and event space in the corner of the facility that can hold 150 — key areas, as Riley said Rayback has flourished in part on the strength of local offices and organizations renting out portions of the space for events.
“We’ve had bat mitzvahs, we’ve had a 3-year-old’s birthday party,” he added, running through his memory cage of other events that have taken place in his business. “It’s an approachable space.”
But rather than just being a place where people can gather to imbibe and feast, Riley and Grant want Improper City to be a home for workers who need a temporary office. As such, every table is equipped with power outlets — alleviating the need for the typical coffee house scramble to find a spot near the wall — and even the bar has such plugs.
To design the space, the owners used only Denver-based business, from Oz Architecture to Holtz Custom Wood & Metal. And they attracted the “significant” (though undefined) investment needed to sign a 10-year lease in the heart of Denver’s hippest neighborhood from local angel investors, Riley said.
