"We have the city of Denver in our in our corner to help us keep this business going for generations."
"We have the City of Denver in our corner to help us keep this business going for generations," he says."What the City of Denver has told us through this designation is that they appreciate the contributions that we made to the community."launched the Legacy Business program at the start of this year with a pilot project of ten businesses.
"We wanted to make the new space feel like the old space, and we had hoped that a lot of our customers that were coming from Platte Street were going to follow us up to Sunnyside," Nigg recalls.When the new Monkey Barrel opened in 2016, regulars spotted the Wreck-it-Ralph-themed shelf from the original location above the handmade bar. Nintendo 64 gaming consoles sat at each booth, and nearly a dozen pinball machines lined the wall of Monkey Barrel's dining room...
He and his partners would like to keep the Monkey Barrel in its current home — when they were looking at the property, the landlord was also looking at a deal to knock down the building and create apartments. The Legacy Business designation could help with that. For Rob Leicht — bartender, barback, server, busser and everything in between - the Monkey Barrel is more than just a workplace."Just looking around, you've got all the memorabilia, the pinball machines, the N64," Leicht says."This would be the type of bar that I would hang out at for sure."If Leicht wanted to sit behind a desk all day filing paperwork, he says — but working as a bartender is all about the daily human interactions.
While he appreciates the other regulars, McNamara says the staff is the main reason he keeps coming back."The staff is so great. Every place is going to have its bumps in the roads, but at the end of the day, they take care of you and make sure you have the best experience possible," he says.