Two iconic Denver businesses are fading away. The news broke on the same day, Friday, Jan. 16.
The first will start liquidating inventory on Jan. 23. Its passing, though not unexpected, is kind of sad because it was so inevitable. I'm surprised it didn't happen long before now.
I'm speaking of the Sears department store at East First Avenue and University Boulevard. Sears Holdings Inc., the parent of Sears and K-Mart, said the closure is part of a corporate-wide restructuring.
Walking through the doors to Sears was like crossing a time warp. Even though it was surrounded by swanky Cherry Creek shops and the trendoid Whole Foods grocery, inside Sears it looked much like it did in the 1950s.
A few years ago, Sears tried to spiff the store up by adding a Lands' End retail store on the main level, but everywhere else it was circa 1958.
It was, however, my go-to place for tools, because the Craftsman brand carried a lifetime guarantee. At least a dozen times in the past three decades that I've lived in Denver, I have returned broken tools to Sears — some of them originally purchased by my dad in the 1950s — and exchanged them for new ones, no questions asked.
Redevelopment plans for the Sears store are underway. David Tryba, the architect on the Clayton Lane development adjacent to Sears, told the DBJ's L. Wayne Hicks that the property owners would like to see the whole store torn down, parking garage and all, and replaced with up to eight stories of condos and/or apartments or offices with room for more swanky retail stores that I can't afford to shop at on the main level.
Oh, yeah. They want to extend Columbine Street through the property to create another intersection at East First Avenue. I can hear the howls of protest from the neighborhood already, and just as clearly see the approval from the city council as another step toward its live-work-play utopia in Cherry Creek.
The other business evidently getting ready to fly away from Denver is Frontier Airlines, but that's just an opinion.
What used to be Denver's hometown airline hasn't been that for a long time, and the company's announcement Jan. 16 that it is giving almost 1,200 Denver-based Frontier employees the boot is sealing its fate.
Over the last few years, Frontier went from beloved to reviled with its toddler-appropriate seating geometry (unless you paid extra), à la carte pricing for previously free onboard food and drinks — all in its quest to out-discount the discount airlines.
It was in stark contrast to the airline that brilliantly used those loveable Rocky Moutain animals as its brand icons (Griz, et al) and a clever advertising campaign that emphasized quality service and price. People used to like flying Frontier.
Now, it's just another airborne bus, with few real ties to Denver. I won't miss it when it finally downsizes into nothing.