Three Saints Revival is the third business in downtown Denver to close this month.
The colorful Mediterranean restaurant, located at 1801 Wewatta St., held its last service on Feb. 18. Owner Robert Thompson, the original founder of Punch Bowl Social and upcoming Camp Pickle, opened the restaurant in 2021.
He cited the lack of downtown office traffic as a reason for closing.
“We opened Three Saints Revival in late 2021 to provide guests with a much-needed oasis from their homes – a place filled with colors and flavors that brought joy to people as they emerged from their COVID hibernation,” Thompson wrote in a statement to The Denver Post.
“The response was what we’d hoped – operating and design awards, and positive reviews right out of the gate – but downtown didn’t recover. The staggeringly low office buildings’ occupancy is killing so many businesses that count on people visiting and working downtown,” he continued. “Three Saints Revival is just one of many recent closures of beloved restaurants in downtown Denver, and we’re certainly, and unfortunately, not going to be the last.”
The office vacancy rate in downtown Denver, which tumbled during the pandemic, was 30.9% in the fourth quarter of last year, according to a report by the Denver office of the commercial real estate firm JLL. And it’s the highest vacancy rate for downtown Denver office buildings since the 1990s, according to CBRE, another real estate firm.
“That, combined with economic and other forces, had made it impossible to stay in business,” the restaurant team wrote in an Instagram post. “We are truly appreciative of the support from so many loyal guests. We’ve enjoyed our 2.5-year run, but like the revival tents of yesterday, it’s time to pull up our stakes and move on.”
In addition to Three Saints Revival, Ana’s Norwegian Bakeri closed its 16th Street Mall location less than three months after opening, blaming slow pedestrian traffic, and LoDo restaurant Avelina announced this week that it would be permanently shuttering due to a lack of employees returning to offices as well.