Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
Fifty years. That is how long the Mercury Cafe has been the beating bohemian heart of Denver, and for most of the last two years, most people wrote it off for dead.
Here is the part people miss. It is not dead. It is about to have a second life, and the folks behind it actually seem to get what made the place matter in the first place.
So let me lay it out for you.
Danny Newman is under contract to sell the Mercury Cafe building at 2199 California St. in Five Points. The buyer is CoCreate, a local creative agency that is set up as a public benefit corporation, which basically means they have a mission baked into their paperwork, not just a profit motive. And their stated mission is to restore the Mercury's bohemian roots. Poetry. Music. Dance. Tarot. The whole weird, wonderful thing.
The building is roughly 10,000 square feet. It has been the Mercury for about 50 years. And now it is changing hands again.
The CEO of CoCreate is Dante Dunlap, and honestly, his resume is exactly the kind you want on a place like this. Lifelong Denver guy. He worked as technical director at the Denver Performing Arts Center. He worked New Year's Eve in Times Square, which if you have ever tried to run anything in a crowd that size, you know is no joke. He ran a valet company down in Larimer Square. Right now he is the property master for the Colorado Symphony.
His Director of Experience is Jennifer Mosquera, co-founder of the immersive art company Prismajic. Side note, Prismajic lost its lease at Colorado Mill earlier this year, so this is a team that knows exactly what it feels like to have a creative space pulled out from under them. CoCreate also runs Analog Salon, a monthly vinyl and storytelling listening session over at the Posner Center. So these are not people who just discovered that Denver likes art.
Dunlap says the space could start hosting events as early as late January or early February. And the longtime poetry, music, tarot and dance groups? Welcomed back. That is the whole point.
You cannot tell this story without Marilyn Megenity, because she basically willed the Mercury into existence.
She started the operation as a hippie cafe called Elrond's up in Indian Hills. The opening date tells you everything you need to know about her. The Ides of March, 1975. She settled at the current California Street building in 1990, bought it for
Ides of March. Halloween. This is not a person who does anything on a Tuesday for no reason.
And here is the thing about property in that part of town.
Marilyn sold the building and the business to Newman in 2021 for
He also leased the space to Ashlee Cassity and Dom Garcia, the former owners of the Capitol Hill lesbian speakeasy Pearl Divers, who reopened it as The Pearl in April 2025. That is the Mercury name most people have not seen on the marquee since.
And it has not all been smooth on paper either. On Sept. 11, 2026, the building showed up on a public notice of delinquent property taxes. Unpaid taxes and interest totaling $60,573. Newman is handling that, and CoCreate says it will take clear title, so buyers, breathe.
One more Newman note, because I find it charming. He also owns My Brother's Bar, which is billed as Denver's oldest bar. So the guy has been holding onto two of the most historically loaded pieces of Denver hospitality at the same time. That is a lot of ghosts to answer to.
Look, plenty of people say they are going to honor the history of a place and then they show up with a sledgehammer and a cold brew tap. What makes me hopeful here is the small stuff.
CoCreate says renovations will update some of the decor but preserve the Mercury's bohemian aesthetic. And they have been consulting Marilyn Megenity on the plans. That last part is the tell. You do not call the founder unless you actually care what she thinks.
The real story on this is not the sale price or the tax lien. It is that a 50-year-old, 10,000-square-foot building in Five Points, the kind of space that in this market almost always gets flattened for something with amenities and a rooftop, is instead going to a group whose entire pitch is keeping the poets and the tarot readers in the room.
That does not happen much anymore. Not here. Not at these prices.
So if the timeline holds, you could be back inside the Mercury for a reading or a dance night by early February. Same building. Same weird soul. New people who seem to understand the assignment.
Buckle up. The Merc might just make it to fifty-one.