Historic Denver Building Transforms Into 'California Modern' Retail Collective

Before Los Angeles retail entrepreneurs Raan and Lindsay Parton turned 1801 Blake St. in Denver's hipster LoDo neighborhood into their “California modern" retail collective Free Market, the historic structure had been home to an aging sports bar and a restaurant for more than 15 years.

“It was very dark and dingy," Lindsay says of the 1917 brick building that was once a fire station, and is now part of the neighborhood's Dairy Block development. “[As] one of the last places you could smoke inside in Denver, it had a very classic aura. But it was light on the attendees in the last days."

But the Partons—who were already running two retail spaces in Los Angeles—and business partner Paolo Carini were on the hunt for a space to house their latest venture: a retail collective featuring eclectic clothes, accessories, decorative items, and cosmetics to be sold alongside a restaurant and cafe. Having grown up in Colorado's capital city, Lindsay was particularly cautious about selecting Denver. “I was not optimistic at all," Lindsay explains. “I knew what it was like 20 years ago."

Though like many cities across the nation, Denver has experienced a rebirth thanks, in part, to its growing millennial population. The historic Dairy Block, for example, was completely redeveloped in 2017 and has become a bustling destination for trendy eateries, swanky cocktail bars, and a boutique hotel, all within walking distance of Coors Field and the city's recently refurbished Beaux Arts-style Union Station transportation hub.

Today, the 15,000-square-foot Free Market can be accessed from three streets and features six retail brands including Australian skincare brand Aesop, New York-based outerwear company Westerlind, and a Denver outpost of the Partons' own Alchemy Works store.

The collective is also home to Brutø restaurant and sister cafe BØH (a play on “back of house"), both run by James Beard Award semifinalist Kelly Whitaker. Powered by a wood fired stove, Brutø's menu centers around heritage grains milled on-site and a raw bar.

With the help of local architect, Kevin Nguyen of Regular Architecture, Lindsay and Raan prioritized a “gallery neutral" ambiance with white walls, exposed structure ceilings, whitewashed and natural brick, dark slate flooring, and light wood furniture throughout.

“We brought in our California aesthetic," Lindsay says of the former industrial space, calling the new design “warm Modern." Los Angeles architecture and furniture company Klein Agency built display cases and custom benches designed by Raan that can fold out into picnic tables for special events or remain closed as seating for shoppers. Klein also developed a custom system to include shelving for merchandise on the glass partition walls that subdivide the space by retailer.

For the Partons, the glass walls were particularly important for drawing natural light through the space, as well as for encouraging customers to visit the various shops. With the collection of complementary brands, the team “felt that the glass dividing walls between the brands wasn't a distraction but really [helps] the customers go between all the different spaces," Lindsay explains. “When you see there is a bag company next door that you can put with a sweater you bought from another store, it really makes sense to have something a little more fluid."

While the retailers in Free Market are largely permanent, Lindsay and Raan have dedicated various spaces for community engagement including an area for pop-ups and another for local artists to display their work. As part of an ongoing relationship with the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (MCA), Free Market will host artists on a rotating basis connected to programming at the museum. Currently, an experimental installation that dispenses “fortune pencils" by local architect and guest MCA curator Paul Andersen of Independent Architecture is on view.

For the Free Market team, establishing this collective is not necessarily about “reinvention" of retail—though they agree they "don't think that retail is dead," Lindsay says. Instead, Free Market offers an alternative approach to the department store model.