Denver Has a Growing Cannabis Hospitality Scene. It Only Took Thirteen Years.

[[{“value”:”Step outside in Denver on April 20, and you’ll probably smell something burning in the air.

As the first city to decriminalize cannabis and the capital of the first state to legalize the plant for recreational purposes, Denver will be forever linked to that sweet, sticky stuff. And on the high holiday known as 4/20, you’ll see plenty of public celebration, notably at Civic Center Park during an annual festival that traditionally has drawn tens of thousands of people who openly light up.

Yet Denver has never had much of a “legal” cannabis hospitality scene. The 4/20 festival has always been unsanctioned for cannabis use — that’s never stopped the majority of attendees and performers from smoking, however, and police haven’t issued a public consumption citation there in years — and underground or private businesses and events allowing cannabis use have seen limited success.

Like a tightly rolled joint, cannabis hospitality burns slowly with little oxygen in Denver. Strict rules and unproven business models dominate the small but growing sector, and the Mile High City isn’t collecting cannabis tourism dollars as it did when retail weed was less common in the United States.

But as another 4/20 approaches, licensed cannabis bars, lounges, tour services and day spas are finally a reality in Denver. This year, four permitted cannabis-friendly establishments will be open by April 20, compared to just one in 2024.

It only took thirteen years, but Denver now has a burgeoning cannabis venue space that doesn’t operate in the shadows.

Tetra Lounge owner Dewayne Benjamin is pumped up this April, physically and spiritually. The longtime weightlifter regularly bench-presses 120-pound dumbbells, but “only because that’s the heaviest at my gym.” Physically imposing but soft-spoken, the 44-year-old can go up to 200 pounds in each hand. He also smokes a little weed before hitting the gym.

“I’ve been doing this for 25 years. When you get into it, it’s hard to stop,” Benjamin says on an early April morning, fresh out of the weight room. “Kind of like with what I’ve been doing with cannabis.”

Benjamin’s cannabis-friendly lounge at 3039 Walnut Street hasn’t been around quite as long as he’s been lifting, but the venture has become one strenuous workout. After opening Tetra as a private cannabis club in 2018, before Colorado state lawmakers created a pot hospitality license, Benjamin fought to keep the lounge open for over six years while he chased the right to operate as a bring-your-own-cannabis space that hosts live music, industry nights and other events. Now Tetra is finally open to the public for a $20 daily entry fee, with monthly and annual memberships at discounted rates.

City licensing officials have largely been patient as Benjamin worked to transition Tetra from private to public, and he’s received a grant from the state’s Cannabis Business Office to help pay for required building changes, including ventilation work. This year will be Tetra’s first 4/20 as a licensed cannabis venue, and Benjamin wants to go big. National music and comedy acts like Devin the Dude and Ky-Mani Marley are coming to Tetra from April 18 to April 20, and the venue will host art, food and other cannabis-inspired events at Tetra throughout the three-day span.

“It’s a very large transition from the past six years. This year we were actually able to work with licensed brands, dispensaries, sponsors and talent on a more legitimate level,” Benjamin says. “We don’t have to look over shoulders as much. We can expand into more people who are interested in cannabis but not immersed in it.”

The father of two was a cannabis business and marketing consultant before deciding to open Tetra.

“Over that time working with dispensaries into 2015 and 2016, even back then, one of the biggest questions was ‘Where can we smoke this?'” he recalls. “Hearing that asked hundreds and hundreds of times helped me develop Tetra.”

But the journey has been bumpy.

During the first 4/20 when Tetra was open as a private club, undercover police officers wrote citations to Benjamin and several patrons for violations of public marijuana use and the Colorado Clean Indoor Air Act, a law that applies to smoking in public. Those citations were dismissed, but Benjamin found himself defending Tetra from other enforcement actions over the years, including citations from the city health department for operating during the COVID-19 pandemic and a ticket from the Denver City Attorney over an alleged unlicensed cannabis consumption event in 2023.

Until recently, those types of interactions were a common thread for businesses allowing social cannabis use. Denver’s history with cannabis is dotted with periods of clean-air enforcement against cannabis-friendly businesses and city-led efforts to shut them down. The public-private debate was often at the center of any subsequent legal battles, although no hard precedent was set in court. But for every Tetra Lounge that stays open, there’s an iBake Denver or a LOOPR, Mary Jane’s House, Marijuana Mansion, My 420 Tours or POTUS Pot Club, all of which are defunct cannabis clubs or tour services.

“In Colorado, you have to put your toes in the water first. They never just let you jump right in. But there were cannabis clubs and events before Tetra, and that helped make us feel free to throw these private events,” Benjamin says. “I know a couple of different lounges and models are coming on board soon, so hopefully that creates a foundation for experience.”

A lot of the tension has eased today. A few months after Tetra officially debuted last May, Pure Elevations, a spa licensed for cannabis sales and outdoor consumption, opened off South Santa Fe Drive in September. Three mobile lounges that offer cannabis-friendly shuttles and tours are also up and running, while the Coffee Joint, Denver’s first-ever licensed cannabis lounge, is still in operation. Outside of Denver in unincorporated Adams County — one of the few local governments in Colorado that also licenses cannabis lounges — is High Society Dispensary & Lounge, a cannabis bar that opened in 2023 under a different name.

More spaces are on the way, too.

The Patterson Inn, a boutique hotel in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, received preliminary approval to open an indoor cannabis smoking lounge in 2022. After several roadblocks such as indoor smoke ventilation issues and a burst pipe in the floor, the owner hopes to open a small, pot-friendly parlor space in the basement by the summer.

Cirrus Social Club, another cannabis bar and social lounge, has been hosting special guests and is scheduled to hold a grand opening on East Colfax Avenue and Steele Street on April 18, two days before 4/20. According to founder Arend Richard, over $3 million has been raised for the project since Cirrus first began converting an old tae kwon do studio over two years ago.

Every one of these businesses spent years trying to open — often while paying rent and pushing back multiple grand opening dates — but more challenges lie ahead, as licensed cannabis hospitality remains largely untested across the country.

Finding a cannabis-friendly establishment has never been as easy as finding the nearest bar or brewery in Denver. Amendment 64, the 2012 initiative that legalized recreational cannabis in Colorado, banned public cannabis consumption, but it left a gray area for private businesses and events. Private cannabis clubs with daily memberships as well as bus and limo services sprouted up soon after, and the turnover rate was high thanks to intermittent police raids and city citations for violating state laws that ban indoor smoking.

A solution appeared to be on the way when Denver voters adopted the city’s first cannabis hospitality licensing program for businesses in 2017. However, the Denver Department of Excise & Licenses added a handful of new location and operation restrictions to the measure, and only two cannabis lounges opened in the first four years, with one of them closing within months.

Four years ago, Denver City Council scrapped the local program altogether and opted for language that aligns more closely with a state pot hospitality law passed in 2019, although the location restrictions remain.

As with dispensary sales, local governments must first opt into licensing such businesses; for a while, Denver and unincorporated Adams County were the only local governments to do so. Since then, the towns of Longmont and Antonito have joined in — a cannabis-friendly massage facility plans to open in Longmont and a cannabis dispensary and lounge is open in Antonito — and so have a handful of mountain communities such as Black Hawk, Dillon and Central City, although no businesses are currently operating in those towns.

Even with a licensing structure in place, running a business that allows cannabis use still comes with a lot of financial challenges, according to Rita Tsalyuk, co-owner of the Coffee Joint. Open since 2018, the Coffee Joint only allows edibles, vaporizers and electronic dabbing, turning away people who want to smoke. And it’s not exactly in a big-traffic area: The Coffee Joint is located in Lincoln Park, an industrial part of town, right next to one of Tsalyuk’s dispensaries, 1136 Yuma.

Tsalyuk never envisioned the Coffee Joint becoming a major Denver destination, although it did see its fair share of tourists before the pandemic. “It was never profitable, and never meant to be profitable. We’re adjusting to the market right now, so we use it as a YouTube studio, and our marketing department will work out of there, but it is still open as a consumption lounge,” she says.

The fee to enter the Coffee Joint is nominal, Tsalyuk notes, and it’s free if you buy something at 1136 Yuma. But if the cost of running the space were higher or she didn’t have a dispensary next door, she probably wouldn’t keep it open, she admits.

She knows just what kind of obstacles those new to the business will face. “People need to find a reason other than cannabis consumption to open. That alone won’t make it profitable. But if they figure out a reason to get people in there, then maybe it can be profitable,” she says.

Most of Denver’s new or upcoming cannabis venues aren’t content with simply providing a space for travelers to legally burn one last joint before heading to the airport. Tetra has some regulars and sees a decent turnout on the weekends or during big sporting events, but the real crowds come during cannabis industry night, stand-up comedy, karaoke or pop-up events.

“It doesn’t have to be a lounge, and most of these places won’t be. It could be a pool hall, a yoga studio and anything else cannabis has been encompassed in,” Benjamin says. “I don’t think it’s about the consumption of cannabis, solely. It’s about the experiences and atmosphere you create. People can drink and listen to music at home, but nightclubs and bars create memories and experiences for people. We are supposed to be the alternative for a bar. People are turning away from drinking in this day and age, and we have food trucks, video games and music.”

Pure Elevations didn’t have quite as dramatic a road to opening as Tetra, but founder and co-owner Rebecca Marroquin still hit her fair share of bumps in the road. And she sees more ahead.

Marroquin and her business partner started pursuing a hospitality license after leasing a small property at 185 South Santa Fe Drive two years ago. Unlike Tetra, Pure also has a license for cannabis sales, so guests can’t bring their own products inside, and Marroquin has applied for a food license so she can serve fresh and non-packaged food.

“With the taxes, licensing fees, owner fees, insurance fees, the costs of products — at the price point of cannabis and the way the industry going right now, it’s hard to sell cannabis and make money off it,” she says.

The longtime massage therapist worried she would have to close Pure after a slow first couple of months, but she says traffic has picked up since the place was featured in a popular social media video. The financial outlook has improved, but Marroquin still sees spa offerings such as hair, massage, skin and other self-care services as  Pure’s main path to profits.

“Our niche is the whole cannabis thing. That’s what helps us stand out as a spa and makes us different. That enables us to make revenue off cannabis products, too, but if it were only for the lounge portion, I don’t think we’d be successful. It’s very, very hard. We make all of our money off services, and that’s kind of how we want it. We keep our cannabis prices as low as possible — and it’s still not that low. I mean, $20 for a joint is a lot if you’re from Colorado…most people would rather spend that money on an experience.”

Creating that experience isn’t all that easy, although she’s making progress. Pure is located next to train tracks, and the cannabis lounge portion is located on the outdoor patio. According to Marroquin, the building was the best place she could find given her budget and Denver’s cannabis hospitality location restrictions, which prohibit licensed venues from being within 1,000 feet of any daycare center, drug treatment center or city-owned park, pool or recreation center, as well as any other hospitality licensees.

Since opening seven months ago, Marroquin has added more plants outside, renovated Pure’s pampering areas with soundproofing insulation, and bought noise-canceling headphones for people who want them while hanging outside. The new potrepreneur believes those efforts, along with pursuing a presence on social media and hosting events such as “high tea” and a Galentine’s Day gathering, have created word-of-mouth buzz and momentum.

“People are already coming to Denver just to visit us,” Marroquin says. “It’s such a hard market and I’m glad we’re able to break through. I just hope more people do, too, so we have more of a tourism market.”

Cannabis tourism has been on a slow and steady decline in Colorado as more state legalize. Around 700 people visited the Coffee Joint on 4/20 in 2018, the first year it was open, Tsalyuk recalls. This year, she says she’s “ready for the excitement, but it’s not anything like what we saw before.”

Benjamin agrees. “We’re not seeing as many tourists coming in for Colorado’s aura of cannabis anymore with New York, California, Las Vegas and more big cities on board,” he says. “I’ve definitely seen a decline in cannabis-related tourism. And with the industry as a whole hurting right now, a lot of brands and businesses are moving out of Colorado or shutting down completely because of how bad things are.”

Colorado dispensary sales hit a seven-year low in 2024 while wholesale prices hit some of their cheapest prices ever, according to the state Department of Revenue. During Colorado’s cannabis recession, now going on four years, hundreds of dispensaries, growing operations, extraction labs and other businesses have closed. Still, there is a thirst for brands to reach new or former customers outside of the dispensary, Benjamin contends.

“Everyone is trying to survive and rebrand themselves and trying to find business models that work. Not get rich, but stabilize their business in the current industry, because it’s not the cash grab it once was,” he says.

Patterson Inn owner Chris Chiari was the first person to apply for a cannabis use permit after Denver opted into the new program in 2021, and is now almost four years into his effort to open a cannabis-friendly space. The longtime cannabis legalization advocate bought the Patterson Inn, an old Victorian mansion located at 420 East Eleventh Avenue, in 2018 with the intention of someday allowing guests to roast a bone or two.

After rezoning his property so that he could apply for a bring-your-own-cannabis hospitality license, Chiari spent over two years renovating a carriage house on the property into a small cannabis lounge for his hotel. He was looking for a new indoor HVAC system that would meet Denver’s indoor ventilation requirements when a pipe burst inside the Patterson’s bar, the 12 Spirits Tavern, requiring new plumbing and flooring in that part of the hotel.

A registered National Landmark dating back to the 1800s that appears on Cap Hill ghost tours, the Patterson isn’t exactly a new build with modern foundations. With a major renovation on the way, Chiari used the burst pipe as an opportunity to redo the layout of his amenities. He reopened the 12 Spirits, named after the ghosts said to still haunt the property, in the carriage house, and moved his cannabis plans to the basement.

Chiari hopes to open the cannabis lounge this summer, but won’t make any announcement “until I have the permit in my handm” he says. Even then, he’s tempering expectations.

“I’m deep into this. I’ve been consuming a long time, been in this space a long time. I’ve smoked in a lot of places I should or shouldn’t have…but I don’t know how many people who consume like me really need a cannabis lounge beyond a special or novelty event,” he admits. “As a commercial destination, I still don’t know if it’s going to work, but by pairing it with another business as an ancillary attraction, cannabis could be a unique amenity.”

The basement space in which Chiari plans to host cannabis users, where former mansion owner and United States Senator Thomas Patterson smoked cigars with guests, can comfortably accommodate around 25 people, according to Chiari. The nine-suite hotel also offers an upscale munchies-inspired menu that includes milkshakes, Rice Krispies-inspired bars made with Cheetos and Goldfish, and “pigeon wings” made of chickpeas.

Chiari envisions hotel guests being able to walk freely between the cannabis lounge and his tavern, and he plans on offering entry and memberships to locals. He hopes that allowing cannabis consumption will bring more people to weekend brunches and more corporate gatherings to the hotel.

“My confidence in this is I only need to attract one more room-night per day to generate positive cash flow, and that’s before I serve a milkshake, slop tarts or pigeon wings,” he says. “It’s going to be intimate, but the hotel is an intimate space. I’m not looking to make a cannabis destination for every consumer but, first and foremost, I’m trying to make a destination for the cannabis traveler.”

A cannabis traveler and a traveler who uses cannabis are two different things, however. Because of the plant’s longtime legal prohibition, many dispensary shoppers are still used to buying cannabis off the street — and discreetly smoking it there, too, if they have to.

“Anyone who wants to open a cannabis consumption space is competing with the reality that most consumers are still buying gummies and edibles, and that most cannabis tourism is still geared around the half-gram joint or vape pen, most of which is consumed right outside on the sidewalk,” Chiari says. “This is how most people smoke, and I’m still not sure if cannabis hospitality, as far as a going-out-sort-of-thing, works. It might work two blocks from the convention center, but in bigger and bigger venues, I’m not so sure.”

Venues are only part of Denver’s cannabis hospitality equation. Tour services and special events, like the Mile High 420 Festival at Civic Center Park, are an integral part of social consumption activities in Denver.

Mobile cannabis lounges have been licensed by the city since 2023, with three currently operating and one more hoping to launch soon, according to Excise & Licenses. Mobile lounges have fewer ventilation requirements and lower startup costs, allowing them to get on the road relatively quickly compared to getting venues off the ground.

Some of these businesses, such as Colorado Cannabis Tours, offer an extensive list of bookable tours through dispensaries, cannabis growing and extraction operations, and mural-filled stretches of town; they even feature seasonal ghost and holiday tours. Others mostly serve as a licensed consumption space for tourists or private weddings, business outings and parties.

According to licensed mobile lounge owner Alisha Gallegos, getting the word out has been difficult. “We’ve been more on industry and community events. We’ve done a lot of events at green spaces in Rino, and we work with the Cannabis Ski Club and the Cannabis Golf League to provide transportation for their outings,” she says. “We’re just making relationships. I think this year is going to be big for us.”

After receiving a $20,000 social equity grant from the state Cannabis Business Office, Gallegos plans to increase marketing efforts for her business, Canna Cabanabus, in permitted media like newspapers or radio. But because the bus is a licensed cannabis business in Denver, she’s not allowed to buy billboards or wall signs, and social media giants such as Instagram and Facebook have a stern policy against cannabis advertising.

Gallegos is pushing local and state cannabis officials to craft more education around Colorado’s laws surrounding public pot consumption. While she doesn’t think regulatory oversight is needed for “some places where it’s adults-only,” she would like to see “more public safety at festivals and public events,” she says.

“Just like we have to drink responsibly, I think we need to be responsible cannabis consumers. At public events, there needs to be a designated area; we should not be able to just smoke anywhere,” she adds. “We’ve created a culture in Colorado where it’s okay to publicly consume, and the only way to get through that is by working with the regulatory agencies and, in particular, the police department.”

Denver event organizer Stephen Woolf says he’s glad to have mobile lounges at his disposal and enjoys working with licensed venues. On April 20, he’s hosting a hash and coffee pairing at Tetra with Crema Coffee House and Lazercat rosin. But creating a permanent or temporary allowance for cannabis use at unlicensed locations is needed to maximize the city’s relationship with cannabis hospitality, he argues.

Woolf, who holds both private and public gatherings that allow cannabis use, believes that restricting cannabis-friendly events to a small group of locations inhibits their potential scope and impact. A proud cog in the city’s food pop-up scene, he likes to have Denver chefs pair dishes with specific types of hash rosin at his events, which also feature art, music and popular glassblowers. The chefs behind La Diabla Pozole y Mezcal, Little Arthur’s Hoagies and King of Wings are just a few he’s collaborated with during cannabis-friendly events.

“I appreciate the lounges and love going to them, but it’s a limited space,” he notes. “You kind of have your hands tied behind your back with anything you want to do at a cannabis lounge. Unless they have a kitchen, then you can’t cook. It has to be prepared food or from a food truck, and a chef can only do so much with a portable deep fryer or a small Blackstone. You also can’t have any alcohol there, and you have to go through so many hoops for what is a pretty small event. If you’re having a consumption-forward event, you’re in a position where you’re not selling it to 1,000 people. You’re selling it to something like sixty people.”

Woolf tried to spearhead an effort to create a temporary or special event license for cannabis use at the state level, but says the lobbying effort became too expensive. And as long as an establishment or restaurant with an active liquor license is banned from holding a permitted cannabis event, he doesn’t see much movement in mixing fine dining and cannabis.

Woolf is still optimistic about what’s to come, though. Like many others in the cannabis space, he has been paying attention to Cirrus’s development. As social media posts swirl with rumors of what Richard has planned, Woolf thinks that Colfax’s upcoming cannabis lounge looks “really cool” and is having conversations with Cirrus management about future collaborations.

Cirrus will offer onsite cannabis sales inside of an 8,400-square-foot building, with plans to cater to higher-end clientele and serve as a spot for date nights and friendly gatherings. Pictures shared on social media show a colorful and luxurious layout, with chandeliers, elaborate floral arrangements and a Steinway & Sons piano, something Richard has been teasing since announcing his vision.

Richard declines to speak about Denver’s current cannabis hospitality scene as he’s “hyper-focused on giving interviews about our launch,” which is slated for the 4/20 weekend. This comes after several delays to Cirrus’s anticipated opening in 2024 and again on March 7 of this year.

But Cirrus crossed the finish line on Friday, April 11, when Excise & Licenses gave the venue final approval.

Pure and the Patterson Inn, too, had to reassess their opening dates after unforeseen complications. And Tetra’s had numerous false alarms.

Benjamin’s original application for Tetra to become an indoor smoking lounge was approved by Excise & Licenses over two years ago, but he never actually received his license. The department later explained that Tetra still needed to pass building and ventilation inspections, and that it only received preliminary approval — but that was after a highly publicized ribbon-cutting ceremony at Tetra in March 2022 at which Governor Jared Polis and then-Mayor Michael Hancock praised Colorado and Denver’s cannabis regulations and touted Benjamin, who is Black, as a success story in social equity efforts in legal cannabis.

Over the next two-plus years, Benjamin went back and forth with city licensing and building department officials about Tetra’s ventilation system and accessibility issues — issues he’s maintained were never relayed to him until after the ribbon-cutting ceremony. As a result, Tetra’s opening dates were pushed back again and again, until Benjamin eventually pivoted to a model that allows smoking outside and certain forms of vaping indoors, which complies with Denver rules, he says.

Cirrus has spentupwards of six figures on an indoor ventilation system, according to Richard, while Chiari says he’s figured out a new way to mix indoor and outdoor air in a $30,000 system that meets the city’s standard, which mandates that air inside of a weed lounge must be as breathable as outdoor air.

“Cannabis hospitality was under a lot of scrutiny, but it seems like it kind of eased up,” Benjamin says. “After my licensing, there have been a couple of new lounges coming up across the city. I’m looking forward to seeing all of them.”

According to Excise & Licenses Executive Director Molly Duplechian, “nothing has changed” from a regulatory standpoint, but businesses may have learned how to better navigate the rules. “I think this was a bit more of a challenging business model for people to figure out and navigate through,” she says, adding that indoor smoking is “one of the more difficult things to figure out.”

The smell of weed and public safety are often brought up by Denver residents who oppose allowing cannabis hospitality businesses. However, Duplechain says the city “hasn’t had any issues with the neighbors” of licensed lounges, nor has Excise & Licenses received “any complaints, or anything like that” regarding the businesses.

Cannabis hospitality “used to take a majority, or a lot, of our time, and now it’s getting less,” she adds. “And that’s a great thing. It means we’ve addressed a lot of the challenges, and businesses are in compliance.”

Duplechian is open to creating a permit for temporary cannabis events but says state laws would have to be changed first, citing a rule requiring all hospitality permits to run for at least one year. “I definitely think there is space for that,” she adds.

Benjamin, Gallegos and Woolf get excited at the thought of a special cannabis use section at restaurants, places like Red Rocks Amphitheatre or Ball Arena, and events like Denver Jazz Fest at City Park — but they know we’re still years, if not decades, away from that kind of cannabis (and insurance) acceptance…and that’s if we ever get there.

In the meantime, cannabis users who don’t want to trek to Civic Center Park on 4/20 will have a few new, legal places to visit. They can even catch live music or comedy, take a dab and sip on espresso, or enjoy a massage and skin wrap, too.

We can still count the legal lounges on just two hands, but slow motion is better than no motion.

“}]] As another 4/20 approaches, licensed cannabis bars, lounges, tour services and day spas are finally a reality in the Mile High City.  Read More  

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