In the weeks leading up to Casa Bonita’s much-vaunted reopening in June, Don Thwaites was told to pack up the kettle corn and Sno-Kones he sold out of a converted shipping container stationed in the parking lot of the iconic Mexican eatery and leave.
The sudden and unceremonious end to the carnival treat business he had operated for nearly two years in the shadow of the restaurant’s famous pink tower came as a shock to the 66-year-old Lakewood resident. Not even three months prior, the owner of the shopping center in which Casa Bonita is located had asked Thwaites if he wanted to extend his stay there.
“And then it just went downhill,” he said. “I lost my income, I lost my business.”
While he’s not sure why his relationship with shopping center owner Broad Street Realty soured so quickly, Thwaites has his suspicions: A Colorado dining destination that marks its 50th birthday next year was about to relaunch with much fanfare and adoring media coverage after having gone dark for three years, and now with new management in place.
“Being right in front of Casa Bonita — they didn’t want me there,” he said of his brightly painted and multicolored, retrofitted shipping container.
Thwaites doesn’t know if Casa Bonita management or its famous owners, South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, had anything to do with the decision to send him packing ahead of the $40 million reopening of the restaurant. But he is crestfallen about how a good thing went bad so quickly.
“What really ticked me off is I extended my lease (until May 2024) and they gave me permission to sell hot dogs, nachos and other food products,” Thwaites said of Broad Street Realty. “I bought a new fridge, I bought hot dog equipment, I bought a sink and a condiment dispenser. Then all of a sudden, they told me I had to move out.”
He estimates his expenditures for the new equipment he never got to use was $5,000. A spokeswoman for Casa Bonita wouldn’t go on the record for this story.
Broad Street Realty, based in Bethesda, Md., with an office in LoDo, didn’t return multiple requests by phone and email for comment. A Denver-based attorney for the company, Uriel Martinez with Senn Visciano Canges P.C., declined to comment when reached by The Denver Post.
But in a Notice of Default letter Broad Street Realty lease administrator Victoria Wagner wrote in late March, she stated that Thwaites had violated the agreement by failing to set up accounts with utilities for water, gas and electric service at his kettle corn stand.
She also wrote that the shipping container Thwaites was using isn’t allowed by Lakewood at that location, even though it had sat in the parking lot for the better part of a decade. After Broad Street Realty filed a complaint with the city on April 20 about Thwaites’ shipping container, a code enforcement officer issued Thwaites a notice of violation five days later.
He quickly packed up and moved off the lot.
While the license agreement both parties initially signed in July 2021 allowing Thwaites to operate his food stand in the Casa Bonita parking lot — later extended through March 2024 — gives Broad Street Realty “the right to terminate this agreement, at any time,” Thwaites said nothing had changed in how he ran his business.
As recently as Feb. 3, Broad Street Realty Vice President Colin Clancy emailed Thwaites asking about his future plans.
“Your current license agreement doesn’t expire until March 31, 2024,” Clancy wrote in the email shared with the Post by Thwaites. “Are you wanting to extend again now? Or wait until we get closer to your expiration date?”
The tone of the correspondence led Thwaites to believe that he was going to be part of the excitement of Casa Bonita’s next chapter.
“Everyone was waiting for Casa Bonita to be open,” he said. “I was waiting too.”
Money has been tight since he had to close shop, Thwaites said. He is living off social security income and relying on roommates to cover expenses. He earned about $60,000 a year from his stand after expenses, working from April to October seven days a week. Broad Street Realty charged him $400 a month in rent during the warm season and $200 a month during the winter.
Sheldon Spiegelman, Thwaites’ landlord-turned-confidante, said Broad Street Realty should have offered to buy his friend out for the remainder of the lease instead of chasing him off the lot.
“They waited right up until Casa Bonita opened to start this with him,” Spiegelman said. “They put out of business a guy who was gearing up for a big year.”
Thwaites wonders why Broad Street Realty didn’t give him more of a heads-up before shutting him down, a buffer of time that would have allowed him to register as a vendor at fairs and events statewide this summer. Now it’s too late, he said.
“All I know is that what they did to me isn’t right,” he said.
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