Carrie and Ernest Wigglesworth have lived in the South Park Hill neighborhood with their son for 11 years, watching “restaurants come and go,” Carrie said.
One of those, The Elm, was a neighborhood watering hole for the couple and a particularly tough goodbye when it closed in Dec. 2020 after 16 years. The space at 5001 E. Colfax Ave. was briefly home to Crush Wing + Tap, but it closed in May 2022 and has been sitting vacant since.
“We’ve seen and heard neighbors clamoring for a good space that they can rely on, and it’s been a dream of my husband’s to own his own restaurant,” Carrie said. “When we saw that this space was available, we kind of bumped that dream up a bit.”
On the first weekend of March, the Wigglesworths are opening The W in the former Elm space. The name? “Wigglesworth was too hard to fit on a sign,” Carrie said.
Since South Park Hill is “inundated with pizza places,” they’ll offer a variety of craft burgers, sandwiches and charcuterie. On the drinks side, there will be cocktails featuring Colfax-related names, like The Grand Ave. (the street’s original name) and The 1868, named after the year that Grand became Colfax in honor of former U.S. Vice President Schuyler Colfax.
The W will have 12 taps with beer from Park Hill breweries, like Long Table Brewhouse, 4 Noses Brewing and Station 26 Brewing. There will also be wines from around the world.
The couple co-own the business with Ernest’s brother, Charles, a Denver resident, and their friend Jason Manoukian, who lives in Manhattan, but “travels here a lot and is eager to bring this to the area as well,” Carrie said. Ernest and Charles previously owned a chemical cleaning and engineering business, which they sold to open the restaurant.
“We’ve always wanted to have a place that sticks around forever and becomes a staple in the community, so we hope to provide the good service, menu items and bar items to our neighborhood that we feel like has been missing,” Carrie said.
