Iconic Denver theater company can finally move ‘from surviving to thriving’ after a plot twist few dared to think possible

Of all the stories the Curious Theatre Company has told on its iconic stage over the past 29 years, this one has the most unlikely ending of all: A happy one.

Only it’s not an ending at all. It’s a new beginning.

Against all odds, Curious has been saved. Denver’s most significant homegrown theater company of the past three decades will live to tell another tale. Many of them.

Curious on Wednesday completed the $1.9 million sale of its 131-year-old building and parking lot at 1080 Acoma St. to Denver real-estate executive and theater preservationist David Spira, who will not raze the crumbling building or redevelop it, as many had feared any buyer might, given the property’s 9,500 prime square feet in the lucrative Golden Triangle neighborhood.

Instead, Spira will rehabilitate the historic former church and lease it back to the theater company in a fortuitous deal that not only wipes out the existential debt that has dogged Curious for more than two years – it will put at least $1 million into its reserve, giving the company unprecedented financial stability and sustainability moving forward.

It was a Hail Mary that few thought possible when the company announced that it was facing an existential financial crisis in 2024.  

“I don’t think we could have asked for better news,” Curious Artistic Director Jada Suzanne Dixon said. “We are joyful for the opportunity to be in a partnership with someone who has a clear understanding of Curious as a cultural asset in the Golden Triangle neighborhood and in this larger Denver arts ecosystem. I’m excited for Curious as we embark on this journey to look at all the opportunities for us to widen and deepen our impact in the community.”

Spira, CEO of KEW Realty Corporation of Cherry Creek and founder of the Colorado-based Music Appreciation Society, intends to expand Curious’ building into a year-round arts center, making it a community resource available for films, concerts, meetings, special events, rehearsals and more, all built around Curious as the anchor creative tenant.

Not only that, Spira said: Curious gets to keep all funds generated by rentals as an additional revenue source. And if the boiler breaks down two years from now? That’s Spira’s problem.

Why is he doing it?

“When an old building is destroyed, you can’t get it back,” Spira told The Denver Gazette. “I think people deserve to stay in touch with their past. You can’t figure out where you’re going unless you know where you came from.”

Key points of the deal include:

• Spira completed the purchase as “Acoma Theater LLC,” a non-profit project of Spira Giving Colorado. “My parents helped me start the foundation, Spira said, “and we’ve given in a quiet way to a number of organizations that support the arts, such as Denver Young Artists Orchestra, Levitt Pavilion Denver and KGNU.”

• Spira will spend about $400,000 rehabilitating the building that was long known as the Acoma Center with full system upgrades and deferred maintenance projects including the sound system, backstage, bars and bathrooms. While the bones of the building will essentially remain intact, seating capacity will be increased from 177 to 225. Those project needs account for the reduction in the initial $2.3 million asking price, Curious board president Greg Laugero said.

• Curious will vacate its building from Aug. 1 through at least January 2028. During those 18 months, Curious will stage four plays at the newly expanded Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Theater, which is located less than 2 miles away at 119 Park Avenue West. Curious will perform in the former Shorter African Methodist Episcopal Church, moving, in effect, from one former iconic church into another. “That’s some beautiful symmetry, right?” Dixon said. 

The idea of a “Curious and Cleo” partnership was first floated in this newspaper two years ago, and, Dixon admits: “It’s perfect.” Not only that, “It’s also very personal for me. I’m 303-raised. I’ve known Cleo since I was a little kid. I danced in Cleo’s apprenticeship program. When I was growing up, this community was poured into me.”

In January, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance opened the doors on a $25 million, 25,000-square foot expanded facility. 

“Curious not only has a beautiful home, they are an essential and critical voice in Denver’s cultural ecosystem,” CPRD President and CEO Malik Robinson said. “As we experienced with the pandemic, continuity is also vital for the arts – artists and audiences alike – and we are thrilled to play a role in keeping the momentum going as they renovate their space and celebrate nearly three decades of excellence in the arts.”

• Dixon does not believe asking the company’s subscriber base to temporarily move with them to Cleo Parker Robinson Dance will be a hard sell. “Our patrons are so loyal, and we can’t do what we do without them, so they are central to the journey,” Dixon said. “They also understand the issues with our building better than anyone, so they are with us, and they are absolutely rooting for us.”

• The timing of the building upgrades will coincide with the creation of the Downtown Denver Partnership’s ambitious 5280 Trail. That’s a 5.280-mile, $100 million pedestrian and bicycle loop designed to connect downtown many Denver neighborhoods from Five Points to the Golden Triangle as a tree-lined linear park. That project will convert Acoma Street south of downtown into a pedestrian walkway. That’s going to knock out street parking in the immediate vicinity of the theater, “and that is going to be a pain point,” Dixon admitted. But it will add immeasurably to the area as a downtown destination. 

Curious will be returning to a thriving neighborhood in 2028, with the 5280 Trail and the wildly popular Schoolyard Beer Garden at 1115 Acoma St. A new Olive & Finch restaurant will soft-launch later this month at 1140 Bannock St., and an Italian restaurant is in the works next to it.

“People will know that they can come down here, have dinner, see a show and maybe have a drink afterward,” Dixon said. “And there’s also an opportunity for us to deepen our partnerships in the neighborhood and open people’s minds to the power of live theater.”

• As planned, Curious will still stage the final offering of its current 28th season, “Furlough’s Paradise,” at its present location from May 2-31, as well as its annual “24-Hour Plays” fundraiser on July 10.

• Curious will plan its grand reopening in early 2028 to launch a year-long celebration of its 30th year.

How did we get here?

How big of a turnaround is all of this? On March 1, 2024, Curious went public with a dire announcement that the company would need to raise $250,000 in four months “or else.” When that goal was not reached, the company took the extraordinary step of putting both its greatest asset and greatest liability – its performing space – up for sale.

That seemed to foreshadow the company’s inevitable end. Selling the building would mean that the company would almost certainly have to transition into an itinerant troupe without an identifiable home space. If that had happened, Laugero said, “all it would cost us is our identity.”

At the time, company officials expressed the hope that some angel investor would buy the decaying building and lease it back to them so that the company could stay in its existing building, freed from the yoke of ownership. It’s just that no one really thought it could happen.

Only … it did.

Arts organizations come and go. But even the possibility of a Denver without Curious sent chills throughout Denver’s cultural landscape.

Curious has presented about 115 plays since 1998. During that time, it has engaged and enraged, challenged and comforted, educated and elucidated audiences on most every major issue of our times. The company won 48 Denver Post Ovation Awards between 2001-11, including “best year by a company” six times. Three company members – including co-founder Chip Walton and Dixon – have been named Colorado’s “Theatre Person of the Year.”

Curious bought the Acoma Center from real-estate magnate and longtime company booster Mickey Zeppelin in 2007 for just $800,000.

Dixon was named just Curious’ second artistic director in May 2022 following the retirement of Walton and co-founder Dee Covington. It was a historic appointment that made Dixon the first woman of color to serve as artistic director of any Denver metro theater company she did not found. But within a year, Dixon found herself navigating massive debt, with charges and countercharges about who was most responsible for the dire financial condition of the company. The entire board has turned over within the past three years, Laugero said.

The past few years “have very much been a month-to-month financial challenge,” he said, which is why the board saw selling the building as the only way forward.

“I would say what Curious struggles with financially is what any nonprofit of this size struggles with – and that is unpredictability in its income and expenses,” Laugero said. “And when you own a building that was built in 1895, it just makes it much, much worse. So our priority was to stabilize as much as possible – and selling the building was the only way to do that.”

Who is this guy?

It’s hard to overstate how much of a unicorn Spira is. Ask him what he’s all about and he only says, “I’m just a real-estate guy with a passion for old buildings.” But he’s much more than that. Spira is now not only Curious’ buyer and landlord, he’s also a community resource, a creative partner and a significant company donor with both a creative and financial interest in Curious’ long-term viability.

Where did he come from?

He grew up in New Jersey, moved to Colorado in 1974 and splits his time between Denver and the East Coast. His parents, Jeanette and Seymour, raised him to appreciate theater, ballet and film, but David’s jam was really live music.

He was drawn to Colorado after college, like so many, by a passion for skiing. “I was spending all my free time in Colorado anyway, so I finally moved here,” he said. He worked for Listen Up Audio, which provided sound for concerts at iconic venues like Ebbets Field, the Rainbow Music Hall and Red Rocks. ”So I went to a lot of concerts,” he said. The perks of the job.

Kew Realty is a family-owned business founded in 1953. Spira expanded it into Colorado when he opened an office in Cherry Creek in 2000.

His company essentially specializes in acquiring, renovating and managing commercial properties. It rebooted the closed Le Grand Bistro at 1512 Curtis Street as the Baur’s Listening Lounge, which then became home to the Dazzle Denver jazz lounge for a decade. That’s also where Spira started the Music Appreciation Society, which will now move from its current home at the Savoy Denver over to Curious. “We have just had an amazing time bringing great artists to Denver who wouldn’t have come here otherwise,” he said.

No one recruited Spira to explore the possibility of buying Curious; he saw the listing and reached out himself. His initial interest was rooted in his greater affinity for simply saving old theaters. (He’s explored the possibility of acquiring the dilapidated Aztlan Theatre at 974 Santa Fe Drive as well.)

He particularly liked the size of Curious, which he calls “just right” for hosting immersive live experiences. He’s not interested in changing the character of the building, he said, but rather accentuating it.

“When we renovate, we’re going to be very mindful that there’s a lot in the space that already works,” he said. “But we do want to reveal more of the historic elements of the property.”

From surviving to thriving

It is incredibly rare for any arts organization to publicly announce a financial crisis and survive it. In 2017, Regan Linton took over as Artistic Director of Denver’s disability-affirmative Phamaly Theatre Company, which was facing an immediate $250,000 shortfall and imminent bankruptcy. Linton made a candid public plea and successfully raised the necessary funds in just 17 days. Curious got there a little more circuitously. But it got there.

With one stroke of the pen Wednesday, Curious went from surviving to thriving.

“I am so tired of being in survival mode. It is exhausting. I want to be in thriving mode,” Dixon said. “And thriving is where we just blossom even more than we could have imagined.”

And now, for the first time in years, that is now a possibility for Curious Theatre Company.

Spira does not see himself as the hero of this story, even if everyone else does.

“David is very dedicated to Denver, and I think he’s looking for a legacy at this point in his life,” said Laugero. “Personally, I think this is going to be the legacy.”

Dixon additionally credits staff, board members, the artistic company and audiences. But Laugero flatly contends that “none of this would be happening right now” if not for Dixon. Had things gone the other way, she knows the end of Curious would have been inextricably tied to her tenure there. The past four years have taken a toll.

But rather than taking a victory lap, Dixon was more interested in just stopping to take an overdue breath.

“When I took this leadership position, I believed in the possibilities for this organization,” she said. “And now, to be able to say those possibilities are starting to come to fruition – and that there are even more that are going to happen in the next few years –

“It’s just super amazing and exciting to know that we are moving in the right direction.”  

John Moore is the Denver Gazette’s Senior Arts Journalist. Email him at [email protected].

Next at Curious

• ‘Furlough’s Paradise,’ a play by a.k. payne

• When: May 2-31

• Where: 1080 Acoma St.

• Director: Jada Suzanne Dixon

• Information: 303-623-0524 or curioustheatre.org

Curious Theatre/Season 29 announcement

These are the plays Curious Theatre will stage next season at Cleo Parker Robinson Dance (dates to be determined):

• ‘Topdog/Underdog,’ by Suzan-Lori Parks

• ‘One of the Good Ones,’ by Gloria Calderón Kellett

• ‘Marjorie Prime,’ by Jordan Harrison

• ‘Purpose,’ by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins