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TARRA: A New Way for Women to Work

TARRA women’s workspace is a new concept for connecting entrepreneurs with a community of support. Located in 9+CO—the 26-acre redevelopment of a former teaching hospital at Ninth Avenue and Colorado Boulevard—TARRA touts a modern “work club” model. Two spaces meet women where they’re at. Members can choose from an open-plan membership space with monthly memberships starting at $70 or a traditional flex office space with offices for one to five people, starting at $525, in a brand-new five-story office block.

“This space gives women permission,” says founder Kate Bailey, 45, of a mature color palette and high-end design that was intentionally crafted to appeal to women of all ages and industries, especially female leaders and business owners transitioning to a challenging growth phase or re-entering the workplace. “Too often older voices are devalued. This is a place for all generations to come together and mentor one another.”

READ — Women to Watch: PNC Bank

Men are welcome. But TARRA was designed—down to the details of stocking female-owned house brands—to support women in the areas they continue to be underserved. “Just look at the stats,” says Bailey, who experienced roadblocks firsthand as a small business owner. Only 9% of U.S. CEOs are women. Just 1.7% of woman-owned businesses make over $1 million in gross annual revenue.

“Despite efforts, the data from the last 10 years demonstrates that this is a problem that needs a different solution,” she says.

“Men have tight professional networks, but also extensive access to informal education and resource sharing. Women don’t yet have that generational strength, but there’s so much potential to create the kind of networks that advance us all.”

And that’s what TARRA plans to tap. With 12,500 square feet to create a supportive community, women will have access to daily informal networking and formal leadership workshops; intentional events designed to teach growth-oriented business strategy; open and closed meeting and communication spaces; and a hub for anchor tenant the Colorado Women’s Chamber of Commerce to make a meaningful impact.

Approximately a third of TARRA’s 33 office spaces were leased before construction wrapped in September; a block away, women are busily occupying the work club with comfy booths, high-top tables and an open kitchen in TARRA’s flex workspace. “We’re industry agnostic,” Bailey says. Members range from postpartum care professionals to commercial real estate to law and accounting.

READ — Women to Watch: Trio Design

Like today’s top hospitality brands, Bailey wants TARRA to cater to boutique business needs, but also feel like a home. She says, “We don’t plan to scale to the level of WeWork, but we hope to have 20 or so TARRAs around the country to create a powerful network of professional women.”

Outdoor Retailer, We Hardly Knew You

After five short years—two plodding through the pandemic—the trade show for the country’s biggest outdoor brands is departing Denver.  The city will lose big bucks—hundreds of millions—and associated global attention as an outdoor mecca. Outdoor Retailer’s twice-a-year event stretched from downtown Colorado Convention Center booths to iconic slopes, rivers and trails for product demos.

READ — Made in Colorado: Great Stuff for the Great Outdoors

“We made a good-faith effort to keep the show, but also need to be good stewards of our taxpayers’ money,” says Conor Hall, director of the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Industry Office. “We wish them luck, but also know that the trade show model is under a lot of pressure right now.”

Outdoor Retailer is headed back to Salt Lake City where it was stationed for the two decades prior. The decision by OR’s publicly traded parent company Emerald, which puts on more than 140 trade shows worldwide, has ruffled feathers, to say the least.

Major outdoor companies like Patagonia and Colorado-headquartered The North Face have stated that they’d boycott a trade show based in a place where state leadership continues to deny public land protections, highlighted most recently in the dismantling of Bears Ears National Monument.

The exit puts Colorado squarely in a political position to tout its own track record for supporting environmental, conservation and public-access efforts — and invite major and minor outdoor players to a more inclusive exhibition for consumers and industry insiders.

“We’re thinking of it like the South by Southwest of the outdoors, with music and art for a more creative bent, plus all the brands consumers would love to see,” Hall says. “We want to bring in folks into the industry who aren’t at OR. There are kids who grew up in Colorado who’ve never been on a rock wall or in a kayak. We want to break down barriers and give them their first experience.”

Hall calls the soon-to-be-announced event an opportunity to support the state’s $9.6 billion outdoor recreation economy’s growing direct-to-consumer model, but also to showcase Colorado’s reputation as a thought leader — and a beacon for the outdoor lifestyle.

Colorado’s Competitive Spirit is Alive and Well — Celebrating CoBiz’s Fall 2022 Print Issue

There is a hint of seasons’ change blowing in the wind. No, it’s not Fall yet, but it is football season.

Nonetheless, this isn’t about the Walton-Penner Group, the new owners of the Denver Broncos, or their new quarterback, Russell Wilson. It’s about the spirit of competition that’s in the air.

They say a friendly matchup never hurt anyone. No pain, no gain. Whether on or off the field, inside or outside the boardroom, the strategies are strikingly similar. Develop a game plan. Practice. Execute. Review, repeat (or modify). Competition can bring out the best in us, and afterward it often leads to internal evaluation and honest reflection.

We see that in this year’s Top Company Awards competition, now in its 35th year, sponsored this year by MB Law. The outpouring of applications is a testament to the resilience and adaptability of Colorado businesses, and it’s clear that the competitive spirit is alive and well. ColoradoBiz staff and hundreds of guests gathered on Sept. 14 to celebrate the best of the best in 14 industry categories. Winners and finalists are profiled in our Top Company section that begins on page 52 of our Fall issue.

For many, it’s a moment of clarity that their well-executed game plans led to success. It’s also a time to reflect and be grateful.

And since football is also top of mind right now, the positive benefits of competition among our high school students, and the next wave of entrepreneurs and CEOs, is also in the air. There’s something about youth competition we don’t seem to talk about often enough. On or off the field, it breeds innovation and a commitment to excellence.

On Aug. 26, two rival high school football programs – Regis Jesuit (ranked No. 3) and Valor Christian (ranked No. 2) – squared off under Friday night lights for a season opener that everyone will be talking about for the rest of the season. While you can find the details of Regis Jesuit’s overtime victory on MaxPreps Sports, what inspired me was the level of respect the teams granted one another. Moments after the tears of both joy and defeat, together, they knelt at the 50-yard line in prayer. Even for them, the months of preparation and training, statistic tracking and execution culminated with sobering reflection.

Yes, fall means sports. It also means a time of evaluating success and failures, and strategic planning for the future. Colorado has never been more competitive, and we wish all businesses, Top Company (or not) the greatest success as they lay the groundwork for their future successes.

 

Jon Haubert Hb Legacy Media Co 2Jon Haubert is the publisher of ColoradoBiz magazine. Email him at [email protected].

Live from Colorado: The Future of Sports Betting 

On a sunny Saturday afternoon last October, Denverite Richard Terry did something audacious: bet that the Oklahoma Sooners would win a football game.  

It was midway through the annual “Red River Showdown” against the University of Texas. The Sooners were getting drubbed 28-7. Terry, a 37-year-old corporate relocation specialist, was about to leave a friend’s home in Aurora when his buddy tossed out a wild idea: Bet on Oklahoma to win it straight up.  

The suggestion seemed implausible, but Terry listened to his friend’s case: Oklahoma had a history of coming from behind, and the Sooners still had home-field advantage. With a few breaks, Oklahoma conceivably could rise up. Intrigued, Terry fired up the DraftKings app on his smartphone and checked the odds: eight-to-one for Oklahoma to storm back. Why not, he figured. He put $5 down and headed out.  

Sure enough, Oklahoma began making a run. Alerted by a text message, Terry hurried home to watch backup quarterback Caleb Williams orchestrate one of the great comebacks in Oklahoma football history. With three seconds on the clock, Sooner halfback Kennedy Brooks romped into the end zone from 33 yards out. Terry’s $5 bet instantly turned into $40.  

 

In a state where hundreds of thousands of players bet billions of dollars annually on sports, it was a tiny wager. But encapsulated in that moment were the ingredients of what some people believe will be a revolution not only in how fans bet on sports, but watch them, too.  

It’s called “in-game betting,” and it’s just what the name suggests: wagers made live and in the moment during real-time play. It could be whether Rockies’ hitter C.J. Cron will get on base in his next at- bat. It could be whether Real Madrid can sustain a shutout over the final 10 minutes. Or as Richard Terry experienced, it could be whether the Oklahoma Sooners can make a late charge to win a game.  

In-game wagers differ from old-school sports bets, like whether the Broncos can beat the spread against the Chiefs. These sorts of “moneyline” bets have long been the bread-and-butter for the sports-gambling business. But they’re somewhat passive. Once a bet is made, bettors can just as easily go shopping for groceries and check the final score later.  

Now, with smartphones and wireless data networks, betting on sports is a whole new ballgame, with live, in-game betting a rising factor.    

Fantasy successor 

Kyle Christensen is the chief marketing officer for PointsBet, an Australia-based sports-gambling company with its U.S. headquarters in Denver. He makes a convincing argument for in-game betting as a sort of souped-up successor to fantasy sports: It’s a way to enrich the betting experience, keep fans interested in games (even blowouts), appeal to an increasingly discriminating sports-betting market, and create a positive impact on the broader sports-entertainment experience.  

Momentum seems to favor his argument. Live betting now accounts for roughly half of all PointsBet wagers, up from less than a third as of late 2021. As interest grows, PointsBet and others are working feverishly to keep up with the demand by conceiving of a never-ending torrent of live betting propositions. During the 2022 “March Madness” NCAA men’s basketball tournament, for example, PointsBet offered nearly 60 live-game bets, letting players gamble on everything from which team would prevail in a four-minute interval to “lightning bets” on which team would score the next point.  

Christensen grew up in Loveland, cultivating a passion for the Rockies and Broncos before heading west to work for media giants Facebook, Fox Sports and Netflix. He’s now back in Colorado, working at PointsBet’s headquarters office on 17th Street in Denver. 

PointsBet employs close to 200 Colorado software developers, graphic designers, customer agents and other professionals who work at king-sized monitors behind an expansive succession of floor-to-ceiling windowed rooms, including a “dugout” space that overlooks Coors Field. To be sure, this is not the backroom gambling operation of a bygone era: the aesthetic divide between PointsBet’s sleek, high-tech downtown office and the streetwise bookmaker of old could not be starker.  

Sports-biz

Many of these employees are focused on making live betting a locus of distinction for PointsBet. The company has invested in technology designed to assure fast response and continuous “uptime” application availability – both keys for making live betting work. Christensen is convinced the winners in a crowded Colorado sportsbook sector won’t be the gambling giants that are spending heaps of money on advertising, but instead will be those that can out-perform the competition when it comes to the basics of the betting experience. These elements range from how quickly cash gets transferred to accounts, to how well back-end customer service agents handle customer inquiries. One big goal for PointsBet’s tech developers is reducing latency – the micro-second interval that occurs after someone presses a keypad button and when an instruction is completed. With live, in-game betting, low latency becomes a critical point of distinction, which is one reason PointsBet has insisted on building and managing its software in-house, rather than contracting with an outside provider.   

Sports engagement 

Live betting also has implications for how people fundamentally engage with sports. As Richard Terry points out, having a betting interest can captivate even casual fans. When Terry and his pal put money down on the Oklahoma Sooners last fall, it wasn’t because of Sooner loyalty. “We’re not really even [University of Oklahoma] fans,” Terry said. But when crunch time came in the second half, he was riveted to the screen. Having a few dollars on the Sooners that day “kept me invested,” he said.  

For Christensen and others, this is the point. They see in-game betting contributing to sustained fan interest in games that might otherwise lose their luster: Think eighth inning with the Dodgers up 10-1 at Coors Field and two outs already recorded. It’s a near-certainty that the fan who plops down $3 on whether Charlie Blackmon will reach first base has a keener rooting interest than the ticketholder who’s heading for the exits. The same holds true for those watching on television: PointsBet’s alliance with NBC-owned regional sports networks is designed to use betting possibilities as a foundation for new ways to present and engage fans on the electronic screen. 

To be sure, Colorado isn’t the only state where in-game betting is becoming a thing. But because Colorado was early to the legalized sports-betting game (beginning in May 2020) and because of its prominence nationally – the state ranks sixth in the U.S. for total sports-betting wagers, per publisher Legal Sports Report – it offers a preview of what may be ahead. The sportsbook MaximBet launched its sports betting operations in Colorado before any other state partly because the sports betting population here is more experienced than in other states, according to Doug Terfehr, vice president of brand marketing. After racking up $18 million in total sports wagers during its first six months, MaximBet, like PointsBet, has seen a major swing toward in-game action.

“Colorado bettors love in-game betting,” Terfehr said.  

Sportsbookhr Hires11

Dan Hartman, director of Colorado’s Division of Gaming, thinks one reason Colorado stands out as an archetype for the sports-betting future is because of a symbiotic marriage of interests between bookmakers and the agency that regulates them. The common interest here is money — the more action sportsbooks take in, and the better they are at managing net proceeds, the more money Colorado collects. The formula used in Colorado is that sportsbook operators pay back 10% of net gambling proceeds to the state, expressly to support big-ticket water projects. In the first 12 months after legalized betting began, Colorado had booked some $2.3 billion in wagers, with sportsbooks, after doling out cash to winners, keeping net proceeds of just under $61 million.  

Because more bets mean more tax revenue, Hartman says Colorado is determined to work in partnership with sportsbook operators to assure compliance on one hand and to sustain innovation on the other.  

Still, guardrails rear up. Earlier this year Hartman’s agency turned down a proposed bet submitted by one Colorado sportsbook operator: a wager on what color of Gatorade would be splashed down the neck of the winning coach after the 2022 Super Bowl. The reason? That particular event hinges on a randomized outcome that’s not tied to game performance – a no-no in the state’s rulebook. “It’s not that I don’t like Gatorade,” deadpans Hartman, an Aurora Central High School graduate who used to sweep sidewalks at the Mile Hi Kennel Club, one of three racing facilities his father owned.

Changing market 

PointsBet’s Christensen and others think Colorado’s sports gambling arena looks very different today from what it’s likely to become over the next few years. As of May, 25 sportsbook operators were licensed to take bets on sports in Colorado, with four more in line for later this year. This collective runs a wide gamut: from homegrown operations to big national players like DraftKings, FanDuel and BetMGM. Bets can be made in person, at several Colorado casino sportsbooks, but more than 95% happen over smartphones or other devices. Hartman has counted 850,000 sportsbook app downloads so far in Colorado, indicating a wide swath of players in a state with an adult population of roughly 3 million. Like Terry, who commonly makes bets of less than $10, most players risk fairly small amounts: The publicly held DraftKings reported average monthly spending per sports-betting customer was $77 last year.  

Within this environment, there’s general consensus that a shakeout is inevitable, which is one reason the national giants are spending mightily to capture market share. The advertising industry research firm Kantar estimates that sports betting operators plowed more than $660 million into U.S. advertising in 2021. That flow of money has created a cash-injection for Denver-area television and radio stations, along with media and sports personalities who have been enlisted to help spread the word. In May, the Rockies’ Blackmon became the first Major League Baseball player to endorse a sportsbook, lending his name and influence to MaximBet. 

Besides advertising, some sportsbooks are trying to out-do one another with come-ons that promise easy payouts for first-time bettors. But attempting to out-spend the competition is a game Christensen and PointsBet, along with others, are determined not to play. Instead, they’re looking to make a mark elsewhere, figuring that over time, as the betting market matures, a better customer experience is what will differentiate the leaders.  

The biggest unknown of all is whether in-game betting, an arena where Colorado sportsbooks are taking a lead role, will have the halo effect Christensen and others are relying on. If it does, it could have a powerful ripple effect across the entire sports-entertainment ecosystem, benefiting teams, leagues, owners, television networks and just about any business – even local sports pubs – that stands to profit from stronger fan interest.  

In the background, technology marches on. Early on in the development of legal sports betting in Colorado, Hartman and a few colleagues evaluated the “geo-fencing” chops of the state’s online sportsbooks by driving north on I-25 and traversing back-and-forth across the Colorado-Wyoming border. True to promise, bets they attempted to place over a smartphone within state lines went through like a snap. Those they tried north of the border were intercepted and rejected. The lesson: Whether your bets are live game wagers or classic moneyline bets, in order get in on the sports-betting revolution in Colorado you actually have to be in … Colorado. 

 

 

Stewart Schley JpegStewart Schley writes about sports, media and technology from Denver. Read this and Schley’s past columns on the Web at cobizmag.com and email him at [email protected]

Colorado Women in Film: No Cash Cow, But Wildly Collaborative

The film industry is an incentives business. And historically Colorado hasn’t secured the cache that brings big names, crews and budgets to underdog states like neighboring New Mexico.  

Colorado is beholden to TABOR, the amendment that caps state revenue retained and spent, but also jockeying interests. “We have a couple of million dollars, so we’re not competing at the same level as other states,” says Kelly Baug, deputy film commissioner, Colorado Office of Film, Television and Media. “We go to bat every year, but there are competing interests like education and health care that win out.” 

Without significant incentives, the local landscape is known as friendly to filmmakers who care deeply about the craft — not just paychecks attached to monied, star-studded productions. Colorado is collaborative, unlike cutthroat environments like Los Angeles, which can amplify an every-woman-for-herself mentality in a male-dominated industry. Women working in the local film industry repeat this mantra almost universally. 

Filmmaker Biz Young, 31, who moved to Denver after winning two Emmys for her independent film series “BombASSBabes,” says, “It’s been such an easy transition. Every woman I’ve spoken to shares this sentiment. We hold on to each other and continue to support one another.” Likewise, Shaya Christensen, 29, who came to Colorado to finish a documentary, says she boldly cold-called Colorado women in film. “Amazingly, every single person replied to me. We got coffee,” she says. “It’s a pretty small network.”  

Biz Young Bts Photos 1
Biz Young

A foundation in festivals 

Where Colorado shines is showcasing awe-inspiring landscapes, whether that’s for a national truck commercial or a narrative about people playing in wildly inspiring places. And more than any film sector, festivals are Colorado’s happy place. There are more than 50 statewide, a remarkable number for the relative scale of the industry.

“Colorado is unique in that we have such thriving interests in film in every community,” Baug says. “Name a town and I can name filmmakers in it or very close by.”  

A growing number of festivals are women-led or feature films made by women and minorities. Take No Man’s Land, an outdoor-themed festival previously anchored in Carbondale. It’s a microcosm of the world’s — and the industry’s — cultural pivot. “We were trying to bring diversity to a place that cannot sustain the demographic that ultimately supports No Man’s Land,” says Executive Director Kathy Karlo.  

“Mountain towns are expensive, access creates a huge challenge, and they are predominantly white. In recognizing that the public face of the outdoors is changing, we chose to move to Denver and celebrate empowering women and gender-nonconforming individuals with our event.” 

Gig work, day job — or both?   

But festivals are cyclical. And freelancing is the norm in film. Young took a dream film-editor position at outdoor brand The North Face. But while her day job pays the bills, that’s rare for Colorado women in film. Most are taking gigs on temporary sets that could last a day or weeks, or working on unpaid “passion projects.”  

A massive gender pay gap remains, especially notorious in film gig work. Young, for example, cited her freelance pay as 17% of her male counterpart for the same two-week project. “Unfortunately, the industry is set up in a way that it’s hard to say no even when you’re burned out,” she says. 

Rising action beyond Denver  

And yet the pandemic may have empowered gig work—and Colorado. With greater acceptance of remote work, serious filmmakers no longer have to live on the coasts, says producer Arielle Brachfeld, a fourth-generation Coloradan. She’s a case study.  

After 12 years of cutting her teeth as an actress and later finding fulfillment selling films to Lionsgate, earning an Emmy for her work, Brachfeld came home to Colorado. “LA is a tough town. There’s a lot of misogyny and harassment, and it really wears on you,” she says. Brachfeld was assaulted at work, prompting a revaluation of life.

“We were used to beauty, nature and smiling faces in Colorado,” she says. “In LA, nature is an overused park filled with people posing for their next Instagram story.”

Ariella Brach2
Ariella Brach

Brachfeld settled in Grand Junction, where her husband grew up. The Western Slope’s largest town is home to a thriving arts community, boasting two higher-education filmmaking programs. “Mesa County is screaming to be filmed. It’s the best-kept secret that I don’t want to keep,” laughs Brachfeld, who teaches production management at Western Colorado Community College, which shares resources with four-year Colorado Mesa University.  

Fueling next-gen creatives, Brachfeld applies lessons learned as a film project manager for the LA Unified School District’s Arts Education Branch, even recently securing investors to support a local “creature feature” called “Dragon Soldiers.” 

“Now we’ve got a crew pool,” she says. “We get to hire students on the set in the spring and teach them in the fall.”  

With women like Brachfeld cheerleading film studies, Baug championing state incentives and Karlo fighting for festival diversity, Colorado women in film have nowhere to go but up.   

Good Company: Eric Phillips and his 3E’s Comedy Club

Eric Phillips 

Owner of 3E’s Comedy Club 

Hometown: Cleveland 

What he’s reading: Phillips subscribes to Colorado Springs’ local newspaper, The Gazette, and reads the print edition every morning, along with online trade publications covering the comedy industry. 

 

ColoradoBiz: We’ve got plenty of technical questions for somebody crazy enough to open a brick and mortar in 2020, but before we dive in, care to share your impression of the Chris Rock-Will Smith episode, which unfolded over a joke in a stand-up routine? 

 

Eric Phillips: It was comedy! I understand the sickness [Jada] has – I get it – but you’re coming to a place where a host has been hired to do crowd work, and it’s nothing personal. That particular joke was so mild. Plus, it’s not just Chris Rock writing the jokes. Writers help write those jokes. I think [Will Smith] went overboard. He was the last person I would have expected to do something like that.  

 

It’s true that comedy can be offensive. Has the cancel culture movement taken a toll on the industry? 

Some comedians are afraid now, some aren’t. Look, I always tell comedians, people like shock. You can say whatever you want to say, but it has to be funny.  

 

How would you describe the current state of stand-up? 

Comedy goes in ebbs and flows. It’s up, then sometimes it’s down. I think comedy is coming back around. Clubs closed during the pandemic, but people are going out to shows again. You see lots of open mic nights; young comedians are going to bars and clubs. You also saw comedians doing Zoom shows during the pandemic.  

 

Was opening your own club a longtime dream?  

I was in the military, stationed in Georgia in the mid-90s, and on the side I’d promote shows for different comedians. Some are big names now, like Shuckey Duckey and Earthquake. I got to meet these guys in their early years. I loved the people I met in comedy. But when you promote, you’re barely breaking even. If I brought a comedian in, I’d pay for his plane ticket, put him up in a hotel, and pay him for the show. Meanwhile, the comedy club would make money off food and beverage and all I’d get was what I charged at the door. So yeah, from those early days on, I always wanted my own club.  

 

How’d you go from entertainment promoter to small business owner? 

I was stationed in Colorado Springs twice, and when I got out of the military I stayed. I started a property management company. During that time, I served on a lot of boards and commissions. I got involved in the community, and this gave me a chance to not just see what the community needed, but to build relationships, too, and those relationships were critical when it was time to open the club. 

 

Are relationships the most important aspect of operating a successful small business? 

I always tell other small business owners that when you want to open a brick-and-mortar, you’ve got to get engaged in the community. When 3E’s first opened in September 2020, a lot of people came not because it was a comedy club but because they knew me. 

 

You launched 3E’s at a time when established businesses across the country were closing their doors. Did you ever think about delaying the opening? 

Life gets in the way. You just keep going. We’d started working on 3E’s in 2019, and I signed the lease in February, before COVID closures in the U.S. When COVID started, I kind of shrugged it off, thinking it would go away. Then came March 2020. We had the opening in September as planned, but with limited capacity, and then we closed in December only to reopen in January. 

 

How did COVID impact the look and feel of 3E’s? 

It changed a lot of things. We took down some walls; we put up some walls. We couldn’t get people to work because it was a risky time, and I couldn’t set up the chairs and tables like we would have because we had “6-feet apart” restrictions. But we kept going. We had a lease that we had to pay the rent on. Landlords still needed their money, and I couldn’t get any relief. Since we were a new business, we didn’t have tax returns from 2019.  

 

Without a PPP loan, or other relief, how’d you stay afloat? 

I used my own personal savings, plus small grants and little loans here and there. I bootstrapped a lot of stuff. And I made money offering extras, things we would have eventually added anyway. We have a café and lounge where we serve food and beverage, and the club holds open mics on Wednesdays and weekly beginner comedy classes. We host different events, too, just to get people into the building. We’ve had everything from a high school graduation to an awards ceremony for a Black magazine and a reception for violinists. We also had the mayor’s event here. Most important, I found support in the strong business community in Colorado Springs. Even though we had more minorities in [my hometown of] Cleveland, it might have been hard to do what I’m trying to do here back there. That’s not to say there’s no racism or prejudice in Colorado Springs – there is – but it seems that if you’re working to get something done, people will help you regardless of your color, race or ethnicity.  

  

Colorado Springs isn’t the first place that comes to mind when thinking about hip downtowns and thriving comedy scenes. Has the city changed since you arrived? 

Colorado Springs has changed a lot over the last 20 years. As we grow to a city of 500,000, we’re the second largest city in Colorado. I served on the city planning commission for several years. During that time, we got a lot of new people coming in from Texas and California, and those people wanted to do something different. Colorado Springs is a big military town, but it’s not just a military town. A lot of times people from a military post won’t venture off the post unless there’s a major event. I got to Colorado Springs in 1989, then left and came back in 2000. There weren’t any comedy clubs downtown then. There was one club off Academy called Loonees Comedy Corner. Academy used to be a main street, but as Colorado Springs grew, there was a big emphasis on developing its downtown. Most comedy clubs in big cities are downtown. So, I wanted to open something downtown.  

 

What makes 3E’s distinctive? 

It’s the only comedy club downtown. We’ll have four headliners a month usually, and I try to mix it up with women, Latinos and Black comedians. I make a conscious effort to put women on shows. I have whole shows devoted to women. I want to give Colorado Springs variety because the city is diverse.  

 

You must have had some dark days while opening shop during the pandemic. What kept you going during the hardest times? 

Family motivates me, and so do people. I love to see people having a good time and enjoying themselves. And I love seeing young comedians learning how to be better comedians. This will be our first year operating in a somewhat normal environment. I can’t wait to see how it goes.