Neighborhood waits for its comeback
It would be two hours before a cook dropped the first strip of catfish into a fryer boiling hot grease. Two hours before another cook poured sticky honey hot sauce over a pile of chicken wings, or packed steaming collard greens into a small plastic tub for takeout.
But there stood Melody Lynch, waiting patiently outside the door of the building where the owners of the shuttered Welton Street Cafe were holding one of their occasional pop-ups in mid-march, this time in honor of Black Restaurant Week.
Lynch arrived extra early to guarantee herself a box of the cafe’s “honey hots” — juicy chicken wings coated in a sweet, spicy sauce that’s a family secret recipe.
“Their food is beyond description, so every minute is worth it,” Lynch said of her wait that Sunday. “If you can catch them when they’re cooking, it’s a hot ticket.”
Welton Street Cafe, one of Denver’s oldest Blackowned restaurants, closed its doors at 2736 Welton St. on March 12, 2022, following a dispute with the business’ landlord. Since then, the Dickerson family — six of them own and work at the cafe — has labored to reopen in a new location one block down the street in the city’s Five Points neighborhood.
The Dickersons have navigated city permitting, negotiated with landlords, filled out loan applications and overcome problems with contractors as they try to get back in business in a historically Black neighborhood that’s seen gentrification accelerate in the past decade.
Their path to reopening reflects the entire Welton Street corridor, a 12-block stretch from Broadway to North Downing Street that was once a bustling strip for Black entrepreneurs and is now still waiting for its comeback.
Black people began moving to the neighborhood in the 1870s when southern railroad workers settled there and, by the 1920s, 90% of Denver’s Black residents lived in Five Points, according to a Denver Public Library history. Up through the 1950s, Five Points was known as a cultural and entertainment destination because of its jazz and blues nightclubs.
Since the arrival of the pandemic in 2020, though, commerce along the corridor has slumped, with multiple businesses closing or relocating.
The historic Rossonian hotel is still shuttered even after announcements promising a revival. Old buildings remain boarded up with no assurance that renovations are coming anytime soon.
And tension between a high-profile Black developer and some of his Black tenants has led to bitter feelings and litigation as they debate what it means to hold onto the corridor’s history.
“When you walk down Welton Street during the day there is no heartbeat,” said Fathima Dickerson, one of the Welton Street Cafe’s owners. “There is no pulse. It’s just so hollow.”
In a neighborhood where housing demographics shifted years ago, someone needs to “ring the alarm” that Welton Street is losing the last of its Black culture, she said.
“Preserving Welton Street Cafe is preserving the culture of the neighborhood,” Dickerson said.
“Part of the fabric of Five Points”
The Dickersons opened the Welton Street Cafe in 1999, but the family has operated restaurants in the Five Points neighborhood since 1986.
Flynn Dickerson, the family patriarch, and Amona Dickerson, the matriarch, moved to Colorado from St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands as newlyweds with a dream to establish a restaurant.
The couple’s first offering, Caribbean Fast Food, became a hit as people lined up for handmade pates — hand-held pastries stuffed with meat, vegetables or fruit.
“We were doing these turnovers with rolling pins,” Flynn Dickerson said. “That was hard. We were having nightmares about pates.”
Over the years, the two have operated eight restaurants in Five Points and Aurora, maintaining a business partnership even after a divorce. They’re selftaught in the restaurant industry. But Welton Street Cafe would be the only restaurant where the parents and four of their children became part of the ownership and labor force.
Cenya Dickerson, one of the sisters, gave up a teaching job in 2019 to join her family at the restaurant. She wanted to help her aging parents maintain the family legacy.
“This is our lifeblood,” she said. “This is how we live.”
Welton Street Cafe’s presence in Five Points was almost like something out of a movie, a throwback to small-town diners where the waitstaff knew which customer was related to another, how many children they had and when to sing Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday” on someone’s special day.
The line to get a table on any given day might have included a University of Colorado Buffaloes football player, a funeral home director or a local politician.
It was the kind of place where the owners would recognize two ne’er-dowells in line and tell the server to ask them to pay upfront for an order — and then that same night send home a free plate of food with another customer who was going through hard times.
“The Welton Street Cafe and the Dickerson family are part of the fabric of Five Points,” said Norman T. Harris, executive director of the Five Points Business Improvement District.
“You have to experience it to understand it, but it’s a place where you go and it means more than a plate in front of you.”
Fathima Dickerson, the face of the business, often greets customers by calling them family or friend.
At the family’s March pop-up, she would be firm one minute, yelling at customers to straighten the line along the sidewalk, then smile and tell two teenage girls, “I might put you to work if you get too close to me. I just want to feed you.”
Before it closed, Welton Street Cafe had become the last soul food restaurant along the corridor. And in the two years since, the Dickersons’ food has been missed.
Joshua Graham works late nights on the security crew at Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom, a live music venue on Welton Street.
On a cold night in January, Graham called Fathima Dickerson to ask what she was cooking at home. He missed the cafe that much.
Dickerson asked whether he wanted some of her leftovers. He did. So she packed up a steak, baked potato and broccoli and delivered the food to Graham.
“I went to work on the plate right then and there,” he said. “It was sooo good.”
Graham was appreciative of his friend and her food. And, yes, he paid for the meal.
“It just shows her love for her community and how much she loves to feed people and what feeding people does for her body and soul,” he said.
It takes money — a lot of money
But a deep love for food and community can only take a business so far.
The COVID-19 pandemic was rough on Welton Street Cafe and the entire Welton Street corridor.
When most of Denver shut down in March 2020, the Dickerson family immediately switched the cafe to a take-out restaurant. But the number of customers dipped as people stayed home. Some days, employees didn’t want to work out of fear of the coronavirus.
“Welton Street was like a ghost town,” Fathima Dickerson said.
Before the cafe could fully recover from the pandemic, the Dickerson family’s relationship with their landlord, the Flyfisher Group, fell apart. The Dickersons were forced to close their restaurant and vacate the building.
Fathima Dickerson is reluctant to talk about how that business relationship collapsed. “I don’t know what to say about it,” she said.
But her father, Flynn Dickerson, said Flyfisher’s chief executive officer, Matthew
Burkett, wanted to become an investor in Welton Street Cafe and asked the family to give him a 40% stake in the business.
“Why would I put 40 years into a business and then give you almost half of it for nothing?” Flynn Dickerson said. “We didn’t owe him anything.”
Burkett, in an interview with The Denver Post, declined to discuss his business dealings with the Dickerson family. He said he wishes them well as they work to reestablish the cafe in a new location.
“I hope they’re able to reopen so we can have another outwardly facing business on the corridor,” he said.
Opening a retail business, restaurant or bar comes with enormous upfront expenses.
In the commercial leasing world, a tenant is responsible for any renovations, remodeling or redecorating.
If the building needs a new heating and air conditioning system, that’s on the tenant. If tenants want to build walls to create separate rooms, they pay for it. Need a new ventilation hood in the kitchen? It’s on the business, not the landlord.
Burkett said it can cost $500,000 or more to get a building into shape for a new business.
He said he spends money to keep his buildings upto-date and his 75% occupancy rate shows it. But one of the problems along the Welton Street corridor is that rental spaces are in such disrepair that few people who want to open a clothing store, book shop or other small retail business can afford the startup costs or receive loans to pay for them.
“If you’re going to do it like I’ve done it — that’s equity capital,” Burkett said. “That’s not bank money going in there. That’s your real money that you’ve earned somewhere else and then came back and sunk back into this neighborhood.”
Burkett, who describes himself as a “serial entrepreneur” with business interests around the world, lives in Five Points and owns multiple buildings on Welton Street, although he would not say how many. He also has stepped into the hospitality sector, opening two restaurants on Welton; his brunch spot, Mimosa’s, has been open since 2021 while his dinner restaurant, Moods Beats Potions, closed in July 2022 after a year because it wasn’t making money.
“It is not easy,” he said of the restaurant business.
“You need some luck. You need great staffing. You need a great customer base. Most businesses don’t make it. There’s only a fraction that get to three years and even a smaller few that get to five years. It’s tough.”