It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a rocket ship landing in Lowry in 2017?  How this 40-foot tall rocket ship landed next to the Lowry Beer Garden is a great story. And the fellow behind this story, Joe Vostrejs, has a trail in real estate and in restaurants—and yes, a rocket ship.

Joe Vostrejs is a 4th generation Denverite whose family lived in Mayfair where as a boy, he sneaked into the Lowry base racing bikes all over the campus. He and his brothers and sisters enjoyed Denver attending Catholic schools in the area. “I wasn’t the easiest of kids, and not the best of students, but I did well in science and biology classes.” His first jobs were in restaurants in 1984,  and he started at the bottom of the business-soon to rise to the top with more than 20 restaurants in his company’s portfolio. Yes, yes, the rocket is coming.

After college, he worked at the Lakewood Fishmarket which introduced him to good restaurant management working with the likes of Noel Cunningham and Michael Coughlin. After seven years within the fish and restaurant businesses, he went into real estate – in restaurants and other commercial properties with the Trammell Crow Company. The names of restaurants that came in his City Street
Investors portfolio will be familiar to Denverites as will be the commercial areas they developed. 

Starting in Tamarac Square in 1991, there was a Josephina’s which eventually was for sale and in 1996 with Jeff Hermanson, they bought the Square and went into partnership first as Larimer Associates for many years and later with other partners in City Street Investors (Jeff Hermanson, Rod Wagner and Pat McHenry). Their biggest development to date is Denver Union Staton which they helped revitalize in 2014. They bought property at 32nd and Lowell and put restaurants in there, too. As they partnered with people like Troy Guard and Jennifer Jasinski, he soon found he was back in the restaurant biz. There’s Billy’s Inn at 44th and Lowell and Sloan’s Bar and Grill on West 25th Ave.

Life and food was good to Joe who kept moving on and up. Mary, his wife whom he met in high school, is a doctor. They had two kids and in 1998 he moved into Lowry as one of the earliest pioneers in our community. With two kids, they needed more room and in Lowry, homes large and small were sprouting up. They found a great new house and moved to where he used to bike.

Property and his restaurants grew as did his investment group. In 2011, Lowry’s Hangar 2 was an old 90,000 square foot hangar completed in 1938 in the early days of the Lowry base. Jim Hartman, a Boulder architect who had done a lot of work with the LRA (Lowry Redevelopment Authority) including
the Lowry Steam Plant Lofts, combined efforts and Joe and his group tackled what restaurants would go into Lowry. First was a decision and a plan on what do you put into the hangar building that was the size of two football fields? They came up with putting storage inside the hangar since parking on the site was a major concern. They interviewed several storage companies and chose Extra Space Storage as the top company. The idea of restaurants along the outside was planned and storage units would work for the giant hangar.

All of this was in 2009 during the financial crisis and they needed big financing to buy the site from the Wings Over the Rockies Museum. It took getting permits and financing from Denver Urban Renewal Authority (DURA) and a major loan from FirstBank and to put the package together. They pulled it off, and then had a huge space to design.

When not investing in old spaces and turning them into successful places, Joe and his wife liked biking in many areas of the world. They have biked all over the U.S., Japan, New Zealand and more. This time as the Lowry project was developing, they did a 10 day and over 300 mile trip from Prague to Vienna. As
they stayed in different small towns each night, they noticed how the beer gardens in various towns became community landing places where families brought their kids and everyone sat around having a good time. These multigenerational groups were casual, friendly places and could serve people quickly and have them seated within minutes. Everyone enjoyed the spirit of the place. Why not have one of these in Denver? Joe researched the prospect, got his partners on board, and in 2011, the Lowry Beer Garden opened.

But what other kinds of restaurant places would Lowryites want? With focus groups (City Street Investors calls it Custom Crafting to develop focus groups with the neighbors and get better ideas for a site), he found residents wanted nice places to eat while others opted for family style places. At Lowry, they now own or lease North County, Officer’s Club, Café Mercato, Woodgrain Bagels, Copper Door Roasters, and of course the Lowry Beer Garden, which is one of the more successful of his properties with indoor and outdoor seating. The ample parking and seating guarantees a full house in the summer, and even in the winter, the tables are often full. All of his  restaurants are original—no national chains for this group and “all make neighborhoods better,” he says.

And now, OK, here it is: the rocket ship. Patrons at the Beer garden were asking for ice cream, “and I always wanted ice cream somewhere in this area. And I also had an interest in rockets as a kid.” In researching on line, the company found a rocket ship that was perfect AND for sale. The Raygun Gothic Rocket Ship was created for the Burning Man event in 2009 by the Five Ton Crane Art Collective inmOakland. It had been dismantled and traveled to a variety of sites around  the country and Canada. City Street Investors bought it, crated the iconic silver ship and brought it to Denver. But where to put it in Lowry?

Part of the Beer Garden parking area was perfect, and it was installed in 2017. The Rocket Ice Cream stand was opened and the lines formed. People come from all over Denver to have their photos taken next to the rocket, and it’s a great addition to the Beer Garden which now has dessert served outside.

With more than 20 restaurants and more than 800 employees, Joe Vostrejs and his investment group owns many fine restaurants and commercial developments all around Denver. And very recently, there’s a new café abutting Cheesman Park on the north side at 2901 Williams (The Secret Garden) as well as planned development in the Golden Triangle in the old Evans School building.  He always has a place to eat and especially here in Lowry. And where else can you sit and watch planes overhead while sitting under a rocketship?

For those who are interested in the raygun gothic rocketship, you can explore more here.

Meet Your Lowry Neighbors is a monthly feature written by our intrepid reporter Sally Kurtzman, who knows everyone in our community. This month, she is joined by co-writer Chuck Woodward. If you have a suggestion for a Meet Your Lowry Neighbor, please send us an email to connect@lowryunitedneighborhoods.org.