.....Advertisement.....
.....Advertisement.....

Business

  • Empire’s 1860 Tavern reopens with rejuvenated spirit

    Sometimes the best decisions are the hard ones.
    Idaho Springs resident Gail Hill decided the time had finally come to take a chance and start her first business by reopening the 1860 Tavern in Empire.

    Click here to read more...
  • Entrepreneur fired up about new industry

    After two years of planning and building a $3 million facility in Silver Plume, Rosalie Bianco is ready to start a revolution.
    A pellet revolution, to be exact.
    Bianco is on a mission to replace fossil fuels with a greener, cleaner alternative. Her business, New Earth Pellets, takes beetle-kill trees from Colorado mountainsides and mills them into pellets for pellet-burning stoves. The pellets are highly compressed nuggets of ground-up trees.

    Click here to read more...
  • A frank approach to the dog

    Standing in plumes of billowing steam, whipping up concoctions over dancing flames with the fervor of a mad alchemist — good street food vendors are the stuff of pure legend.

    So it probably doesn’t hurt that St. Mary’s resident Brian Smith learned the tricks of his trade from a bona-fide Denver hot-dog legend before setting out on his own in Idaho Springs.

    Click here to read more...
  • Home Design Center makes room for consignment

    The Rocky Mountain Home and Design Center across from Ski Country Antiques has opened a consignment department, Consign of the Times, on the second floor in 8,000 square feet of light-filled warehouse space at the Floyd Hill exit off I-70.

    Consign of the Times is the second consignment furniture store to open in the Evergreen/Idaho Springs area in the last six months, along with It’s New To Me, which opened last October in the former Blue Spruce Market on Bergen Parkway.

    Click here to read more...
  • Proprietor’s vision permeates Georgetown B & B

    With all the gusto and grace of a symphony conductor, Joyce Jamele moves through the house at 314 Argentine St. pointing to brightly lit bedrooms and marble counters as if they were string, brass and woodwind sections.

    The former interior decorator and current proprietor of the Silver Queen Bed and Breakfast can speak to every facet and nuance of the house’s interior design as if they were carefully composed arias and symphonies.

    Jamele has worked on the house for three years, bringing her years of design experience to the B&B, which opened this year.

    Click here to read more...
  • It’s hip to offer trendy fare

    It's a truism that the older you get, the sharper the edges of your perpetually uncool square-dom become. As maturity comes around the corner, so too does the tale of traveling to school while barefoot, in snow and uphill both ways. Pants seem to get baggier, music louder and hair longer.

    But not for Shelley and Darren Kohagen, owners of the new Idaho Springs store Huckers Haven. The two have found a virtual fountain of youth at their lifestyle apparel shop — with a little inspiration from their three teenagers.

    Click here to read more...
  • G-Town candy store branching into Idaho Springs

    Golden flat-back cows are the best bovines when it comes to making ice cream. Their flat backs are the key — without them they’d have a problem sleeping upside down. During the night, while they’re snoring away, the cream rises in their udders, and that cream is the secret to great ice cream.

    Click here to read more...
  • A picture-perfect framing business

    Kevin Vaughan sits in his new business surrounded by antique posters, antique maps and maps of ski trails. A large-format printer sits in one corner and examples of his rustic-looking picture frames in another.

    Vaughan is surprised that his idea for a local frame/print shop hadn’t been embraced by many others. It’s sort of like creating a one-stop shop, and it’s an idea that took shape for Vaughan in 1986, when he became a treasure hunter … er, bottle collector.

    Click here to read more...
  • The stuff stories are made of

    Everything comes with a story.

    Take, for instance, the bear. The bear was killed by the husband of a lady who once worked for the FBI. Its skull is fake; the actual head bone was taken to the Smithsonian Institution because of its unusual size.

    Or, take the lamp filled with shotgun shells — instead of seashells — or the noble profile of the jackalope staring out from the wall.

    All the items for sale in David Gladstone’s recently opened shop, the Everything and Anything Consignment Store, have a story — including the store itself.

    Click here to read more...
  • Jewelry hobby becomes gem of a business

    Turning a hobby into a successful business can be a challenge.

    Try, for example, taking a love of collecting Elvis memorabilia, painting by numbers, or bowling by black light and creating a profitable enterprise. But jewelry making and repair is another story — or at least it is for Jim Delano.

    Two years ago, Delano decided to take his hobby and turn it into a business, leading him to open Jewelry By Antonio in Idaho Springs late last year.

    Click here to read more...