The “South Park” creators just may have fulfilled their promise of buying Colorado institution Casa Bonita.
In a live interview this morning with Colo. Gov. Jared Polis, Matt Stone and Trey Parker announced they will be buying Casa Bonita, in a matter of months, if their plan goes accordingly.
“As of about an hour ago,” Stone started, “so I have to qualify this, pending bankruptcy proceedings (…) we’ve come to an agreement with the owner, and we bought it.”
At the end of July, Stone and Parker had announced that they wanted to purchase the beleaguered Lakewood restaurant and entertainment venue. They said they will partner with yet-to-be-announced Colorado-based restaurateurs to do so.
“The one area that we would all love to see an upgrade — and I think I speak on behalf of everybody who patronizes Casa Bonita — is the food could be a little better,” Polis said.
“I think it could be a little more than a little better,” Stone clarified.
Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post
Customers have dinner at Casa Bonita Jan. 11, 2019, in Lakewood. Mexican restaurant Casa Bonita has been a memory-making institution for decades, filling children with countless sopapillas and dreams of plummeting from the top of a man-made, three-story indoor waterfall while people eat tacos, listen to Mariachi music and watch puppet shows around them.Casa Bonita has been closed to diners since March of 2020. By this spring, its owners had filed for bankruptcy.
Chapter 11 protection bought Summit Family Restaurants more time to pay off its $4.4 million in debt while looking for outside investment and possibly continuing to run the business.
But as of mid-August, Casa Bonita was still closed for dining and entertainment, like the venue’s famous cliff-diver performances. It is open to the public for “free backstage” tours, according to the website, as well as gift shop and arcade access.
Without opening for service, the restaurant had been losing around $40,000 a month, according to court documents filed back in April. Casa Bonita occupies 52,000 square feet behind its pink palace facade, located within a shopping center on West Colfax Avenue. Inside, it seats more than 1,000 people.
“The restaurant is in big trouble,” Jaime Zender, finance professor with the University of Colorado Leeds School of Business, told The Denver Post back in April. “As it looks now, without some infusion of cash, they would have to sell the building to satisfy their longterm debt.”
The terms of Casa Bonita’s sale to Stone and Parker were not immediately available as of Friday. Nor was any further information on the “South Park” creators’ local business partners in the endeavor.
Since March, a group of local fans and supporters have been running a fundraiser to “Save Casa Bonita.” They’ve raised more than $68,000 since starting the campaign and were able to purchase a portion of Summit Family Restaurants’ debt in order to pay back small creditors in the bankruptcy case, such as the restaurant’s local mariachi band and some independent food vendors.
Andrew Novick, a spokesperson for the Save Casa Bonita group, said he and his cohort as of yet are not involved in the purchase, and still haven’t had any contact with Stone or Parker.
“I hope they do contact us,” Novick said. “We will continue to try to ‘save’ (Casa Bonita) until it opens with all of the things we think are necessary and beneficial.”
A longtime unofficial tour guide for the business, Novick has visited it more than 300 times over the years, bringing in countless visitors and sharing the unique Casa Bonita experience.
One of his fundraising partners, Danny Newman, is a Denver restaurateur and investor who has bought other endangered Denver restaurant institutions — My Brother’s Bar, The Mercury Cafe — and ensured their locally operated futures. And Newman’s connection with Casa Bonita runs deep: his father even used to work as a Casa Bonita cliff diver.
Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post
Mexican restaurant Casa Bonita has been a memory-making institution for decades. Here, a cliff-diver pauses during a show at the restaurant’s three-story-tall indoor waterfall.“Our group was getting pretty close to a deal (with Summit Family Restaurants) when Matt and Trey threw their hat in the ring,” Newman said on Friday. “That unfortunately paused the seller’s response. We’re still hopeful that we can partner with them.”
As far as Newman, Novick and their local team are concerned, moving forward, Casa Bonita will need to change more than just its food menu, while still preserving much of the quirkiness (Pirates! Fire jugglers! A costumed gorilla!) that created this 47-year icon.
He added that making the business’ leadership more diverse, while treating employees fairly, would need to be a top priority.
And during Friday’s announcement, Polis, Stone and Parker brought up the Save Casa Bonita group and their efforts, albeit indirectly.
“We also know that there’s a lot of people in Colorado who have been working on, who love Casa Bonita,” Parker said. “And so we’re excited to work with everybody and make it the place we all want to make it.”
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