Ballyhoo brings theatre, coffee, cocktails and community to LoHi

Ballyhoo Table & Stage will have its grand opening on November 1 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 3300 Tejon Street, Denver.

On a recent October afternoon, the air inside the newly opened Ballyhoo Table & Stage in Denver’s Highland neighborhood buzzed with possibility. In the front café, the hiss of the espresso machine mixed with the low hum of conversation as neighbors trickled in to try the newly dialed-in Queen City Coffee drinks.

Beyond the art gallery that connects the store’s café in the front to the stage in the back of the building, a troupe of performers rehearsed, their voices and laughter echoing off the freshly painted walls. In one of the side rooms tucked between the café and theater, founder Julia Tobey settled in to talk about the long, winding road that led here.

“If I wasn’t spending an extra 40 hours a week keeping up with the city’s requirements, I’d be fine,” she said with a rueful laugh. “All the zoning stuff was what really caught us off guard. I thought, ‘I’m going to sign a lease on a venue and get liquor and cabaret licenses; that’s no big deal.’ But it was like, ‘No, you are changing from the last time it was zoned as a church in 2011, so you need all these permits,’ which really slowed us down.”

Originally slated to debut on September 27, Ballyhoo’s grand opening was postponed until November 1 after months of wrangling with city permits, zoning changes and last-minute licensing hurdles. The delays tested the patience of performers and staff, but Tobey says the wait has made this moment all the more meaningful.

“It feels so good to finally be at the place where the doors are open and the community can walk in,” she said. “All of those sleepless nights and setbacks are worth it when I see people sitting down with a cup of coffee or laughing in the theater — it reminds me why we fought so hard to make this happen.”

A venue for all seasons

Located at 3300 Tejon Street, just steps from neighborhood staples like Linger and Little Man Ice Cream, Ballyhoo blends a coffee shop, cocktail bar, café and two live performance spaces under one roof. A large theatre in the back will host productions ranging from Broadway remounts to circus cabaret, while a smaller café stage features Ballyhoo’s singing bartenders and intimate performances.

Tobey admits striking the right mood between the two spaces wasn’t easy.

“Investors had some feedback that, ‘Right now it’s very bright and colorful, which is great, but we also wanted to be sexy date vibes,’ so we painted a wall black and got some black love seats. We’re trying to make a hybrid, which is hard because you want it to be that bright daytime, fast Wi Fi coffee spot, and a sexy cocktail bar for the singing bartender stuff, and we’re getting there.”

That hybrid will be on full display for the grand opening on November 1. In the morning, the space will brim with family-friendly festivities from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. By afternoon, the music will crank up, the cocktails will flow and Ballyhoo will step into its nightlife identity.

“DJ Buddy Bravo will start music around 9:30 a.m. and then we’ll do a ribbon cutting with our favorite drag diva, Jessica L’Whor, around 10 a.m.,” Tobey said. “It’s a very family friendly event, and then at 3 p.m., the event officially ends in the cocktail bar is just open for adult shenanigans. We’ll have live music throughout the day and have fun community engagement the whole day, so we hope folks will drop by to check us out.”

Part of the Ballyhoo team, Byron, Piper and Dino, are all smiles ahead of the Nov. 1 opening. | Photo: Andrea Flanagan

Delays, red tape and resilience

Reaching this moment took far longer than anyone anticipated. When Tobey signed the five-year lease on the building with the option to extend for another five years back in April, she imagined the path to opening would be straightforward. Instead, she found herself caught in a bureaucratic maze.

“Every time we would do something, the city would say, ‘Well, now that triggers this and this and this,’ and the worst part was there was no guide to the process,” Tobey said. “You just kind of get broadsided by information left and right. If I had known it was going to take all of this, I wouldn’t have signed the lease on this building.”

There were retail food licenses to correct — at one point she applied for the wrong type and had to restart the process — and zoning requirements that surfaced months after initial applications were filed. One of the biggest recent shocks came when the city raised the possibility of requiring a fire sprinkler system in the theater, an expense that could top $80,000. Even the pace of communication with the city became a hurdle.

“There was a week or two where everything stalled because one person was out with an injury,” Tobey recalled. “One person holding up an entire business, it’s just not sustainable. And you can tell the city employees are all frustrated; that must be a hard way to work.”

The uncertainty rippled outward. Performers who had committed to dates had to be canceled and rescheduled, frustrating both artists and audiences. The company tried to press forward with smaller cabarets and rentals, but without the necessary permits, even selling popcorn was off the table. Eventually, Tobey made the painful call to postpone the planned September 27 grand opening and channel all energy into cutting through the red tape.

“It was maddening,” she said. “But stopping was the only way forward. We had to put 100% of our focus into doing whatever it took to get the doors open.”

Opening the doors

Now that the wait is over, Ballyhoo is launching big. The November 1 grand opening begins at 10 a.m. with a ribbon cutting, followed by fun activities and live music spilling through the café. Actor-singers Clark Destin Jones and Emma Maxfield will also appear in character as Hedwig and Yitzhak, teasing Ballyhoo’s first major production, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, opening November 6.

That show will kick off a busy first season of programming. In January, beloved Colorado composer and music director David Nehls will debut his original work Do You Wanna Go? on the café stage, offering an intimate glimpse into the kind of cabaret and new works Ballyhoo hopes to nurture. And in July 2026, the theater will mount a special 30th anniversary production of Rent, directed by original Broadway cast member Rodney Hicks with Nehls as music director.

Tobey said Hicks has been in touch with Jonathan Larson’s sister, Julie Larson, about reimagining the musical for a new generation. “I get goosebumps thinking about it,” she said. “Rent was the Hamilton of my generation. It totally blew us all away and redefined what musical theater was. To bring it here with Rodney at the helm feels historic.”

Beyond those headline shows, Ballyhoo plans to balance Broadway remounts with burlesque, circus cabaret, comedy and original work from local playwrights. Tobey envisions the café stage as a laboratory for informal readings and small-scale performances that could one day graduate to the main theatre.

“We’ve been flooded with interest from artists already,” she said. “In the new year, we’ll be able to start saying ‘yes’ to those collaborations.”

Right now, though, Tobey and her team are focused on making sure people know they are open. “The big thing is just making the community aware that we are actually open, because I think the neighborhood has seen us and are thinking, ‘Are they open? Are they not open?’” Tobey said. “We just did exterior paint to kind of show we are a thing.”

For Tobey, though, the real joy lies in the small moments — seeing her vision finally connect with the community. She recalled one recent afternoon when a man came into the café, ordered a coffee and lingered in the space.

“I’ve been so buried in the minutiae of everything that when I saw a stranger come in off the street, I just marveled at them,” she said. “It was powerful seeing somebody looking around and taking in the space. And then he came up with tears in his eyes and said, ‘I’ve been looking for this kind of space for years. Ever since I moved to Denver, I’ve just haven’t found an inclusive space that I can co-work and see friends.’ That meant the world and is the reason we are here.”