Earlier this month, Denver restauranteur Jake Linzinmeir had to say goodbye to the sign waving in front of his Lower Downtown restaurant Jovanina’s Broken Italian for over five years.
The sign was simple. A flag with the logo of a woman with short, dark curly hair with a red flower in it over text that read “Jovanina’s.”
But, technically, he wasn’t supposed to have it up for that long.
He had to take it down or face fines from the city for violating downtown’s specific zoning code on signage.
Jovanina’s, 1520 Blake St., was already fined $150 for the flag last year along with several other restaurants on the same block on Blake Street, causing Linzinmeir to begin the process of getting a new sign to meet the city’s standards. As he waited for his new one approved by the city in March to arrive, he said he got a threat for another fine over the flag, this one totaling $500, which led him to take it down.
Now he’s sitting without a sign to tell customers his business is there at the start of the busier summer season as he has to wait several weeks until the new one arrives.
But it’s not only about the sign, he said.
The situation has led him to see it as a sign that businesses aren’t getting enough support to survive downtown, he said.
“It’s a bigger issue to me,” Linzinmeir said. “This is very symptomatic.”
Denver’s Community Planning and Development notified the business several times of its code violation and issued its first fine on Oct. 4 but has rescinded the fine since the flag was taken down, said spokesperson Ryan Huff in an email.
“There are no forthcoming penalties,” he added.
Jovanina’s flag had been up to tell passersby about the existence of his business through the pandemic and the construction on 16th Street and the recovering number of downtown visitors. It hadn’t been cited by the city until last year.
“Part of the reason we’ve been able to stay open is because I left my sign up,” Linzinmeir said.
LoDo’s zoning code has strict requirements on what kinds of signs businesses are allowed to have facing the street. It states businesses should have three-dimensional signs on the ground floor that reflect the character of the business and are sculptural in nature.
When he opened the restaurant in 2018, Linzinmeir tried to get approval for a vintage electric sign from Telluride that he felt matched the historic nature of the neighborhood.
But he said city planners denied his request and wanted a more sculptural and Italian-themed sign for his Italian restaurant, he recalled, getting advice to find something like a “spaghetti bowl.”
“I thought that was completely ridiculous…” he said. “I’m not going to put a bowl of spaghetti outside my beautiful historic building and that’s insulting to numerous people.”
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Huff said the spaghetti bowl comments “did not come from us.”
LoDo’s design guidelines state a sculptural sign is to “create eye-catching and well-crafted three-dimensional objects to portray a business’ persona or service with as few words as possible.”
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The guidelines were placed to create a pedestrian-level atmosphere that respects LoDo’s industrial and commercial history as well as enhance the vibrancy of the neighborhood.
Linzinmeir said he got advice from city officials at the time to put up a flag, which is allowed as a “temporary sign” for up to 45 days, until he figured something else out.
Then five years passed before anyone said anything.
“We were aware of the flag sign during the pandemic. But we did not receive any complaints that would trigger enforcement and we chose not to proactively enforce because of the pandemic,” Huff said when asked about why the city never cited the business.
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“However, more recently, when we received complaints, we reached out to the business owner to discuss the rules and enforcement,” he added.
City officials have been pushing to revive downtown, especially as 16th Street (which dropped “mall” from its name) is nearly finished with its years of construction that compounded downtown’s pandemic recovery problems.
Downtown’s restaurants are also dealing with stubborn inflation over food costs that have driven up menu prices and the city has one of the highest minimum wages for restaurant staff in the country, leading Colorado to push a controversial bill to allow cities to lower the minimum wage for tipped workers.
Linzinmeir said he wonders why the city cited him and other businesses on the block now when many restaurants are still trying to recover.
The restaurant got city approval in March for a new sculptural sign with their logo on it. It costs about $13,000 to get made, he said.
“With business still being down significantly, it’s probably two or three months worth of potential profit before I even get paid as an owner,” Linzinmeir said.
Outside Jovanina’s Broken Italian, 1520 Blake St., after its flag was taken down on June 4.
Courtesy photo, Jovanina’s Broken Italian
Linzinmeir said he asked a city’s citation officer if he could leave his sign until his new one arrived, but said the city denied his request.
If he didn’t take it down by June 4, he would face a $500 fine. And additional fines after that would have been $999.
“It just seems a little over the top to be threatening people with fines,” he said.
The owner said he considered leaving downtown due to the myriad of issues businesses are facing, but because he owns the building he feels “stuck.”
“When they closed the street on us [for 16th Street construction] and issued these citations, we were going to sell it, but it’s not worth anything,” he said.
Now he wants to see more work from city leaders to not just try to attract businesses back to fill downtown, he said, but do more to keep the ones that are still there.
“Restaurateurs usually are the eternal optimists. It’s gonna get better, it’s gonna get better, it’s gonna get better,” Linzinmeir said. “I really hope it does before it just drains everything.”