Florist claims rent hike after moving from Brown Palace in Denver

Bouquets owner BJ Dyer has moved his flower shop to the Golden Triangle. (Maia Luem, Business Den)

Brown Palace's business is no longer blooming.

Bouquets, a flower shop that operated in a downtown hotel annex, has moved. Owner BJ Dyer said the hotel is asking him to pay $10,000 a month for about 650 square feet of space.

“If you sell diamonds there, you'll get a good profit,” Dyer said. “Even if we were open 24 hours a day, we wouldn't sell enough flowers to pay $10,000 a month.”

Ms. Dyer moved her 39-year-old florist to an annex building at the corner of 17th Street and Tremont (Holiday Inn) about four years ago after selling Bouquets' Lodo property.

Business was good, he said, but the Brown Palace space itself had air conditioning issues. In the summer, we often worked in temperatures over 90 degrees, and in the winter, the heating stopped working. When the last freeze brought heat back two days later, it created a “tropical storm with boiling water pouring down from the ceiling,” he said.

“Ironically, while all this was happening, we were also negotiating the lease,” he said.

Despite the problems, Dyer said he would have stayed if the rent had remained reasonable.

“We have a new general manager, a very nice woman, and from what I understand her instructions from the owners have been to maximize profits and cut expenses as much as possible,” Dyer said. he said.

When Dyer moved during the pandemic, the hotel had a different general manager, and Dyer said he had an evolving handshake agreement with that general manager. The bouquet provided flowers to the hotel and paid different rents depending on the amount provided.

Brown Palace's new general manager, Jana Smith, stressed in an email to BusinessDen that the club has no contract with Bouquets. She claimed the Bouquets had not paid rent and said: “Technically they were squatters.”

“That doesn't make sense,” Dyer replied to BusinessDen. “Is Palace Brown going to make us squatters for three and a half years? If we were squatters and she came in as a new manager, wouldn't she kick us out in the first month? ”

The former Bouquets space, where the hotel itself operated a flower shop, has remained unused since Dyer moved out.

Brown Palace was purchased by Texas-based Crescent Real Estate in 2018 for $125 million. His Connecticut-based HEI Hotels & Resorts was hired to manage it.

Westword reported last month that the hotel had laid off its bellboys and doormen and hired Chicago-based corporate valet service company SP Plus. Those affected by the layoffs told Westword the decision was a “cost-cutting measure.”

As for Dyer, he has moved Bouquet to 1070 Bannock Street in the Golden Triangle.

Mr. Dyer signed a five-year lease for 2,500 square feet and paid about $4,000, not including common area maintenance fees, he said. He spent less than $10,000 on a simple addition to the space that previously housed a photography studio.

Bouquet's revenue last year was about $1.5 million, which Dyer said was still a “significant” decrease from pre-pandemic numbers.