The Tattered Cover is closing its Cherry Creek location, removing to Colfax. The Fourth Story restaurant is closing, since the Colfax location in the renovated Lowenstein theatre doesn't have four storeys, and frankly I don't think the store as a whole is far behind. It might survive in LoDo and Highlands Ranch, for downtown and architecture and hordes of children, but how the store can survive without the Cherry Creek demographic, within that shopping district, without those numbers of passersby, I do not know.
I don't know of another independent, adult, new-book bookstore in Denver. Lots of used book bookstores--hooray for that stretch of Broadway--and there's the Bookies, independent sellers of children's books, and the Barnes & Noble downtown to threaten the LoDo store, and the Barnes & Noble on Colorado Boulevard that must have contributed to the decline of the Cherry Creek store, and the other B&Ns and Borders. But so much for independence in a metropolitan area of two million people.
While it survives, I will patronize the Colfax location enthusiastically, and if the relocation of the Tattered Cover and the rejuvenation of Colfax build on each other, well and good. But does the TC have the time to wait for the new housing (more traffic) and high-end housing (moneyed traffic) to be completed and lived in? Does the rest of the city believe, as I and many in my neighborhood do, that Colfax is grittily vibrant and full of possibility, rather than scary and suitable only to be avoided?