The Red Room - Denver

Design Proposal for the Red Room For Design of Restaurant and Bar Finish Details and Fixtures


Prepared by
Patrick Ryan
President, GOOG, Inc.




July 25, 2001

Proposal


Date: July 25, 2001


Project: Red Room




Description: The Red Room, a new restaurant and bar that is soon to open in a very predominate location on Colfax and Logan in Denver is an exciting and potentially very successful venture that promises a fresh, yet accessible take on the age-old notion of the comfortable neighborhood tavern.

At this stage, the overall concept for this space has been addressed and initially described as “a place where people can come for lunch and drinks that carries on a traditional Colfax-like establishment while updating itself to a contemporary and diverse clientele” or something like that. I am paraphrasing here.

The operative concept, I believe, is re-invention. It is the re-invention of the traditional Colfax bar and grill to a more warmer, more friendly, more finished version of the traditional. The traditional is still alive and valid, but the Red Room turns up the volume a notch and creates a more personal space.

Design becomes not a focus but an accessory. It is the slick new shoes on the old pro so to speak. This means, the interior design of the Red Room should reflect a semi-historical feeling of the popular lounge minus the toothless barfly who inhabits a seat at the bar all day spouting about his days as a “big movie director in Hollywood – back in the days…”

Additionally, there should be a peek towards the future. It would be a mistake to simply rely on modern culture’s neo-take on “retro-lounge” which has been done over and over in bars across the country with widely varying degrees of authenticity and pseudo-hipless. Trying to recreate the 50’s is not an option. Using fixtures and materials that hark back to the bomb-era cocktail bar is OK if you can upgrade that notion to a new, more simpler and critically edited version. Otherwise, the design will never allow the Red Room to make that big step forward into the future of Colfax eating and drinking establishments. It would be a one-liner; great when you first walked in, then slowly becoming fussy and tired after a couple of visits.



A simple, easy-to-follow menu serving great lunches and late dinners would also be a most-welcome addition to the neighborhood. With the Wynkoop’s reputation and attention to bar and restaurant details, this should pose no problem.




Objective: GOOG’s objective in working on the design of the Red Room is to collaborate with you to create a space where the location and relation to the past, present, and future are unknowable. It is our desire to design and pick architectural and finish details that build a bar and restaurant that nods at the “Red Room Theme”. This would be manifested in terms of a lighting scheme that did, in fact, create a red glow that does evoke a time and period in Colfax’s red-light history of a time of debauchery and mystique. It is a scheme that does transform the


Audience: The new Red Room clientele are Senators and Representatives on lunch break, who are tired of the City Grille’s pathetic service and tired menu. They are the young, fly Capitol Hill art students and urban-fashion cognoscenti who are looking for a good cosmopolitan or scotch and soda. Also, because a bar like this has the ability to generate its own popular street buzz, a large demographic of downtowners and early adopters will catch wind of the vibe and make a point of checking out “the Room”.




Patrick Ryan
President, GOOG, Inc.