The Colorado Department of Revenue has seized a Denver barbecue restaurant where employees walked off the job last week, claiming that the owner had withheld wages and failed to pay taxes there and at his other concepts.
A notice posted on AJ’s Pit Bar-B-Q, 2180 S. Delaware St., asserted “delinquent and unpaid taxes” related to the restaurant, which restaurateur Jared Leonard ran for seven years. The notice said the personal property, equipment, furniture, fixtures and inventory would be publicly sold.
Warrants issued by the state revenue department implicate the registered companies of two other former Leonard concepts: Au Feu Brasserie inside of Zeppelin Station (where it was before moving to Washington Park) and Campfire, in Evergreen and Lakewood.
The state will also auction Leonard’s personal property and equipment inside his former Zeppelin Station space at 3501 Wazee St. and at another listed property in Evergreen.
Leonard owes a total $118,562 to the state, according to the department of revenue. State tax investigators are holding auctions at the former location of AJ’s Pit Bar-B-Q to satisfy payment.
Some of Leonard’s former employees told The Denver Post earlier this month that they had walked out of AJ’s, saying he hadn’t made contributions to Social Security and Medicare benefits. AJ’s Pit Bar-B-Q general manager Patrick Klaiber said employees were being personally served letters by the Internal Revenue Service over unpaid taxes.
Klaiber and the rest of the staff quit after their shift on Feb. 28. The state’s department of revenue seized Leonard’s properties the following week.
Leonard had closed his Grabowski’s Pizzeria and Campfire restaurants in Lakewood and Evergreen at the beginning of February. That same month, a Denver District Court judge ordered seizure of his assets at the former Grabowski’s location to satisfy part of a $670,000 fee to award-winning chef Alex Seidel, who’d brought a suit alleging Leonard failed to repay a $155,000 loan.
He similarly owes hundreds of thousands to other lenders, purveyors and landlords who’ve sued him, his concepts and parent companies over the last 20 years, according to court filings.
Leonard’s remaining restaurants are all in the Punta Mita resort community near Puerto Vallarta in Mexico, where he lives.