After nearly three decades in business, the Wash Park Grille has likely served its last meal.
“I’m just done, I can’t do it anymore,” said owner Jeff Estey. “I have to liquidate everything.”
“I’m trying not to file bankruptcy. I want to pay the employees, I want to pay everybody — my vendors, everybody. I do not want to file for bankruptcy, and I am fighting as hard as I can to not file for bankruptcy. I want to get everyone squared and get out of this situation.”
The Italian restaurant at 1096 S. Gaylord St. opened in 1997 and was owned by Estey and Greg Sauber until the latter’s unexpected death in 2022. In recent months, the Wash Park Grille and its neighboring sister restaurant, Agave Taco Bar, have been seized by the city and the state for unpaid taxes. They currently owe $118,000 and have been closed since Feb. 4.
All the while, Sauber’s estate has been suing Estey for allegedly stealing $1 million in life insurance proceeds rather than using the cash to buy out the estate’s share of the restaurants and their real estate. A four-day jury trial is scheduled for the end of May downtown.
In the meantime, the estate is seeking an emergency receivership for the businesses.
“In the aftermath of Mr. Sauber’s passing, it has become clear not only that Mr. Estey is unable to run the LLCs, but also how detrimental his poor decision-making has become,” lawyers for Sauber’s estate wrote to Denver District Judge Andrew Luxen last week.
“The term ‘bleeding money’ is an accurate depiction of the current status of the LLCs.”
The estate claims that while “the financial records of the LLCs are a disaster,” it recently gained access to bank records showing that between Sauber’s death and last December’s first tax seizure, “Mr. Estey treated the business credit card as his personal piggy bank.” It found trips to Paris, Cancun, casinos in Las Vegas, and hotels and strip clubs in the records.
“So, I had some personal spending. Is that a crime?” Estey said of the allegations. “Greg had personal spending too. It’s not even personal spending. We owned businesses together for 20 years. We’d say, ‘Hey, let’s go here or go there,’ and we did it.” Estey is countersuing the estate for $170,000 that he claims Sauber took from their businesses before his death.
“The estate wants to keep pounding me down, making me the villain,” he said. “I didn’t ask for Greg to die. I didn’t ask for my partner of 28 years to just die and for it to all fall on me.”
During an interview last week, Estey repeatedly took issue with the first line of the estate’s motion for a receiver — “This dispute involves Gregory Sauber’s legacy, which has been run into the ground by his former business partner” — and its singular focus on Sauber.
“This is the hangup for the estate, his legacy? It’s our legacy. He and I went through three recessions, COVID, and we survived. Then, once he died, the (expletive) hit the fan.
“Everybody is blaming me and making me the fall guy,” he said. “I’m just doing what I can.”
Both Estey and the Sauber estate are resolved to shut down Wash Park Grille and Agave for good, sell 1096 S. Gaylord, and move on. But the estate doesn’t trust Estey to do that, fearing he will borrow against the building or unload it quickly and cheaply to pay off his debts. For that reason, the estate wants a court-appointed caretaker to oversee the sale process.
It is a process that has already begun. After it was shown to some Estey acquaintances who are still considering whether to buy it, the property hit the market last Thursday.
“The phone is pretty busy so far,” said broker Jeff Hallberg of Lee & Associates, “so we’ll see what happens.”
Some interested parties have considered splitting the Grille property in two, creating three restaurants in all, according to Hallberg. He said the real estate “is in great condition” due to Estey’s improvements over the years and “really kind of sells itself” as a result.
“There’s not a whole lot of restaurant vacancy on that block, it’s pretty coveted, and it’s one of the more desirable, historic neighborhoods in Denver,” the broker explained.
The property is just under 9,000 square feet, including a 1,400-square-foot office on its second floor. Estey, who along with Sauber bought it for $1 million in 1998, wants $6.5 million.
The Wash Park Grille’s surviving owner began waiting tables there at age 25. He is 53 now and spoke with pride last week about the restaurant and its block of South Gaylord.
“I accomplished all that I set out to do,” Estey said. “It is the street that I wanted it to be.”
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