A space for creators, by creators: Town Hall Collaborative

The Town Hall Collaborative sign outside the entrance on Santa Fe in Denver.

It’s midday on a Thursday at Town Hall Collaborative and it’s busy. The hodgepodge of “could be your living room” type tables are almost all occupied. Some tables have seemingly attracted folks on laptops, then there’s a group that’s clearly having a book club, and then right in the middle are the owners: Denise and Lauren, with their laptops and a couple of beverages, offering an ecstatic wave when the barista points them out to me. 

After ordering my latte from Queen City, I slide in at the table next to Lauren, right across from Denise, pulling up the recording app on my phone and jumping right into the interview, where I ask them a ton of questions about the venue: from its inception (during the Pandemic) to its Bar menu and even their working dynamic (which seems super cool).

Denise holds my gaze while answering each question, Lauren leans forward when she responds—both fully engaged with every second of our 30-minute conversation. The environment already feels so rooted that I am surprised to learn that the Town Hall Collaborative opened in October 2022. But then Lauren starts sharing the legacy of the space—and it goes back 13 years. 

“I’ve seen and known Denise through two of her three pregnancies,” Lauren says, doing time math and using the birth years of Denise’s children as markers. They have the ease in conversation that you’d expect from that friendship length, jumping in and out of shared stories with warm, genuine appreciation for each other’s role in the steps that led them to the here that is Town Hall Collaborative. 

Sitting with them in this iteration, here feels vibrant and full—a space that’s genuinely open to the community’s use.

“It’s not just a bar, it’s a place for so much more,” Lauren says when talking about their intention with Town Hall. It was during the Pandemic. The best friends were “living very different lives” as a mother-of-three and “being single, at the time, with my dog. We still loved hanging out with each other and just wanted a space that felt connected, also, to the things that we enjoy…where you can go and laugh or cry, where you could have really serious conversations and then, you know, have a great time afterwards because that’s a part of life.” 

Lauren gestures to the stage during the “great time” part of the last sentence, where Town Hall hosts events like comedy nights, book swaps, floral workshops, and—like they’re doing for the Scribbling Club—poetry events. They’re both smiling while Lauren says these events are originating with the community, “like-minded people who see the vision and mission of Town Hall and want to make their own events,” a pattern that started with the space’s set up. 

Lauren shares stories of folks volunteering their time and energy “that didn’t know Denise and I!” They’re thankful for them, though, because “it takes a village to build something like this.”

This, at least in January 2025, has stories around every corner, but let’s focus on a big one: the Bar. 

“Everything behind the Bar is hand-selected,” Denise tells me, saying it includes as many women-owned, BIPOC, and LGBTQIA+ brands as possible. “Prior to opening, we sat down with each distributor, and said, ‘hey, we’re opening this bar, can you bring us a list of all the women-owned, queer-owned, BIPOC-owned [etc] brands?’ They were just like, ‘what?’ And then one of them came up to us and said, ‘thank you so much for asking that, we’d never done that and we should have that list’.”

This is a theme with these two: building the framework for others’ expansion. Lauren said they’ve heard from “a lot of different organizations or people that have grown their clubs or their organizations because we’ve offered space—and a safe space—that they feel comfortable coming to.”

The Scribbling Club falls easily into that category. The Club has met there a few times and our members have loved our time there, so much so that Town Hall has quite kindly agreed to hosting the Club’s first open-to-the-public event. 

That event, the Dead of Winter Poetry Night, is on Feb 18th and starts at 5:30 with a brief writing prompt meditation, then at 6 you’ll get to hear from the event’s featured poets—Sarah LaRue and C E Jensen—and then participate in (or feel free to just listen to!) the open mic.  

Hopefully, these events become a regular occurrence, since Denise and Lauren aren’t planning on slowing down the growth. 

Near the end of our conversation, I ask them what the two-year-future of the space looks like. “There’s all kinds of possibilities, maybe the Marketplace” Denise nods towards the business incubator, “looks really different” or “bringing in more partners like Queen City…But I think at its core, to me, Town Hall is very much an event venue.”

“So,” I ask, “more community? More events and use of the space?”

Lauren picks up my train of thought with: ”More weddings—we do a lot of weddings!”  (Town Hall is a great spot to host a wedding!), which reminds me of a thought she had shared during the background story: “I think if we just make the space that people will want to use it.”

They’ve made the space and if you vibe with their mission, you’ll want to use it. Go spend time in their space! Queen City serves delicious coffee, the Bar offers yummy mocktails/cocktails, the Marketplace is always worth shopping, it’s truly a lovely space to host an event, and the people running the space are so, so wonderful. 

So check it out! Whether you need to get some writing in or want to reconnect with a friend, it’s an incredibly cool spot. Maybe we’ll even see you there on February 18th!