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El Paso County’s oldest building has been imbued with a breath of new life.
Echo Architecture and Interiors bought 2752 W. Colorado Ave. in December 2021 and revitalized the space, called The Sluice, to serve as a communal spot for locals, creatives and visitors.
The 12,000-square-foot building houses small businesses, artist studios, a coffee shop, Story Coffee‘s second location, an art gallery, Surface Gallery and Echo Architecture and Interiors. It also features a workshop, breakroom and meeting room for its businesses and artists as well as a tiered seating area open to the public and available to rent for events.
The Sluice, named for a tool miners used to filter gold out of soil and water, will celebrate its grand opening Friday and Saturday.
Constructed in 1859, according to Old Colorado City History Center’s walking tour app, the building has lived many lives.
The Sluice, pictured Thursday, in Old Colorado City is the former Army Surplus building along Colorado Avenue.
Originally a general store that served miners, the building was known as “developer’s corner,” said Ryan Lloyd, founder of Echo Architecture and Interiors and owner of the building.
Its facade was adorned with arched windows to display the use of the sandstone quarried from Red Rock Canyon to attract developers to the area, Lloyd said.
But sandstone is a poor building material, he added, and the arched windows, visible in black and white photos of the building, were eventually torn down.
Other clues in the bowels of the building echo its past.
A customer works Thursday inside the second Story Coffee location inside The Sluice building in Old Colorado City.
A narrow set of stairs leads to a dank, low-ceiling basement that is thought to be a walled-up entrance to underground tunnels that once led to the city’s seedier side of booze and brothels in the 1800s.
A metal gun safe on the building’s main floor points to its days as an army surplus store, Old Colorado City Surplus.
Lloyd and his wife, Valerie, who oversees Surface Gallery and the Sluice’s studio spaces, live several blocks from the building.
Before the Lloyds, the building’s owner used the space to run his online business.
The Sluice is home to Echo Architecture and Interiors, on the left, and offers small studio spaces for artists on the right.
“The whole building was storage for books,” Ryan said. “Literally chest-high boxes of books with like teeny little paths between them.”
During walks through their neighborhood, Ryan and Valerie would peek into the windows of the building dreaming of what it could become one day.
Ryan and Valerie slid a letter under the door offering to buy the building, something they’d never done.
Six months later the couple received a call in response — the answer was no.
Years went by and in 2021 Ryan discovered the building was under contract, but the deal fell through. He managed to arrange a meeting and put in an offer. This time, it worked.
“At the closing, he brought the letter that we had put under the door,” Ryan said. “He remembered us, and he never told us that he knew it was us … but he did. And he had that letter laminated.”
Tyler Black works the counter at the second Story Coffee location inside The Sluice building Thursday, April 6, 2023, in Old Colorado City. (The Gazette, Christian Murdock)
The Sluice’s grand opening will feature food trucks on the street with live music Friday and a guided tour and barista showdown Saturday. Admission is free with a chance to see Surface Gallery’s three exhibits and visit the studio spaces.
“The goal being creativity and the people that are going to come through here,” Valerie said about The Sluice. “Just to find beauty in people and creativeness.”
