It might seem like a gamble, but brothers Tyler and Jeremy Fey are betting that Central City is ready to become an arts hub.
A tourist town in the 1970s and ‘80s, the city of about 700 embraced legalized gambling in the ‘90s. In the last few years, business has dwindled, and commercial vacancies have increased.
It’s sad for Jeremy, who remembered visiting the town often growing up.
“We’d always come up here for the candy apples, the mine shaft tours, the family photos in the old jail cells, those kinds of things,” he said. “Whenever we had family or friends in town, this was kind of a staple for us to take them to.”
But he hadn’t been back to the town since the early 1990s — until 2016, when Tyler took over booking for The Scarlet, a vacant Central City casino-turned-music venue.
“I thought it was going to be a pretty daunting task being that the city was pretty vacant at the time,” said Tyler, who took over the concert production company Feyline, from their father, Barry Fey in 2012. “But we actually started seeing some great success up there, really seeing an energized crowd on Friday and Saturday nights. Something the city hadn’t seen in a long time.”
It was on one of those nights that Jeremy came up to check out a show. Seeing crowds hungry for entertainment, he saw the promise of Central City.
“It was really a call to action for me to fill up some of these buildings and bring some arts and entertainment and culture -- on top of what already exists -- to Central City,” said Jeremy, who moved to the town last year to start the arts place maker and development company Central Presents.
Building on what the town already has is key, the brothers said. That’s why one of their first moves was to bring back the music fest Central Jazz.
“There’s a lot of music in Colorado,” Tyler said. “We’re the biggest per capita music market in the country. However, we don’t have a New Orleans-esque jazz festival. That’s something that’s kind of lacking out here.”
Central Jazz ended it’s nearly two-decade run in 1992, a year after gambling was legalized. The updated festival will not be based on its predecessor, Tyler said. Instead of a more traditional jazz feel, it will feature a highly eclectic lineup with nods to rock and funk.
They are also working with the town’s longtime arts organization, Central City Opera.
“The cultural centerpiece of the town is the Central City Opera,” Jeremy said.
But the opera house itself is only in use about eight weeks each year, he said. Helping Central City Opera utilize its facilities more fully is high on the priority list, as well as creating new partnership opportunities. They are also working with Central City Opera to launch a new plein air art festival in September.
With 60 percent of the town’s commercial core vacant, a revitalization is overdue, Jeremy said. But that doesn’t mean turning their backs on the gaming industry, which currently represents about 85 percent of Central City’s revenue.
“That’s a big audience,” he said. “And just because you like to play slot machines and black jack doesn’t mean you don’t like music, you don’t like paintings, you don’t like art.”
In the next five years, Jeremy said he’d like to see restaurants, galleries, and music venues in those vacant buildings along the main streets. Then a small grocery store and more hotels.
Next up, artist residencies and live/work spaces filling the town’s warehouse district. Further down the line, maybe an arts academy.
It may sound visionary, but to Jeremy, it’s just practical.
As an example he referenced the Gilded Garter stage inside what was most recently Doc Holliday’s Casino.
“The likes of Bob Dylan played on that stage,” he said, referencing the 1960 show. “So a lot of these (places) tell you what they should be. It doesn’t take a visionary, it takes a practitioner to fill them up appropriately.”
