Aimee Valdez descended down the stairs and “into the guts” of her downtown Golden restaurant, rattling off the old ghost stories and historic lore that she and her husband, Dean, have mentally compiled about the storied building over the years.
Upstairs, diners grabbing a late lunch washed down the Old Capitol Grill’s smokehouse grub with ice cold suds. In the room below their feet, Aimee unlatched an aged wooden door built into the basement’s brick walls. Dean crouched his way inside and shuffled around kegs to show the room’s size and purpose, a slight chill creeping out the open door.
Just like the name “Coors” engraved on the building’s exterior, the basement keg cooler brimming with antiquity offered another hint at the site’s 150-year-old past.
“Back in the day, if you brewed it, you had to sell it,” Aimee said.
The Coors Brewing Company sold its beer from that very spot during some of its earliest years, the couple said proudly from the former Coors building turned restaurant. Although Aimee and Dean struck out on their own roughly a decade ago, the couple spent the bulk of their careers working with, or for, Coors.
Dean, whose father worked for the Coors brewery, followed in his dad’s footsteps starting with summer jobs, and then a 20-year career with Coors. He also chairs the Golden Chamber of Commerce’s board. Aimee’s professional relationship with Coors began when she worked for a public relations agency helping introduce its beer to the Michigan market. Coors recruited her in-house in 1990. She worked for the company either full-time, or as an independent consultant, until 2016.
Somehow, Aimee and Dean said, they got into the restaurant and bar business. They opened a liquor store in 2013 before opening multiple restaurants in Golden. All serve Coors.
“We bleed Coors red,” Dean said, adding that Coors has its naysayers in town, but not him.
“You should bow to that brewery every day, because without Coors here, this town…
Read the full article here
