Casa Bonita

The pink tower you see over in Lakewood belongs to Casa Bonita. The restaurant opened in March of nineteen seventy-four, part of a chain that Bill Waugh had started in Oklahoma City in nineteen sixty-eight. The Lakewood location covered fifty-two thousand square feet and could seat eleven hundred people at once.

Inside, a thirty-foot indoor waterfall drops while trained cliff divers leap from above, imitating the famous divers at the cliffs of Acapulco. The place also offered a cave called Black Bart's, strolling mariachi musicians, and sopapillas with honey after every meal. A two thousand three episode of South Park set its entire storyline at Casa Bonita, introducing the restaurant to a generation of viewers who had never been to Colorado.

The restaurant fell into bankruptcy and closed during the pandemic. In September of two thousand twenty-one, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone agreed to buy it for three point one million dollars. The renovation ended up costing well above forty million dollars.

Casa Bonita reopened with a soft opening on May twenty-sixth, two thousand twenty-three, with better food, the cliff divers restored, and the pink tower still standing above Colfax Avenue.