Tom’s Starlight Closes on East Colfax in Denver

“I’m very proud of what we did here,” says Tom Messina, who opened Tom’s Starlight at 601 East Colfax Avenue last September. For two decades, he’d run the Googie-style building as Tom’s Diner, a 24/7 staple in Capitol Hill.

But by 2019, he was ready to retire and was in talks with a housing developer when “a Goody Two Shoes showed up,” he told Westword last year, referring to a neighborhood petition to get historic designation for the building, which would have prevented its destruction — and also greatly reduced the amount Messina could get for the property.

Instead, in a win-win effort, Historic Denver engineered a purchase of Messina’s property by history-friendly developer GBX Group, which not only secured protective landmark designation for the building but transformed the former…