Hideaway Bar and Grill Suffers Complete Loss After Second Fire

The smell of charred wood and stale smoke still clung to the air at Hideaway Bar and Grill on Jerry Street, a heavy, acrid scent that seemed to settle into the dry Colorado dust. It wasn’t just the smell of a kitchen that had burned; it was the smell of a community’s loss of face, of a local institution that had stood for fifteen years suddenly reduced to a skeletal frame. The Stroh family had spent a decade and a half building a reputation for made-from-scratch dishes, for warmth, for a place where neighbors gathered. Then came the fire on Tuesday morning, damaging the back of the building, forcing a temporary close, and offering a fragile hope of reopening. That hope lasted less than twenty-four hours.

By Wednesday morning, a second fire had ripped through the same structure, climbing to the second floor and leaving the building with more damage than before. It was a “complete loss,” Bob Stroh said, standing next to the wreckage of his life’s work. He’s been in the restaurant business for forty years, starting with corporate chains before he and his wife, Becky, put their heart and soul into this specific spot on Jerry Street. Now, it feels like it’s all been taken away in the blink of an eye.

The Castle Rock Police Department is pursuing leads, treating the initial blaze as suspicious and now investigating the second one. An individual has been taken into custody on other charges and is currently considered a person of interest. But for Bob and Becky, the legal details are secondary to the immediate, crushing weight of the situation. There’s no electricity, no gas, and no kitchen to speak of. The owners had hoped to rebuild, to fix the kitchen, to get back to serving the community that had supported them. Now, they don’t know what they’re going to do.

The human cost is immediate and stark. Twenty-one employees lost their jobs between the two fires. These aren’t just numbers on a page; they’re people with bills to pay, living expenses to cover, and paychecks that have suddenly vanished. Bob’s thoughts are with them, but the uncertainty is paralyzing. They can’t wait for an insurance claim to trickle in; they need help now. To that end, the couple launched a GoFundMe to support the restaurant’s employees, with the explicit goal of helping workers cover living expenses while they are without paychecks.

If you look closely at the charred beams of the second floor, you can see the scale of the setback. It’s not just a building; it’s a livelihood. The fire left the restaurant’s 21 employees without a job, and the owners said the workers still have bills and living expenses to pay. They can’t wait for whatever may come from the insurance claim. Bob said he was encouraged that they were going to reopen as quickly as possible after the first blaze, but this second fire puts a different twist on it. He doesn’t know what he can do for them now.

The warmth that once filled the dining room is gone, replaced by the cold reality of a “complete loss.” The pair is trying to piece together what happened, trying to understand why a place that had survived one fire would be struck again so soon. But for now, the focus is on the twenty-one people who relied on Hideaway for their own livelihoods. The GoFundMe is a start, a small beacon in the smoke, but it doesn’t replace the steady rhythm of a working kitchen or the sound of a busy dining room. It just helps them breathe a little easier while they figure out what comes next.