Jamestown Mercantile Cafe Raises $1.5 Million to Save Historic Building

How much does it cost to keep the lights on in a town where the population is smaller than a high school football team?

Rainbow Shultz says the answer is $1.5 million.

That’s the price tag for the building housing the Jamestown Mercantile Cafe, a structure that has stood for roughly 130 years. It’s the only restaurant, the only bar, and a music venue that turns away half the bands who want to play there. Shultz, who has run the cafe since 2009, isn’t waiting for a lottery win. She’s asking for 1.5 million people to give one dollar each.

It sounds like a gimmick until you look at the math.

As of late May, Shultz’s nonprofit, The Jamestown Home for Wayward Artists, Pirates and the Somewhat Feral, had raised $33,000. That’s 2.2% of the asking price. It’s a start, but it’s not even close to the finish line. The nonprofit secured an exclusive right to purchase the property from Loupee Burton Jr. for the next 11 months. That gives them a year to scrape together the cash before "someone with a suitcase full of cash sweeps in" and buys it out from under them.

Let’s put that $33,000 in perspective. It came from 130 donors. The average contribution is $250. Most are giving between $100 and $250. Shultz notes that most donors are in similar financial positions to her. One person gave $15,000. One person gave $2 from Australia. It’s a grassroots effort, and it’s tight.

The building itself is the anchor. Built around 1896, it sits on Olde Stage Road, about 14 miles up from Boulder. It houses the cafe, four apartments, and two adjacent buildings rented to local artists. If the nonprofit fails, the building goes on the open market. The fear isn’t just losing the cafe; it’s losing the community hub that defines Jamestown, a community of just 300 people.

Shultz isn’t just relying on locals. She’s leveraging the town’s most famous musical export. Gregory Alan Isakov, who played open mics there in the early 2000s while studying horticulture at Naropa College, is helping. He still sells vegetables from his Starling Farm east of Boulder, but he’s also donating $1 from each ticket sold for his summer shows to the cause. He’ll play a few shows this summer, minus the ones he does with the Colorado Symphony, to keep the cash flow going.

The exclusivity deal with Burton Jr. is the lifeline. It stops other bidders from circling. But 11 months is a long time to raise over a million dollars when you’re starting from a base of $33,000. The nonprofit needs to convert those casual donors into serious contributors. They need Isakov’s ticket sales to add up. They need a miracle or a lot of small, consistent payments.

On paper, the deal is solid. The building is historic. The community is invested. In practice, raising $1.47 million in less than a year is a steep climb for a town where the average donation is $250.

If they fail, the Mercantile becomes just another property. The cafe closes. The bar goes dark. The apartments might stay, but the social glue of Jamestown dissolves. If they succeed, they preserve the history. They retain the only restaurant in town. They maintain the place where everybody knows your name.

The clock started ticking on May 1. It’s now late May. You have about ten months left to find 1.5 million dollars.