Parker coffee shop says bridge work cut off access, slashed revenue

Construction on Twenty Mile Road has cut off access to a Parker coffee shop, and the owner says the change has already pushed her business into survival mode. Shelby Varra said Perfect Blend Coffee & Cocktails lost both primary entrances to its parking lot when cones went up on March 23 for a three-phase bridge rehabilitation over Sulphur Gulch, with northbound traffic shifted into the southbound lanes.

Varra said the disruption has driven at least a 30% drop in revenue since the project began. She said the shop has had to cut employee hours, and that she can no longer pay herself while trying to cover bills and support two children and a third on the way. A regular customer, Allyson Grimme, said the detour has made getting to the shop harder, adding to the strain on a small business already operating inside a growing apartment complex.

The Town of Parker told CBS Colorado it did not warn Perfect Blend beforehand because it did not realize a business was there. Town officials said they had mistakenly assumed the coffee shop was an amenity for the apartment complex rather than a public retail tenant. The town has described the work as a bridge rehabilitation project on Twenty Mile Road over Sulphur Gulch, and its travel advisory says construction activity began March 23 with Jalisco International as the contractor.

Perfect Blend Coffee & Cocktails was founded by Varra and her mother in 2024 inside Watermark at the Twenty Mile, a 294-unit Class A multifamily community at the southeast corner of East Main Street and Twenty Mile Road. Thompson Thrift said the shop opened to the public on March 22, 2024, and occupies a 1,345-square-foot corner space.

The dispute lands in a town where roadwork is already a familiar cost of growth. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated Parker’s population at 65,473 in 2024, while the town says its incorporated population was about 72,147 as of Jan. 1, 2026. Parker officials also say the Twenty Mile Road bridge rehabilitation is one of several active capital projects, raising the possibility that other businesses along major corridors could face similar access problems as construction continues.