A Colfax Avenue thrift store is readying a wardrobe change.

Local real estate investors Guy Carteng and Dan Woodward purchased the Assistance League of Denver’s 8,800-square-foot resale shop on June 8 for $1.65 million. And in the spirit of thrifting, when Carteng sets eyes on 1331 E. Colfax, he sees a way to make something new from something old.

“We’re going after a microbrewery,” Carteng said. “One thought was getting rid of the parking lot and making one big beer garden.”

In fact, Carteng thinks the space is tailor-made for a brewery: basement storage space, ample lighting, eight and a half-foot ceilings and a rooftop fit for patio seating.

Carteng says he had to fend off six offers on the retail strip, which the Assistance League listed with Tanner Fanello and Bob Leino of Fuller Real Estate. The Assistance League purchased the property in 1996 for $340,000.

For the next six months, Carteng is leasing the space back to the Assistance League, which also unloaded a Victorian mansion to consolidate its thrift store and office space in Virginia Village.

Carteng is hoping the delay will give a new user – whether a brewery, a restaurant or another retailer – time to start the permitting process. He’s listing the property with Tyler Bray and Sam Bell with Cushman Wakefield, who also represented the two LLCs that Carteng and Woodward used to buy the property.

“Colfax is my favorite street in Denver,” Carteng said. “I’m trying to buy as many properties as I can on Colfax.”

That includes a bar and restaurant at 8501 E. Colfax, city records show, which another LLC that Carteng manages picked up in 2014 and sold last year. Carteng declined to discuss other properties he owns around town. City records have him listed as one of the managers for an industrial property in Montbello.