With permission from a judge, the bankrupt Denver startup Fluid Truck has abandoned two leases in the city as it tries to sell itself to a Utah company for about $10 million.
The company has moved out of 400 W. 48th Ave. — the scene of a previous legal dispute — and 1441 W. 46th Ave. Both are near the intersection of Interstates 25 and 70 on the city’s north side. The former is an office building, the latter a small warehouse.
“We have transitioned to a coworking space in the RiNo neighborhood of Denver, which better suits our current needs,” spokeswoman Emily Allen told BusinessDen.
That has not resulted in any layoffs for the company’s 127 employees, according to Allen.
In asking for permission to abandon its leases and its personal property at those locations, Fluid told a bankruptcy judge in Delaware last month that “the leases…provide no benefit” to the company and abandoning them “will save it significant amounts every month.”
Fluid Truck was founded in Denver in 2016 as Fluid Market, an Uber-for-everything app that allowed users to rent a vast assortment of household items and vehicles. By 2018, it had become Fluid Truck and focused exclusively on vehicle rentals. It has since expanded to other major cities and partnered with Ikea. It raised at least $80 million from investors.
Fluid filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October, after losing $18.7 million in fiscal year 2022 and $20.6 million in 2023. Its interim CEO has said pandemic-era gains led to an “ambitious growth strategy” that failed, causing “a severe liquidity situation” by the summer of this year.
Fluid plans to sell to Kingbee Rentals, a similar company in Utah, for about $10 million. Fluid is waiting to see if there are any higher bidders before asking a judge to approve that deal. A sale hearing is scheduled for Dec. 13 at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware.
Meanwhile, the Denver company has fully listed its assets and debts for the first time. Fluid has $76 million in assets and $34.5 million in liabilities, according to a 350-page court filing. Most of those assets, $54 million, are business losses that Fluid can deduct from future taxes.
Fluid’s time at 400 W. 48th Ave. — the office space it just abandoned — was rocky. The building known as Globe4Hundred was bought in 2021 for $11.2 million by a local trio: Fluid founder James Eberhard; the developer Ryan Arnold, then with Tributary Real Estate and now of Armada Venture Partners; and broker Ken Gooden in the Denver office of JLL.
The plan was for Arnold to manage the property and for Fluid to be its anchor tenant. The latter expanded its space there in 2022, eventually leasing 52,500 of 100,000 square feet. But when Fluid couldn’t or wouldn’t pay rent, the tenant and its landlord had a falling out.
The landlord accused Fluid of expanding beyond its means. In the first public indication that Fluid was nearing bankruptcy, the landlord asked a judge to let a receiver run it in March, since it was “experiencing financial difficulty and/or mismanagement” under Eberhard.
Fluid, meanwhile, accused its landlord of misleading it into leasing more and more space there, in part by failing to mention that a former hotel was being converted into transitional housing next door. The two sides settled their dispute out of court in the spring of this year.
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