Just north of downtown Lakewood is the new 40 West Arts District, centered around the new RTD Lamar St. Station and the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design at Pierce and Colfax. Like Belmar, it's an integral part of the effort to revitalize central Lakewood, but while Belmar has been all about new construction, 40 West has been about repurposing underused retail structures into galleries, studios, brewpubs, and theaters.
If you haven't had a chance to explore this area, well, it's pretty darn cool. As a result of the 2nd annual West Colfax Mural Festival last August, there plenty of public art to see, but I recently spent a Saturday evening at the Edge Theater at 1560 Teller St., taking in an original play by award winning playwright David Adjimi.
The play, Marie Antoinette, billed as "not your father's Marie Antoinette," is by turns wild, fun, surreal, tragic, and horrifying, and I can't recommend it enough.
The Edge Theater itself is an intimate space, well-suited to the production of cutting edge theater, and holds a small art gallery and bar. And the fact that's it's in central Lakewood, just minutes away from Belmar, is fantastic.