Drive south on University Boulevard past Alameda and the block still reads a little unfinished. A construction fence wraps the corner at Ohio Avenue. Behind it, framing has started to climb where a low brick building with no windows used to sit. Anyone who has lived near Country Club or Wash Park long enough to remember Bonnie Brae Tavern knows exactly which corner this is, and most of them have opinions about what belongs there next.
Here is the part that rarely makes it into the quick version of this story: the corner has been in some state of limbo for four years now, and it will likely be five before anyone actually moves in. That gap, not the finished building, is the real story of what redevelopment looks like on a corridor like this one.
The Closing Nobody Wanted
Bonnie Brae Tavern opened in 1934, during the Depression, and stayed in one family for its entire run. Carl and Sue Dire started it as a roadhouse at 740 South University Boulevard. Their grandsons, Ricky and Michael Dire, were still running it nearly ninety years later when they made the decision to sell. The tavern served its last plate of pizza on June 25, 2022, after 88 years, and the closing made front-page news across Denver because so many people had a personal history with the place.
Michael Dire put it plainly to CBS Colorado on the tavern's final day.
"It's almost like it's not real to me yet."
The property, along with the neighboring Wish Gifts building and its parking, sold for a reported $4.5 million to a joint venture between Alpine Investments and Revesco Properties. Colorado's own U.S. Representative Diana DeGette, who grew up nearby, told reporters at the time that Friday night pizza carryout from Bonnie Brae had been a family tradition. That kind of attachment is exactly why the corner's next chapter has been watched so closely.
Three Years as a Fenced Lot, Then a Fourth
The building didn't come down right away. Concept plans circulated as early as 2020, and the tavern kept operating for roughly two and a half more years after that first filing. Even after the June 2022 closing, the site sat largely untouched. Demolition crews did not clear the building until June 2025, three full years after the last customer walked out the door.
That timeline matters for anyone trying to understand how neighborhood change actually moves. A closing that made headlines in 2022 did not translate into visible construction until 2025, and the finished product is not expected until 2027. For a resident watching this corner on a daily walk or drive, "redevelopment" has meant three years of a quiet lot followed by close to two years of active building, not the fast turnover that renderings sometimes suggest.
What's Actually Being Built
The project has a name now: akin Bonnie Brae, a three-story building at the corner of University and Ohio with 46 residential units ranging from one to three bedrooms, sized between 689 and 1,532 square feet, with private porches and shared outdoor space. Pre-leasing is set to begin this fall, with the developer's own materials pointing to early 2027 for the first move-ins.
One detail is worth sitting with. Early concept documents submitted to the city floated as much as 16,500 square feet of ground-floor retail for the site. The version now under construction has scaled that down to roughly 7,500 square feet, less than half the original figure. Whatever ends up leasing that space, there will be noticeably less street-level commercial square footage than the earliest plans suggested, which matters on a strip where retail has always been part of the daily rhythm rather than an afterthought.
That shrinkage feeds directly into a concern neighbors have already raised in public meetings: that new construction economics tend to push asking rents higher than what long-running, family-owned tenants have historically paid. Nobody can guarantee which businesses will end up in the new retail space once it opens, and city planners don't regulate rents or tenant mix. The Bonnie Brae Tavern's neon sign, which the family had once hoped would be preserved on the new building, remains an open question until the project is closer to finished.
The Rest of the Block Didn't Wait
While the corner rebuilds, the rest of University Boulevard has kept moving. A few of the businesses that give this stretch its character right now:
- Ni Tuyo, a Mexican kitchen at 730 South University Boulevard from the team behind Adelitas Cocina y Cantina and La Doña Mezcaleria, which opened in the same stretch not long after the tavern closed
- Bonnie Brae Ice Cream, the neighborhood's long-running scoop shop on the same block
- Perdida, Homegrown Tap & Dough, Max Gill and Grill, and Reivers Bar & Grill, all regulars on local lists of the area's best-known tables
None of these had to wait for a groundbreaking to keep serving the neighborhood. If anything, they've absorbed some of the foot traffic that used to line up for Bonnie Brae's pizza on a Saturday afternoon, which says something about how a commercial strip actually adapts when its anchor tenant disappears. The block didn't go quiet. It redistributed.
What This Corner Actually Tells You
The lesson here isn't really about one tavern or one apartment building. It's about pace. A closing that feels sudden in the news cycle can still take half a decade to resolve into something new, and the businesses around it don't simply wait out the process. They adjust, some more visibly than others, while the fenced lot in the middle keeps doing exactly what fenced lots do: nothing, for longer than anyone expects.
For residents near Country Club's southern edge, that means the corner at University and Ohio will likely feel unfinished well into 2027. Worth watching for when leasing opens this fall: whether that neon sign the Dire family hoped to preserve actually shows up on the new building, and which of the neighborhood's longtime restaurants end up as its ground-floor neighbors.
If you're thinking about what a changing corridor like this means for property values, timing a move, or simply understanding how a neighborhood absorbs this kind of transition, My Denver Team has been watching Denver's close-in neighborhoods long enough to read these shifts clearly. Contact Us if you'd like a grounded, no-pressure conversation about what's happening on your block.
