As recently as this past February, the corner of University and Ohio still looked like a rendering stapled to a construction fence. A clean architectural drawing of a three-story building with big windows and street-level shops, propped in front of a lot that, at the time, still hadn't seen the demolition it needed to move forward. That sign has been promising a finished building for longer than most Bonnie Brae residents probably realize.
The same month the tavern behind that fence closed for good, a different restaurant three doors down was getting ready to open. Ni Tuyo, a modern Mexican spot from the team behind Adelitas Cocina Y Cantina and La Doña Mezcaleria, opened at 730 S. University Blvd. around the same time Bonnie Brae Tavern served its last pizza on June 25, 2022. One business took a matter of months to go from idea to open doors. The other has now taken longer to get through permitting and site work than it took to raise the funding, hire an architect, and unveil renderings in the first place. That gap is the actual story of this corner, and it tells you more about how Bonnie Brae works than the finished building eventually will.
What's Actually Standing There Right Now
The tavern at 740 S. University Blvd. was a Bonnie Brae fixture for 88 years, opened in 1934 by Carl and Sue Dire and run by their descendants until the family made the decision to close it in 2022. Alpine Investments and Revesco Properties bought the 0.72-acre site for roughly $144 per square foot, an acquisition that included the tavern building itself, the neighboring Wish Gifts building at 750 S. University Blvd., and the parking that sat behind both. The project has a name now, akin Bonnie Brae, and a set of renderings that have been public since 2024. As of February 2026, the reporting on the site was clear that it still did not have a finished building, or even a confirmed demolition date for the structures standing on the lot.
That's not a complaint about the developers moving slowly on purpose. Big infill projects in established neighborhoods take longer than anyone announces up front, and this one is no exception. It's simply the current, verifiable state of the corner: a sign, a set of plans, and a building that hasn't come down yet.
Every Deadline This Project Has Set for Itself
Here's what the project's own public timeline looks like, in order:
- 2024: Alpine Investments unveils the akin Bonnie Brae plans, with an estimated completion of the first quarter of 2025.
- Spring 2025: A construction tracking update pegs the start of actual construction for April 2025, with completion pushed to the first quarter of 2026.
- February 2026: A rendering sign goes up on site, but construction still hasn't started. Demolition of the existing structures is described as expected "soon," not underway.
- April 2026: The developer's own leasing site is live, stating that pre-leasing begins in fall 2026, with move-ins slated for early 2027.
Line those up and the project's own stated finish line has moved from early 2025 to sometime in 2027, a slip of roughly two years measured from its first public estimate, all before a single wall has gone up. None of that means the building won't happen. Alpine Investments and Revesco are established local developers, and the plans themselves are specific: somewhere between 46 and 48 units across more than 15 floorplans, ranging from 689 to 1,532 square feet, with about 7,500 square feet of ground-floor retail. There's also a small, human detail worth knowing if you grew up walking past this corner: Michael Dire, whose grandparents opened the tavern, has said the plan is to keep the tavern's old neon sign on the new building. If that holds, the corner will eventually carry a physical thread back to what it used to be, even after everything behind that sign is new.
But "eventually" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, and if you live in Bonnie Brae, planning your sense of the neighborhood around a date that has already moved twice is a losing bet.
Meanwhile, Three Doors Down
While all of that has been working its way through financing and permitting, Ni Tuyo has spent four years just being a restaurant. It's run by Nathan Ayala-Schmit, son-in-law of chef Silvia Andaya, whose family also operates Adelitas Cocina Y Cantina and La Doña Mezcaleria elsewhere in Denver. The menu leans on molcajetes, a list that runs 25 to 30 mezcals and 20 to 25 tequilas, and recipes the family describes as generations old. It opened within weeks of the tavern's closure and has spent the years since building the kind of regular following that still shows up near the top of local restaurant rankings for the neighborhood in 2026.
That timeline is the real contrast. A restaurant with no rendering sign, no multi-year construction tracker, and no pre-leasing announcement went from concept to a going concern faster than the apartment project three doors over has gone from concept to broken ground. Neither business is doing anything wrong. They're just operating on completely different clocks, and only one of those clocks is visible from the sidewalk.
The Rest of the Block Never Needed a Rendering
Walk a little further down University and you'll find the businesses that have quietly kept this stretch functioning the entire time the tavern site has sat behind its fence. Bonnie Brae Ice Cream, open since 1986, is still scooping the same homemade flavors it always has, a few doors from a lot that's changed ownership, changed plans, and changed timelines twice since 2022. Katherine's French Bakery & Cafe has been serving pastries and lunch on this corridor for more than a decade without a single press release about it.
None of that is a coincidence. Small, owner-operated businesses on this stretch don't need entitlements, construction financing, or a multi-phase permitting process to open, close, or simply keep going. They respond to whether people show up. The apartment project responds to a much longer list of variables, most of which have nothing to do with how well the neighborhood is doing and everything to do with financing timelines, contractor availability, and material costs that are largely invisible from University Boulevard.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
If you've been waiting for the akin Bonnie Brae project to finish before you decide the corner has "come back," you may be waiting past 2027, if the pattern of the last two years holds. That's worth knowing simply so you're not surprised the fourth time the completion estimate moves.
In the meantime, the more useful read on this block isn't the construction sign. It's the businesses that never needed one. Ni Tuyo's patio, Bonnie Brae Ice Cream's evening line, Katherine's lunch crowd, these are the actual, current signals of how this stretch of University is doing, and they've been sending a pretty consistent one for four years running. The apartment building will eventually add something real to that mix, roughly 7,500 square feet of new ground-floor retail and dozens of new neighbors within walking distance of the park. When it opens is genuinely anyone's guess right now. What the corner is like to live near in the meantime is not a guess at all. It's the same as it's been since 2022, minus one tavern and plus one taco spot.
If you're already living in Bonnie Brae and keeping half an eye on how the neighborhood is changing, or if you're weighing what a home near this corridor is actually worth watching for versus what's just noise, Julie Winger has been tracking central Denver's established neighborhoods long enough to tell the difference. Schedule a neighborhood consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
