Walk south on University Boulevard from Ohio to Exposition and you will pass a construction fence that has been part of the block longer than some of the businesses around it. If you have lived in Bonnie Brae for more than a few years, you already know what used to sit behind that fence. If you moved in more recently, you may only know the hole in the streetscape and wonder why it took so long to fill.
The lot at 740 S. University Blvd. was Bonnie Brae Tavern for 88 years. It has been an active construction site, an empty building, or a fenced-off pause for most of the last four years. That gap between closing and rebuilding is the real story on this block, and it explains a lot about why the corner feels unfinished even as the rest of University Boulevard has kept moving without it.
The Corner Sat Idle Longer Than the Headlines Implied
When Bonnie Brae Tavern closed on June 25, 2022, the coverage at the time made it sound imminent: the building would be demolished, the neon sign salvaged, apartments would follow. 9News reported that owners Ricky and Michael Dire, whose grandparents Carl and Sue Dire opened the restaurant in 1934, had sold the 0.72-acre parcel to developers Churchill Bunn of Alpine Investments and Rhys Duggan of Revesco Properties for $4.5 million.
The demolition did not happen right away. The site had actually been moving toward this outcome since 2019, when the Dires first applied for a certificate of non-historic status, the paperwork that clears a building for eventual demolition without a landmark fight. An early concept plan floated in 2020 called for a 43-unit building. None of that broke ground for years. It took until roughly June 2025, three years after the tavern poured its last pizza, for demolition to actually happen on site. The building sat closed, then partially standing, for longer than most residents probably expected when they read that first round of closing-week stories.
That lag matters if you live nearby, because it means the corner has been an open question for most of the time your household has owned or rented in the neighborhood. It is not that redevelopment stalled. It is that the timeline between announcement and visible change on a project like this runs on a different clock than the news cycle around a beloved restaurant closing.
What's Rising There Now
The project has a name: akin Bonnie Brae. As of early 2026, Naked Denver's coverage described a three-story, 46-to-48-unit apartment building with ground-floor retail, a modest step up from the 43 units first floated back in 2020. Floorplans are expected to range from one to three bedrooms, sized between roughly 689 and 1,532 square feet.
The detail that seems to matter most to longtime residents is smaller than the unit count: multiple reports on the project note that developers intend to keep the tavern's original neon sign somewhere on the new building. Whether that ends up being a wall-mounted relic or something more functional, it is the one piece of continuity the project has promised, on a corner that otherwise looks nothing like it did a decade ago.
Here is the timeline in order, since the story has moved in fits and starts rather than one clean arc:
- April 2019: the Dire family applies for non-historic status on the building, the first formal step toward eventual demolition.
- Early 2020: an initial concept plan surfaces calling for a three-story, 43-unit mixed-use building.
- June 25, 2022: Bonnie Brae Tavern closes after 88 years in the same family.
- Roughly June 2025: the building comes down, three years after closing.
- Early 2026: renderings and branding for akin Bonnie Brae are on display, with the unit count now at 46 to 48 and construction visibly underway.
If you have been waiting for this corner to look like something again, that five-step gap is the honest answer for why it has taken this long.
The Replacement Energy Showed Up a Few Doors Down, Not On the Lot Itself
While the tavern site sat fenced and quiet, the neighborhood's dining identity did not wait around. Ni Tuyo opened at 730 S. University Blvd., practically next door to the old tavern footprint, with a mezcal bar and a menu built around molcajetes and Mexican charcuterie. It comes from the team behind Adelitas Cocina y Cantina and La Doña Mezcaleria, with chef Silvia Andaya and her son-in-law Nathan Ayala-Schmit running the concept. The idea behind it, as Ayala-Schmit has described it, was to take generations-old family recipes already in rotation at their other restaurants and give them a dedicated home in what he called a landmark neighborhood for Denver.
That distinction is worth sitting with. The most visible new anchor on this stretch of University Boulevard did not wait for the old anchor's replacement to finish. It filled in around the construction fence instead. If you are looking for where Bonnie Brae's dining scene actually gained ground over the last few years, it is not on the lot everyone was watching. It is a few storefronts over, on a menu with 25 to 30 mezcals and a small, rotating list of tequilas.
What Never Left
Not everything on this block has been in flux. Bonnie Brae Ice Cream, open since 1986 at 799 S. University, is still making its flavors on site the same way it always has, and it remains the kind of place where a summer evening walk to Bonnie Brae Park ends with a cone rather than a plan. The park itself, the elliptical green space that gives the neighborhood its unusual curved streets, still hosts the Bonnie Brae Neighborhood Association's signature picnic every September, a tradition the volunteer-run BBNA has kept going since the group formed in the late 1990s.
The rest of the block has kept its own rhythm too. Broderick, Homegrown Tap & Dough, and a handful of other spots along University continue to draw the same happy-hour and weekend-brunch crowd they always have, independent of whatever is happening behind the construction fence a block away. None of that identity depended on one restaurant or one redevelopment. It is the reason the neighborhood has felt stable through a four-year stretch that, on paper, involved the loss of an 88-year institution.
Parking along the commercial stretch of University still runs tight, especially at peak dinner hours, and the residential side streets are the better bet if you are willing to walk half a block and keep an eye out for street sweeping signs.
What This Actually Tells You About the Block
The version of this story that gets told at dinner parties is simple: Bonnie Brae Tavern closed, and something is finally being built where it stood. The more accurate version is that the corner spent three years as an open question while the neighborhood's actual food energy moved next door, and the thing that will eventually fill the gap is arriving with a longer runway and a smaller nod to the past than most people expected when the tavern closed its doors.
If you live here, that is probably the useful takeaway. The corner is not a bellwether for the rest of the block. Ni Tuyo, Bonnie Brae Ice Cream, and the annual picnic in the park were never waiting on a construction schedule, and neither should your sense of the neighborhood be.
If you are curious about how a stretch like this, one where an 88-year-old institution can sit dormant for three years before a single shovel hits dirt, tends to shape what a home on or near it is actually worth, that is a longer conversation, and one I am always glad to have. You can reach out through Nick Bruce whenever the timing is right, whether that is this season or well down the road.
