Drive south on University Boulevard into Bonnie Brae and you pass two signs within about fifteen seconds of each other. The first, at 724 S. University, reads "For Sale" where a "Not For Sale" sign used to hang, over the gas pumps at the Bonnie Brae Conoco. The second, a block down at 740 S. University, is a construction rendering of a three-story building with a name none of us used a few years ago: akin Bonnie Brae. If you've lived here through the last four years, your brain does the same thing mine does every time. It links the two. Here we go again.
It shouldn't. These are not the same story, and the difference matters if you want to know what's actually locked in on this stretch versus what's just a family thinking out loud.
What a For Sale Sign Actually Means at the Conoco
Ken Wilson is the third generation of his family to run the Conoco station on University. His grandfather started leasing the site in 1942. His father bought the business from his grandfather, his uncle worked there his whole career, and Ken came back about fifteen years ago after starting part time in the summers when he was twelve. That's more than eight decades of oil changes, tire rotations, and full-service pump attendants, a business model that's nearly extinct in Denver and, by Wilson's own account, possibly the last of its kind left in the city.
In February 2026, Wilson and his two sisters signed with a real estate agency and the sign at the pumps flipped. Local television picked it up in April. But what Wilson has actually said about the sale contradicts the panic the sign tends to produce:
"We're just looking now. We're not in a rush. It's not like we're going to sell and be done this year. We're going to get a price we want to get, and if it takes us years to do that's okay."
That's not the language of a family that's exhausted and gone. It's the language of an owner testing what a corner lot at one of the neighborhood's main entrances is actually worth, with no closing date and no pressure to accept the first offer. A "For Sale" sign sitting there next spring doesn't mean anything has gone wrong. It means Wilson hasn't gotten his number yet.
Two Landmarks, Same Block, Different Mechanisms
| Bonnie Brae Conoco | Bonnie Brae Tavern site | |
|---|---|---|
| Address | 724 S. University Blvd | 740 S. University Blvd |
| Family ownership | Wilson family, since 1942 (84 years) | Dire family, since 1934 (closed 2022, 88 years) |
| What triggered the sign | Owner choice, no deadline attached | Building closed, then sold to developers |
| Current status | Listed, no offer accepted, no timeline | Building demolished, new construction not yet visible |
| What to watch | Whether the sign disappears (sold) or stays (still shopping) | Permits and fencing, not renderings |
What Happened at 740 S. University While the Conoco Sign Was Still New
The Bonnie Brae Tavern opened in 1934, when Carl Dire converted a gas station into a bar with four booths and eight stools. It stayed in his family for three generations, run most recently by his grandsons with a fourth generation already working the floor, until it closed on June 25, 2022. Ricky Dire, the co-owner and chef, put it simply at the time: there's good pizza in this town, but none of it tastes like this. The family wasn't testing the market. They were done.
Alpine Investments and Revesco Properties bought the 0.72-acre site along with the neighboring Wish Gifts building shortly after the closure, paying roughly $144 per square foot. The project, branded akin Bonnie Brae, follows other Akin-branded developments the same team has built elsewhere in Denver, including in Berkeley and the Golden Triangle. Development documents submitted to the city describe a building of 43 to 48 residential units with about 16,500 square feet of ground-floor retail, reaching the 40-foot height limit allowed along this stretch of University.
Here's the part worth sitting with if you've been assuming construction is nearly finished: the tavern building itself is gone, but as of the most recent local reporting this year, the actual apartment building has not yet risen in its place. A project originally described as roughly a year-long build has stretched well past that, which tells you something about how long these things really take compared to what gets promised at the announcement stage. If you're trying to gauge how close this corner is to opening, the signal to watch for is permits and fencing activity, not another round of renderings.
The Real Risk on This Corridor Isn't the Wrecking Ball
The tavern's closure set off something bigger than one demolition. In June 2026, neighbors organized to push back on what akin Bonnie Brae means for the small businesses still operating along the South University strip, according to reporting from the Cherry Creek News. The concern isn't the 16,500 square feet of new retail space itself. It's who can actually afford to lease it once it's built.
The mechanism is straightforward once you see it laid out. Commercial real estate is not sentimental about depreciation schedules. Landlords replacing a fully depreciated, single-story building with new construction typically need higher base rents to cover what they just spent building it, which prices out exactly the kind of long-running, lower-rent tenant that made the old building worth caring about in the first place. City planning and zoning review height, massing, parking ratios, and traffic impact. Nobody at the city regulates what the new landlord charges per square foot, and nobody guarantees a displaced tenant gets first right of refusal on the replacement space.
That's the open question hanging over this block right now. Not whether the new building gets built. It's whether any business squeezed out by rising rents on this corridor, or displaced when the tavern closed, ends up in that ground-floor retail once it's finished, or whether the space goes to tenants who can absorb Denver's current construction and financing costs from day one.
Forty Years Without a Sign in the Window
Not every long-running business on this stretch is on the same clock. Bonnie Brae Ice Cream, a few doors up at 799 S. University, marked its 40th year in business on July 19, 2026, National Ice Cream Day, with face painting and balloon artists for the neighborhood kids who've been coming since the shop opened in 1986. No sale sign, no rendering, no development filing. It's a useful reminder that age and family ownership don't automatically put a business on a redevelopment path. What separates the ice cream shop from the tavern and the Conoco isn't sentiment. It's whether the underlying real estate has become worth more empty than occupied, and whether the owner is under any pressure to find out.
What This Means If You Live Here
If you've been treating the Conoco's for-sale sign as a countdown, it isn't one. Wilson has said outright he'll wait years if that's what it takes. Watch for the sign to actually come down, not for how long it stays up. If you've been assuming the akin Bonnie Brae building is nearly done because the tavern has been gone for a while, it isn't. Watch for fencing and foundation work, since renderings have been up for months without matching construction on the ground. And if you care about which businesses end up occupying that new retail space once it's finished, that's a leasing story that will play out over the next year or two, separate from the construction timeline entirely.
Bonnie Brae's curving streets and 1920s character, laid out by landscape architect Saco DeBoer for developer George Olinger, were never going to freeze in place. But the two most-talked-about changes on this corridor right now are running on completely different clocks, and confusing them is the easiest way to either panic about nothing or miss the thing actually worth watching.
If you're weighing what any of this means for your own property on this stretch, whether that's timing a sale around what's happening next door or just understanding how a corridor like this affects value over time, the team at Buildings & Residences of Denver has spent more than two decades reading exactly these signals across Denver's neighborhoods. Contact us when you're ready to talk through what you're seeing on your block.
