Washington Park Boathouse Rentals in 2026: What's Changing

If you walked the Smith Lake loop this month, you probably noticed the swans. What you might not have noticed is who's steering them now.

For 21 years, the paddle boats, kayaks, surreys and Deuce Coupes at the Washington Park boathouse belonged to one company: Wheel Fun Rentals. Ask anyone who's rented a swan boat for a first date or wrangled a six-person surrey around the 2.75-mile loop, and there's a decent chance it happened under Wheel Fun's watch. That run ended this year, marking a change in who operates rentals at Smith Lake.

Twenty-One Years of Wheel Fun Rentals at the Boathouse

Wheel Fun operated under a series of three-to-five-year contracts with Denver Parks and Recreation, a relationship that had outlasted most restaurants and half the housing stock on the blocks surrounding the park. Owner Josh Catron, a teacher who took over the franchise as a side gig before buying it outright last year, was notified last fall that the city would not renew the lease. He tried to negotiate a new proposal to keep operating. According to CBS Colorado's reporting, the city took a couple of months to respond, then gave him one month to clear roughly 40 large swan boats and dozens of bikes off city property, some stored on-site, some scattered across off-site lots.

The timing landed hard. Catron had already paid seasonal staff an end-of-season bonus and sunk money into new bicycles, parts, and a resurfaced dock at Wash Park. The city, he told reporters, declined to buy any of the equipment, which meant Facebook Marketplace became the exit strategy for a fleet of swan boats.

How the Rental Operation Changed

The numbers are worth sitting with, because they show a business that was never enormous next to the operation now absorbing it.

The concession has shifted from a lease to direct city operation. Whether the new arrangement turns a profit is an open question. Catron pointed out that the city will now carry its own liability for injuries and manage a seasonal staff of around 30, costs his rent and sales tax used to help offset.

The Ducks and Dragons Arrived Before the Announcement Did

Back in January, before most residents knew the concession had changed hands, paddle boats started showing up in the City Park pavilion that nobody had rented before: a purple dragon with a long curved neck, and a yellow duck with what one Denverite report called a genuinely befuddled expression. A Denver Parks and Recreation spokesperson confirmed both would be on the water at Wash Park and City Park once rentals resumed in spring, alongside the familiar swan.

So the fleet didn't shrink. It grew a little stranger. Denver Parks and Recreation has branded its in-house version Adventure Hub, running seasonally at Washington Park with kayaks, stand-up paddleboards, and pedal boats. The duck and dragon bring a more unusual addition to the familiar swan lineup.

A Lease Update at the Bathhouse

Directly across Smith Lake from where Wheel Fun operated sits the Dos Chappell Bathhouse, a structure built in 1911 that once served as the changing house when the lake was still used for swimming. For years it's been the headquarters of Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado, a nonprofit that maintains gardens and trails across the city's mountain parks and urban parks alike.

Separately, VOC is now being asked to leave. Denver Parks and Recreation's stated reasoning, in a statement given to CBS Colorado, is that a lease coming up for renewal triggers a routine reevaluation of whether the space could better serve the park directly rather than an outside tenant. The department has offered VOC a short-term extension through the end of 2027, but executive director Chris Nesset has said publicly that the organization may end up leaving Denver altogether if it can't find a comparable home.

The two changes involve separate spaces around Smith Lake: the city now operates the boat rentals, and VOC has been offered an extension through the end of 2027.

What Doesn't Change This Year

Not everything at the boathouse is in flux. The Washington Park East and West Neighborhood Associations still run their long-standing July 4th celebration at the Boathouse, complete with the Denver Municipal Band's Brass Quintet, a bike and stroller parade for kids, and free Bonnie Brae ice cream that's become as much a fixture of the day as the fireworks elsewhere in the city. Denver Parks and Recreation still requires the site cleared by 2 p.m. so the building can turn back over to its regular use, a small operational detail that hasn't budged even as the concession above it has.

That continuity matters. It's a reminder that the boathouse itself, designed by Jules Jacques Benois Benedict and completed in 1913, remains the anchor of the block regardless of who's running the rental counter inside it. The building isn't going anywhere. The question the last year has raised is who gets to operate out of it, and on what terms.

If you live near the park, the practical upshot is simple: expect the paddle boats, expect the swans, expect a duck and a dragon that weren't there in past summers, and expect the city to be the one collecting the fee. If you're the kind of neighbor who also keeps an eye on the Dos Chappell Bathhouse across the water, keep watching. The offered lease extension only runs through 2027.

Washington Park has always been the kind of neighborhood where small changes get noticed and discussed on porches and dog walks before they show up in any headline. This is one of those changes, and it's still moving. If you're curious how shifts like this tend to ripple into what people value about living near the park, or you're weighing a move to this part of Denver down the road, Buildings & Residences of Denver has spent more than two decades watching this neighborhood evolve and is always glad to talk through what's actually happening on the ground here.