"The younger generation of kids, they're not drinking, they're not partying as much." That's Jason Romero, the CEO of Recess Beer Garden, explaining to BusinessDen why the bar that helped define LoHi's reputation for eleven years is opening its next location somewhere else entirely.
Recess isn't closing its original spot on 17th Street. But the fact that its owner is putting roughly $1 million into a second location built to feel like the old LoHi, in a neighborhood two miles east, is worth sitting with if you live along 32nd Avenue. The person running one of the corridor's best-known patios has said on the record that the neighborhood around it has changed, and he is planning his next move accordingly.
Eleven Years On 17th Street
Recess opened in LoHi eleven years ago as what Romero described to BusinessDen as a family-friendly spot. Romero joined the business as CEO in 2022, a Denver native who'd previously helped open the South Broadway Country Club and worked front-of-house at the now-closed Mel's Bar & Grill and at Elway's steakhouse in Cherry Creek. By the time he took over, apartment construction had already brought a younger population into the neighborhood, and the bar's identity had shifted toward late-night crowds and loud music. Romero told BusinessDen the whiskey brand Jameson, once one of Recess's biggest sellers, has seen sales go "way down." He also noted his own wage history for context: he started in the industry at $2.13 an hour, a jarring contrast to Denver's current tipped minimum wage of $16.27 an hour.
None of that is a story about decline. Recess still has one of the best-known patios in the city. But it is a story about a business built for a specific version of a neighborhood finding that version harder to recreate in place.
Why Virginia Village, Why Now
The new location is going into a former Family Dollar space at a shopping center at Holly Street and Florida Avenue in Virginia Village, a neighborhood Romero described to BusinessDen as mostly single-family homes occupied by families, the opposite demographic profile of LoHi today. According to KDVR, the new patio will run about 10,000 square feet, double the size of the LoHi original, and the plan is for a family-friendly atmosphere with kids and dogs welcome rather than a 2 a.m. closing time. Romero is targeting a fall 2026 opening, pending Denver permitting.
He also told BusinessDen he considered RiNo first but passed because it felt too saturated with bars and too close to LoHi's existing scene. That's a useful detail. It means the decision to leave wasn't about escaping competition. It was about finding a setting that fits the version of the business he wants to run, one that, in Romero's own account, resembles Recess as it was eleven years ago.
What's Filling In Around 32nd Avenue
If Recess is placing its bet on a quieter, more domestic version of what LoHi used to be, it's worth asking what's actually replacing that energy on 32nd Avenue itself. The answer isn't more bars. It's daytime retail, reservation-only dining, and coworking.
- The General Store, expanding from its original Littleton location (operated as General Store 45 before a rebrand), is taking over space in the Tamburello building on 16th Street, right next to the landmark Little Man Ice Cream milk-can. Owner Nicole Haas, who purchased the Littleton store about eight years ago, is bringing a mom-and-pop retail concept built around gifts, home goods, and Colorado-made products, the kind of shop designed for browsing on a Tuesday afternoon rather than a Friday bar crawl.
- Strive Workspaces opened a coworking location at 2563 15th Street in the historic Thompson Block building in November 2025, offering private offices and meeting rooms to local professionals who want to work near home rather than commute downtown.
- Origami Den, a Saturday-only reservation speakeasy tucked beneath Sushi Hai at 3600 W. 32nd Ave, opened quietly in late 2025. It runs an omakase-style menu built around small plates like uni butter popcorn and caviar on karaage, and it has built a following without much promotion, the kind of place that stays good precisely because it isn't trying to scale into a scene.
None of these three businesses is built around the after-midnight crowd. They're built for people who already live on that block and want somewhere to shop, work, or eat dinner without the corridor turning into a commercial district after dark.
The Newer Arrivals Are Playing It Cooler Too
Even the newest restaurant openings on 32nd Avenue lean toward a calmer register than the rooftop-bar reputation LoHi has carried for years. Paperboy, an Austin import known for winning Best Brunch across multiple Texas publications, opened its first out-of-state location at 3940 W. 32nd Ave on March 24, 2026. It's a brunch concept: Texas hash, migas, brown-butter pancakes, specialty coffee, in a 3,000-square-foot space with a patio. It's built around daytime hours, not late-night ones.
A few blocks over on Tennyson Street, technically Berkeley but a five-minute walk from the Highlands core, American Lore opened in early 2026 as a saloon-style whiskey bar: $4 beer in frosty mugs, free bar snacks, no-frills cocktails. It's a bar, but a low-key one, built around conversation rather than a DJ booth.
And in West Highland, Cerebral Brewing opened a new taproom inside a former church, sharing the space with Outside Pizza. Cerebral built its reputation on hazy IPAs and experimental sour releases, and the church conversion fits a neighborhood that has shown a consistent appetite for adaptive reuse of its older buildings rather than teardown-and-rebuild.
Put those three openings next to Recess's second location and a pattern holds. The businesses staying in or moving into LoHi and the Highlands this year are the ones built around daytime hours, reservations, or a slower pace. Recess, the business most closely tied to the big patio and late-night crowd, is keeping its LoHi original and opening a second, family-oriented location in Virginia Village.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
None of this means LoHi is getting quiet. Westword has named it Denver's best dining neighborhood more than once, and W. 32nd Avenue still has more restaurant density per block than almost anywhere else in the city. Weekend crowds and parking headaches aren't going away.
What's changing is the shape of that energy. The neighborhood isn't losing its nightlife so much as exporting its loudest, youngest layer to a part of the city built for it, while keeping the daytime retail, the reservation-only dining rooms, and the coworking spaces for itself. If you've noticed 32nd Avenue feeling a little more like a place people work and shop during the day and a little less like a place people go exclusively to drink at night, Romero's explanation for why his second Recess is aimed at families is a useful data point.
If you're watching how that shift is showing up in the properties along this corridor, whether you own here or are simply trying to read where the neighborhood's center of gravity is heading next, Stuart Crowell tracks these changes as part of his ongoing coverage of Denver's premium neighborhoods and is glad to talk through what it means for a home near 32nd Avenue.
