"We're not opposed to development, but we want something that respects the scale of our community," a Belcaro resident told a public forum last year, describing a fight most of the neighborhood didn't know it was having until the renderings showed up.
By the time that fight ended, it had already shaped what's sitting on the corner of Colorado Boulevard and Exposition Avenue right now: an emptied-out shopping center, a vacant liquor store, and a construction timeline nobody can give you yet.
The Store That Left On Its Own Terms
The King Soopers at 825 S. Colorado Blvd closed for good on Tuesday, June 2, 2026, after operating on that corner for more than 50 years. It didn't fail. It moved. The next day, Kroger's Colorado division opened a new store about a mile south at 4201 E. Arkansas Ave in Virginia Village: a $37.1 million, 103,000-square-foot build that includes a Murray's Cheese Shop, its own gas station, and a Starbucks. The land itself has a strange backstory of its own. It used to be the headquarters of the Colorado Department of Transportation, which Kentro Group bought for $19.3 million back in 2018 before building the new store there.
So the grocery gap Belcaro residents are feeling this fall isn't a story about a chain abandoning the neighborhood. It's a story about a chain outgrowing its old footprint and choosing a bigger parcel down the road, which happens to leave the Belcaro side of Colorado Boulevard without a full grocery store for the first time in half a century.
The Fight Nobody Mentions When They Talk About the Closure
What's easy to miss, because it happened well before the store actually closed, is that the empty lot taking shape at 825 S. Colorado Blvd could have looked nothing like what's currently approved.
Neighbors first learned about redevelopment plans for the site in November 2024. What followed was a proposal that grew in ambition as it moved through the planning process, eventually reaching as many as three separate towers, the tallest of them 12 stories, with room for up to 700 units of housing on the 7-acre site. Belcaro Park HOA members and other neighborhood groups organized against it, packing public meetings and putting up yard signs reading "Keep Zoning Capped at 3 Stories," a reference to the site's existing S-CC-3 zoning, which caps buildings at three stories under normal rules.
By August 2025, Kentro Group withdrew the rezoning request entirely. City Councilwoman Amanda Sawyer, who represents the district, put it this way afterward:
"We need solutions that both address Denver's housing needs and respect the character of existing neighborhoods."
That withdrawal is the reason the corner looks the way it does today. Not because nothing was proposed, but because the first thing proposed didn't survive contact with the neighborhood.
What Actually Got Approved, Set Against What Almost Did
| Original 2025 Proposal | Approved 2026 Concept | |
|---|---|---|
| Height | Up to 3 towers, tallest at 12 stories | Single building, 4 stories (55 ft max) |
| Units | Up to 700 | 347 to 350 |
| Zoning path | Required rezoning | Fits within existing S-CC-3 zoning, using an affordable housing height bonus |
| Status as of Sept 2026 | Withdrawn August 2025 | Concept plan approved May 2026, now in site development review |
The developers came back in December 2025 with a scaled-down concept: a single four-story, wraparound building holding 347 to 350 residential units, with 35 of those units reserved for households earning up to 60% of the area median income. It stays within the existing zoning by using a height incentive tied to that affordable housing set-aside, which is how a "3-story" zoning designation ends up permitting a 55-foot, 4-story structure. The plan also includes a private clubhouse, fitness center, courtyards, and roughly 569 parking spaces in a structured garage, with vehicle access off East Exposition Avenue. That concept plan cleared its first city review in May 2026 and is now working through the site development phase, the stage where Denver's planning department digs into the actual infrastructure, transportation, and design details.
Why the Corner Still Sits Empty
If you're wondering why a store that closed in June still hasn't been replaced by anything, even a construction fence with a completion date, the answer is in the calendar above. Concept approval and site development approval are two different steps, and as of this fall the project has only cleared the first one. No construction timeline has been announced. The retail spaces that used to flank the King Soopers, everything except the grocery store itself, had already sat empty for months before the store even closed, waiting on a redevelopment plan that kept changing shape. The southern end of the property, home to a since-closed liquor store, is slated to become a separate retail development rather than housing, though that piece hasn't broken ground either.
Denver's apartment market gives some context for why a developer would still commit to nearly 350 new units here. Metro-wide apartment vacancy has climbed to a 16-year high as new supply outpaces demand in much of the city. Embrey, the firm partnering with Kentro Group on the Belcaro project, told the Denver Business Journal this year that it's still building multiple properties across the metro despite that softening, calling Denver a market it believes in long-term. Whatever the broader rental math looks like, the fact that this particular corner survived a scaled-down redesign and still moved forward suggests the location itself, not just the housing cycle, is doing some of the work.
What's Actually Still Open
None of this touches the parts of the neighborhood that never depended on that one store. Bonnie Brae Ice Cream, a few blocks over on South University, has been serving the same homemade flavors since 1986 and remains as much a fixture as it ever was. The shops along Old South Gaylord Street are untouched by any of this. For groceries in the meantime, Natural Grocers at Alameda and Leetsdale already serves the Belcaro area alongside Hilltop, Cherry Creek, and Lowry, and residents who used to walk or drive the short distance to the Colorado Boulevard store now have a slightly longer trip to either that location or the new Virginia Village store.
The walkability and bikeability that make Belcaro Belcaro haven't changed either. The neighborhood's tree-lined streets, oversized lots, and quick access to Cherry Creek and Washington Park were never dependent on which grocery chain occupied one corner lot.
What This Actually Means Heading Into Fall
The version of this story that travels fastest is the simplest one: Belcaro lost its grocery store. That's true in the narrowest sense, but it skips the part that actually explains the empty lot. This isn't a neighborhood that got run over by a developer's plan. It's a neighborhood that looked at a 12-story, 700-unit proposal, organized against it, and got a 4-story, 347-unit building instead, on a timeline that's still unfolding a year later. The store closing and the site's redevelopment are connected, but the second story is the one with more to say about how this particular pocket of Denver actually operates when its residents show up.
If you're watching what happens next at that corner, or wondering how a change like this affects daily life and property values on your own block, the Wolfe Bouc Team knows Belcaro's streets, zoning history, and pace of change as well as anyone working in this part of Denver. Request a Private Consultation to talk through what's changing near you and what it means for your own plans.
