"We were hoping they'd redevelop in this neighborhood and make the neighborhood even better." That's Paul Young, who has lived two and a half blocks from Empower Field at Mile High for several years, describing what he and his neighbors expected when word first got out that the Broncos wanted a stadium upgrade. Instead, the team and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston announced last September they're eyeing Burnham Yards for a new stadium, with the Broncos targeting a move by 2031. That leaves roughly 80 acres of the current Empower Field site sitting inside Jefferson Park's boundaries with no confirmed future.
For most of this neighborhood's history, there hasn't been a formal, recognized body positioned to answer that question on residents' behalf. That changed this year, and it changed at almost exactly the same moment three long-vacant or newly announced storefronts started filling back in along 25th Avenue and Federal Boulevard. Neither development caused the other. But the timing means Jefferson Park is being asked, for the first time in decades, to decide what it wants to become, right as it gets fresh proof of what it can already support.
A Neighborhood That Just Got Its Voice Back
Jefferson Park has had organized resident advocacy before. Jefferson Park United Neighbors formed in 2000 after a proposed large-scale development from Sullivan-Hayes threatened to condemn a cluster of 19th-century homes and convert the namesake park into an amphitheater. Residents fought that plan and won, and the fight itself became the reason the neighborhood organized in the first place. The Jefferson Park Neighborhood Association existed too, at various points, but had gone quiet.
This year, after a full year of publishing a monthly newsletter called the Jefferson Park Post to close what organizers described as a communication gap, JPNA was formally recognized by the City of Denver as a Registered Neighborhood Organization. That designation gives the group standing in zoning and land use conversations across the neighborhood, and JPNA has stated its top priority is leading community discussions about the future of the Empower Field site ahead of the Broncos' planned 2031 departure.
A neighborhood without a registered voice doesn't get invited to the table when 80 acres come up for reuse. Jefferson Park now does, and the timing is not something the group chose. It's something the calendar handed them.
The Space Where Sarto's Used to Be
At 2900 W. 25th Avenue, a 3,000-square-foot building sat vacant for roughly five years after Sarto's Italian eatery closed. Last year, Jose Reyes, who also runs Royal Event Center in Thornton, signed a 10-year lease on the space through his company, Reyes Bar and Venue LLC. The concept, registered as a Colorado trade name, is JP Restaurant and Lounge: a sports bar and breakfast spot serving bar fare, Mexican dishes, and breakfast, with two outdoor patios and a longer-term plan to open the basement as a pool and bar area. As of the lease signing, no opening date had been announced, but a decade-long lease on a space that sat empty for half that time is a different kind of commitment than a pop-up or a short-term sublease.
Two blocks over, at 2855 25th Avenue, Ephemeral Tap and Bottle was aiming for a spring 2026 opening, its second location after founder Weston Scott opened the original Ephemeral in the Skyland neighborhood in 2022 as a rotating showcase for breweries without their own Denver taproom. The Jefferson Park location shifts the model toward retail: customers can sample and buy bottles to go, and since the taproom doesn't serve food, it leans on nearby restaurants for takeout that patrons bring in themselves. That's a small but telling detail. A business betting on foot traffic from its neighbors' kitchens is a business betting the neighborhood already has enough restaurants worth walking to.
Further west, at the corner of W. 23rd Avenue and Federal Boulevard, local franchisees Abu and Sharmeen Parvez have purchased a property and filed permits to bring Crispy Cones, the chimney-cake and soft-serve concept that gained national attention on Shark Tank, to Jefferson Park. It would be the brand's second Colorado location after an earlier opening in Centennial. No timeline has been announced, which puts it a step behind the other two, but it's one more signal that operators are treating this stretch of Federal as worth a bet.
Three storefronts, three different stages: one just signed after standing empty for years, one that was set to open this spring, one still working through permits. That staggered timeline is worth more than any single opening announcement, because it shows a corridor filling in gradually rather than getting flooded all at once by a single developer's master plan.
Living Two Blocks From the Team on Gamedays
None of this changes what a Sunday afternoon in the fall actually looks like for anyone on a residential block near the stadium. Jefferson Park and neighboring Sun Valley are strictly enforced Residential Parking Permit zones on gamedays, and the city's Department of Transportation and Infrastructure runs tow crews specifically to sweep those streets. A car parked without a local permit gets ticketed and towed, and getting it back means calling the DOTI impound line and paying a bill that runs into the hundreds of dollars. An empty curb on a Sunday morning is not an invitation.
The upside of that same proximity is that Jefferson Park sits close enough to walk or bike into the stadium instead of driving at all. The neighborhood's position west of downtown, with the South Platte River Trail running directly through it, means a home here is already within an eleven-minute walk of the gates for some residents, and bike lanes along 17th Avenue and Colfax offer a workable route home after the crowds clear. That combination, official parking crackdowns on one hand and genuine walkability on the other, is the daily trade a Jefferson Park address makes right now. It's also the trade that will look completely different once the stadium itself is gone.
What the Next Few Years Actually Look Like
Put the pieces next to each other and the shape of the next few years gets easier to read. The Broncos aren't leaving tomorrow. When the relocation plan was announced last year, Mayor Johnston said the city wanted to spend the next five years figuring out what replaces the current site, which means Jefferson Park residents still have a real window to weigh in before ground breaks on anything. JPNA's new RNO status means that input has an official channel for the first time in years. And the restaurant wave on 25th and Federal, regardless of how it turns out, is happening independently of whatever comes next for the stadium site, which is exactly why it matters. A neighborhood that can fill a five-year-vacant restaurant space and support a second-location taproom on its own is a neighborhood with enough underlying demand that whatever eventually replaces 80 acres of stadium and parking lots will need to answer to residents who already know what draws people here.
Not every neighborhood gets asked what it wants to become. Jefferson Park is being asked now, with an organized group in place to answer, and with three new storefronts as evidence of what it can already support without any of this civic conversation resolved. If you're watching Jefferson Park's changes and wondering what they might mean for a property here specifically, or you just want a second set of eyes on how the Empower Field conversation could shape values on your block over the next few years, Brian Grace knows this stretch of West Denver well enough to walk through it with you.
