On a Tuesday evening in late July, the line at Bonnie Brae Ice Cream wrapped past the outdoor tables and toward the parking lot, the way it does most warm nights. Behind the counter, someone was scooping a flavor called Unicorn Poop for a kid who couldn't stop giggling about the name. Across University Boulevard, past the intersection with Ohio Avenue, a chain-link fence wrapped a dirt lot where the Bonnie Brae Tavern used to stand. A few doors down, a hand-lettered "For Sale" sign had gone up at the Conoco station, the same one that's been pumping gas on that corner since Franklin Roosevelt was in office.
Three businesses, one short stretch of University Boulevard, and this summer, each one is living through something completely different.
Three Kinds of Change, One Intersection
It would be easy to fold all of this into a single story about Bonnie Brae losing its old guard. That's the version that tends to circulate in neighborhood Facebook groups: another longtime business gone, another apartment building going up, everyone shakes their head. But look closely at what's happening at University and Ohio right now, and the three stories don't rhyme at all. One business already closed and is being replaced. One is testing the market without closing its doors. One just turned 40 and hasn't shown a sign of slowing down. If you live here and want to understand what neighborhood change actually looks like at ground level, this corner is the clearest example in Bonnie Brae.
Timeline One: The Building That's Already Coming Down
The Bonnie Brae Tavern's ending took longer than most people realized. Carl and Sue Dire opened the place in 1934, in the middle of the Depression, and ran it as a family business for 88 years. By the time it closed, their grandsons Ricky and Michael Dire had put in a combined 84 years behind the bar between them. The paperwork for change appeared well before most residents noticed. Back in 2019, the Dire family won Denver Zoning Board approval for a five-year window to pursue redevelopment without triggering a historic-preservation review, a procedural step that let them explore a sale quietly. They used most of that window. The tavern didn't actually pour its last pint until June 25, 2022.
Alpine Investments and Revesco Properties, led by Churchill Bunn and Rhys Duggan, bought the roughly three-quarter-acre parcel for $4.5 million, then spent nearly three more years on financing and permitting before demolition crews arrived. Bulldozers started work in June 2025, and BusinessDen reported that the crews first had to reroute a sewer line under Ohio Avenue before excavating an underground parking garage, which explains some of the utility work residents may have noticed nearby last spring. Alpine partner David Pietsch described the process this way:
"It's been really hard, and I think we've been fortunate because the real estate fundamentals are really good, it's a great location."
What's rising there now is called akin Bonnie Brae, a three-story, 46-unit building designed by Craine Architecture. Plans call for 15 different floorplans ranging from 689 to 1,532 square feet, plus 8,100 square feet of ground-floor retail with one tenant already reportedly under contract. The developers are targeting completion in spring 2027, which means the fenced lot will likely stay a construction zone well into next year, nearly five years after the tavern's last regular walked out the door.
Timeline Two: The Gas Station That Isn't Closing (Yet)
Compare that to what's happening one corner over. The Wilson family has owned the Conoco station at University and Ohio since 1942, back when Bonnie Brae was a much smaller and quieter place. That's 84 years under one family, just four shy of the Dires' 88-year run at the tavern. In April 2026, the station went up for sale, a development the Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle covered as a possible turning point for the corner.
Here's the distinction worth sitting with. The tavern's closure and its sale were announced together in 2022, a single event with a fixed end date. The Conoco listing is different. As of this writing, the station is for sale, but it hasn't closed and no buyer or redevelopment plan has surfaced. Being listed and being finished are not the same thing, and for a small commercial parcel that's still generating daily income from customers, there's no obvious reason for an owner to walk away before a deal actually closes. If you're filling up at that pump, the honest read for August 2026 is that nothing is imminent, even though the intersection's last non-residential holdout is officially in play for the first time in 84 years.
| Opened | Status as of August 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Bonnie Brae Tavern site | 1934, closed 2022 | Demolished, rebuilding as the 46-unit akin Bonnie Brae, targeting spring 2027 |
| Bonnie Brae Conoco | 1942 | Still operating, listed for sale since April 2026, no buyer announced |
| Bonnie Brae Ice Cream | 1986 | Operating, celebrated its 40th anniversary July 19, 2026 |
The One Constant: Forty Years And Still A Line Out The Door
While its two neighbors were making headlines for opposite reasons, Bonnie Brae Ice Cream quietly hit a milestone of its own. On July 19, 2026, National Ice Cream Day, the family-owned shop at 799 S University Blvd marked 40 years in business with face painting, balloon artists, and prizes for kids whose parents have been coming since before they could drive. It has occupied the same address since 1986, longer than a lot of Bonnie Brae's current residents have been alive.
Part of the reason it hasn't followed the tavern's path may simply be its footprint. A single-purpose ice cream shop on a modest lot doesn't carry the same redevelopment math as three-quarters of an acre with room for underground parking and 46 units stacked above it. Whatever the reason, the practical result for anyone living nearby is simple: the ice cream line isn't part of this year's construction story, and there's no public sign that it's going anywhere.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
- Expect the fenced lot at University and Ohio to stay a construction zone well into 2027, with visible progress picking up now that demolition and utility work are behind it.
- The Conoco is for sale, not closing. Keep filling up there until you hear otherwise.
- The ice cream line will still be there on a Tuesday night. Some things about this corner haven't changed since before most of us moved in.
Bonnie Brae has always been a neighborhood where the interesting stories happen at the scale of a single lot, not a citywide trend. If you're watching this corner out of curiosity, that's worth doing. If you're watching it because you're starting to wonder what your own home on these curved streets might be worth in a neighborhood this closely followed, the team at Linkow Baltimore Team puts together a free, no-pressure home valuation whenever you're ready to look at the numbers.
