At 10:54 on a Wednesday morning in June, the case at Milly's Bagels on South Pearl Street was empty. Five plain bagels had been sitting there twelve minutes earlier, the last of the day, and then they weren't. A few blocks north, on South Gaylord Street, a $6 million restaurant renovation was still working through booth installations and a new horseshoe bar, months away from unlocking its doors for the first time in over a year.
Those two timelines describe the same stretch of months in the same neighborhood, and together they explain something about how Wash Park's food scene actually turns over. This year the neighborhood said goodbye to two longtime restaurants: Table 6 on Corona Street, after 22 years, and Wash Park Grille on South Gaylord, after nearly three decades. Both spaces now have new owners and new concepts, one already open and one due this October, each with substantial backing and an experienced team. A few blocks away, a smaller gap got filled by someone with a home oven and no outside investors.
The Bagel Shop With No Seats and No Investors
Milly Lorden spent about a year selling bagels out of her home and at farmers markets before opening a storefront at 712½ S. Pearl St. in West Wash Park in mid-June. The shop measures roughly 200 square feet, has no indoor seating, and carries a fractional street address because the building itself is barely wider than its French-door entrance. Lorden, a St. Louis native who'd been in Denver less than a year, spent that stretch adjusting a sourdough recipe for altitude and building a client base through catering, delivering around 2,500 bagels before she ever signed a lease. Axios Denver reported the shop sold out daily in its opening weeks, with lines forming before the doors even unlocked.
The gap the shop filled is what stands out. Wash Park has never lacked for coffee shops, but it had gone without a dedicated bagel shop for as long as anyone selling food there could remember. That's a narrow, specific absence, and it took one person with no restaurant background and no outside capital about a year to close it, from first home sale to open storefront.
Fourteen Months to Reopen a Grill
Compare that to what happened at 1096 S. Gaylord St., a few blocks north. Wash Park Grille had anchored that corner for nearly three decades before the city seized the property over unpaid sales taxes in December 2024. The doors shut for good two months later. The corner sat dark until October 2025, when buyers Aaron Grant and Kris Johnson purchased the building for $6 million and began a $1 million to $1.5 million interior overhaul, adding booths and a new horseshoe bar meant to greet guests the moment they walk in. Wash Park Social, a Colorado grill concept from restaurateur Bart Hickey, opened in late April 2026, transferring the old liquor license and seating around 200 guests across 35 tables and two patios. The bar program leans on Colorado suppliers by name, pouring Rebel Bread and Laws Whiskey House alongside the standard well. A second, smaller concept called Provecho's, built around tacos and margaritas in a roughly 700-square-foot storefront next door, is planned to follow.
Run the calendar and that's about 14 months from the day the old doors locked to the day the new ones opened, on a corner with buyers who had both the capital and the motivation to move fast. A well-financed team with a seven-figure renovation budget still needed over a year to turn a dark storefront back into a lit one.
The Michelin Team Inherits Corona Street
Table 6 closed on July 9 after 22 years, and the closure had nothing to do with money. Chef Aaron Whitcomb opened the restaurant in 2004 in a former Beehive space at 609 Corona St., and it became an early standout in Denver's chef-driven dining scene. Owner and chef Aniedra Nichols, who'd taken over in 2023, told Westword the decision was about timing rather than trouble, describing it as a story of knowing when something has run its course after 22 years of first dates, anniversaries, and ordinary Tuesday nights.
Seven weeks after the last service, Westword reported who had bought the space and what they planned to do with it. The Paired Hospitality team, the group behind Michelin-starred Beckon and its neighboring wine bar Major Tom, is taking over 609 Corona St. with a new American bistro called Holm, expected to open this October. Chef Duncan Holmes and his wife Allison are running the kitchen, alongside partners Josh Elson and Craig Lieberman. Early details point to a hyperseasonal menu built around Colorado produce, with dishes like brick chicken and housemade pasta with pork ragu mentioned as reference points. Table 6's 50 seats will make Holm more than double the size of the 18-seat Beckon, and mark Paired Hospitality's first restaurant outside RiNo.
| Address | What Closed | Last Day Open | What's Replacing It | Reopening | Backing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 609 Corona St. | Table 6 (22 years) | July 9, 2026 | Holm | October 2026 | Paired Hospitality (Beckon, Major Tom) |
| 1096 S. Gaylord St. | Wash Park Grille (~30 years) | February 2025 | Wash Park Social, Provecho's | Social opened April 2026 | $6M purchase, $1–1.5M remodel |
| 712½ S. Pearl St. | No dedicated bagel shop | N/A | Milly's Bagels | Mid-June 2026 | Self-funded |
What the New Backing Means for the Block
Put the three timelines next to each other and a pattern shows. Both longtime restaurant spaces returned with sizable investment and experienced teams. Bart Hickey spent two decades running high-end dining operations, including The Capital Grille and Seasons 52, before taking on Wash Park Social. Duncan Holmes and his partners are bringing the name of a Michelin-starred restaurant group to the address where Table 6 served chef-driven cooking for 22 years.
The third address follows a different path. Milly's Bagels opened where the neighborhood had no dedicated bagel shop, because Wash Park, dense as it is with coffee shops and bistros, had not had one. Two of the stories involve substantial investment returning to established corners. The third involves a narrow, unmet demand that a single home baker built a customer base around before opening a storefront.
The Park Keeps a Different Clock
None of this touches the park itself, which runs on a much longer calendar than any restaurant lease. The Mount Vernon Garden, the one-acre plot at the edge of Grasmere Lake modeled on Martha Washington's garden in Virginia, turned 100 years old this year. Landscape designer Saco DeBoer laid it out in 1926, and it isn't even the oldest garden in the park. That distinction belongs to the Perennial Garden, which is 109. Horticulturist Jane Packard and the volunteer group Friends and Neighbors of Washington Park marked the centennial with a public garden party at the end of July, where FANS board president Bonnie Sutherland read a tribute to the park and the people who've maintained it. The same organization runs guided bird walks with the Denver Audubon Society year round and has a free trishaw ride around the park's loop road planned for October, a rhythm that has nothing to do with what's opening or closing on Gaylord or Corona.
A restaurant corner can go dark for over a year and reopen under entirely new ownership, with a new name and a resume nobody there before could have matched. A garden planted in 1926 is still following roughly the same footprint a century later, tended by a different horticulturist but the same design. Both are part of the same six blocks, moving at speeds that don't have much to do with each other.
Wash Park is small enough that residents will likely notice both kinds of change on the same walk this fall, whether that means checking on Holm's build-out on Corona or catching the last of the season's color near Grasmere Lake.
For anyone who lives near Corona, Gaylord, or Pearl and wants a longer view of how these corners have moved over the past few years, or what else is worth watching before winter, Horizon Home Group keeps a close eye on Wash Park as one of its home neighborhoods. Let's connect and build your real estate strategy.
