"I want to activate the market for later evenings," says Ken Wolf, describing the corner of Denver Central Market that spent several weeks sitting dark this summer. He's talking about the space that used to be Curio, the RiNo food hall's original bar, the one with the empty spirit shelves and no stools filled for weeks. Wolf owns the market. He also, as it turns out, now owns the bar that replaced it.
If you live near 2669 Larimer and noticed the food hall looking different this summer, you weren't imagining it. Three stalls changed hands in the space of a few weeks, right as Denver Central Market quietly turned ten. But the paperwork behind that turnover tells a different story than the empty counters did. Nine of the market's twelve stalls just signed ten-year lease extensions. The three that left were clustered close enough together that it read like a collapse. It wasn't one.
What Actually Left, and What Never Moved
Denver Central Market opened in 2016 inside the 1920s H.H. Tammen Curio Company building, which is where the departed bar got its name in the first place. Of the eleven original vendors, most of them are still exactly where they started.
| Status | Who | When |
|---|---|---|
| Original tenant, still there | Crema, Green Seed Market, Izzio, Tammen's Fish Market (formerly Silva's Fish Market), Temper Chocolates and Confections, Vero | Since 2016 |
| Quiet turnover, years ago | Lunchboxx replaced SK Provisions | 2021 |
| Quiet turnover, years ago | Call Your Mother replaced Culture Meat and Cheese | 2024 |
| Left this summer | High Point Creamery, Butchers at RiNo, Curio | 2026 |
Six of the original eleven concepts never left. Two more turned over so gradually, years apart, that nobody called it a shake-up. It took three exits landing in the same short window this summer to make the whole market look like it was unraveling, and even that only accounts for a quarter of the stalls.
Why It Read Like a Bigger Story
Part of it is geography, not decline. Curio's empty shelves sat directly across the aisle from the vacant glass cases that used to hold Butchers at RiNo's cuts of beef and pork. High Point Creamery's counter physically connects Crema's coffee bar to Izzio's bakery, so its bare drywall sat wedged between two of the market's busiest stalls. Walk in during that stretch and three separate vacancies landed inside the same forty feet of floor space. Nine stalls that didn't change a thing were easy to miss standing next to that.
The exits themselves weren't identical, either. Butchers at RiNo's owner, Brent Ratliff, had bought the business in 2024 without realizing his obligations went beyond base rent, and fell six months behind before Wolf evicted him. High Point's owner, Erika Thomas, was more sanguine about it, pointing out her brand runs five locations, including a newer one at McGregor Square, so losing this stall didn't put the company at risk. Curio's exit was the least dramatic of the three: its previous owners were already planning to move to Spain once their lease ran out.
What's Actually Filling the Gaps
Curio's old room is now Bar 77, a partnership between Wolf and Celina Tio, a James Beard Award winning chef from Kansas City who's also a partner in that city's Belfry Collective restaurant and Gerard's Pool Hall. The name nods to Talking Heads' first album. The hours tell you what it's actually for: 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday, a real extension past Curio's old 8-to-8 daily schedule. Wolf has been direct about the intent, calling the bar "the epicenter of the market" and saying the goal is a room that runs later and works more coherently with the food stalls around it, rather than closing while the kitchens are still slinging pizza and pasta.
Izzio is taking over the old High Point space with a concept called Tiny RiNo Treat House. As of the most recent reporting, that's still a "coming soon," with a branded facade up around the stall and an Instagram account that has a bio and zero posts. As of that same reporting, Butchers at RiNo's old stall remains the one true blank spot. Wolf says he'd like to bring in a delicatessen built around sandwiches and sausages, but nothing had been signed as of that report.
The Landlord Story Underneath the Vendor Story
There's a second layer to why this year reads as renewal rather than retreat, and it has to do with Wolf's own history with the building. He renovated it, then sold it and several neighboring structures in 2018 to Edens, a national retail real estate firm, for more than fifty million dollars. The relationship soured fast enough that Wolf sued Edens in 2021 and posted signs that year and again in 2023 telling the company to stay out of Denver Central Market. Both sides now describe things differently. Wolf calls it a good relationship. An Edens spokeswoman called it positive. Nine ten-year lease extensions don't happen without that kind of détente holding.
The Rest of RiNo Is Marking the Same Kind of Year
The food hall's anniversary isn't happening in isolation. RiNo Art District, the nonprofit that's shaped the neighborhood since local artists first organized around its vacant warehouses two decades ago, is treating 2026 as its own twenty-year mark. A "Welcome Back" exhibition opened a new gallery space at RiNo ArtPark on August 7, the same day the district's first Creative District Welcome Center opened on-site as a permanent hub for district news and programming. Here's what's actually on the calendar if you're in the neighborhood this month:
- September First Friday Festival, September 4, 4 to 9 p.m. at RiNo ArtPark: live music and local artists, with the Welcome Back exhibition still up inside Truss House.
- Doors Open Denver walking tour of RiNo ArtPark, September 26: a free architecture tour led by the district's Public Realm Manager, Courtney Burns, and Facilities Manager, Rob Gray, covering how the city and RiNo Art District rehabilitated two former city buildings into the current arts hub.
None of that is small. RiNo pulled in more than 12.4 million visitors in 2025 and generated roughly 10.6 million dollars in sales tax revenue for the district, according to reporting from Denverite. A food hall's vendor turnover in a neighborhood that size isn't gossip. It's the kind of thing that shows up in city planning conversations about who gets to shape what RiNo becomes next.
Not Everything Gets a Renewal
None of this means RiNo is immune to real loss. Port Side, the all-day coffee and brunch spot at 2500 Larimer that anchored the Five Points and RiNo line for a decade, served its last plate on July 5, 2026. No replacement has been announced. The difference between Port Side's ending and Denver Central Market's summer is instructive: one was a business closing without a landlord or ownership structure built to guarantee a next chapter. The other was a lease-cycle event inside a market whose owner had already lined up nine ten-year commitments before the vacancies ever became visible from the sidewalk.
That's the actual headline buried under a summer of vendor gossip. Denver Central Market isn't quietly winding down the way plenty of first-generation food halls do once the original hype fades. Its owner used this exact moment, the ten-year mark, to lock in the next decade before anyone outside the building noticed the turnover happening inside it.
If you're already living out this stretch of RiNo and want to talk through what any of this means for your building, your block, or a move you're weighing down the road, I'm always glad to grab coffee and talk it through. You can reach Jerrell Young any time. Let's connect.
