Last updated Thursday, October 8, 2026
If you've ever slowed down past a dirt lot or a gutted storefront around here and asked exactly that question, you're my kind of neighbor. This page is the running answer for Littleton's 80127, Ken Caryl, and the edges we can see from the Hogback. Everything below comes from the actual paperwork, county permits, recorded deeds, state filings, and the city of Littleton's development files, plus what the businesses themselves publish. I update it when projects actually move, and the free Friday newsletter is where every change lands first.
Ziggi's Coffee, 8020 South Sangre de Cristo. Open. The Colorado-grown drive-thru chain opened its Chatfield and Sangre de Cristo corner on Thursday, August 27, with a grand-opening week of daily deals running through Saturday the 29th. After months on this page, this one graduates.
The Summit Steak Bar, the Bevy's building on South Alkire. Open. The steakhouse opened Monday, August 31, and it's serving dinner 5 to 9 Sunday through Thursday and 4 to 10 Friday and Saturday, with reservations through its site. That closes this page's longest-running question after months of a live website with no date. The first look ran in Issue #19.
Better Mattress, 8055 West Bowles at Bowles Crossing. The Colorado chain with stores from Arvada to Lone Tree now lists Bowles Crossing as Coming Soon on its own store locator, matching a tenant-finish permit issued in late July. No date yet.
Jersey Mike's, 7735 West Long Drive. One zip over, about a mile east of Kipling. A tenant permit issued in July reads like a sub shop starter kit, two kitchen hoods and a brand-new grease trap. Details in Issue #19.
The old Walgreens at Simms and Ken Caryl. It's becoming a medical office building. The conversion permit issued July 1, right after the property sold in June, and the first phase demolishes everything that makes the building recognizable as a Walgreens, the gable canopies, the pharmacy drive-through, the old entrance. The electrical permit, issued July 9, describes the job as a remodel "into a 'white box' for UC Health," a bare shell (walls, ceiling, lights) the tenant finishes out, and I've asked UCHealth what it's planning there. An earlier version of this entry said no tenant was named in the county's records. The electrical permit names one. The story ran in Issue #18.
Turnbuckle Distilling, northwest corner of Bowles and C-470. The old Whistling Hare property is turning into a five-acre distillery with a restaurant, a silo tasting room, and a working farm. Construction was underway when I checked in early July, and as of mid-August the company's own site still says Coming Soon with no date attached.
Ivybrook Academy, 8906 West Bowles Avenue. A county permit issued in late August details a 5,912-square-foot interior build-out for the half-day preschool chain, serving the 18-months-to-6 crowd, and the school's own site is already enrolling its Littleton campus for the 2026-27 year. Reported in Issue #22.
The new Deer Creek Library, 11100 Bradford Road. Jeffco Public Library is building a full branch at its Bradford site in Ken Caryl, and the library's own timeline has construction running through 2027 and doors opening in 2028. In September the project team said it was reviewing the final construction documents, the last step of design before permitting, the same week the library's longtime executive director, Donna Walker, retired after 14 years. The art call for the building's community wall, marker drawings of Colorado nature from all ages, closed September 27. The design and leadership update ran in Issue #24.
Jared's Nursery land, the southeast corner of Bowles and Oak: 140 rental homes. A site development plan reached Jefferson County on September 18 from B2R Partners II, the Scottsdale company that builds as BB Living, for six parcels totaling about 23 acres. The developer's own narrative calls them luxury rental homes: single-family houses, duplexes, and six-home clusters around shared parking courts, with a clubhouse, pool, gym, dog park, and playground, and two entrances off Oak. The rezoning behind it is done, approved 3-0 by the county commissioners on June 30 under a plan that caps the site at 152 homes. What the file doesn't say is what happens to the nursery. The paperwork describes the land as currently occupied by Jared's, the parcels include the nursery's own 10500 West Bowles address, and the site plan is in the county's first round of review. I've asked the nursery. The filing was the lead in Issue #26.
NUVO Residences at Ken Caryl Ranch, the Plains parcel on Ken Caryl Avenue east of the Safeway center. North American Development Group's own page calls it a build-to-rent townhome community: 199 two- and three-bedroom townhomes with garages and fenced backyards, all rentals. On August 25 the county logged four permit applications for new multi-family buildings at 11961 through 11991 West Laurel Place, addresses so new the map services hadn't caught up to them, and within two weeks all four had moved from intake into plan submittal. Nothing is issued and nothing is vertical. Add it to the Jared's project and the east side of the zip has 339 rental homes in the pipeline. The permits ran in Issue #23 and the rental detail in Issue #26.
Village Cooperative of Ken Caryl, the old Deer Creek Golf Club at 8135 Shaffer Parkway: 59 units. The plan sheet on file with the county draws a 62-and-over ownership building, one structure with surface and underground parking and a single entrance onto Shaffer. The company's July price sheet runs from about $196,000 for 1,007 square feet to about $393,000 for 1,713, with monthly fees between roughly $1,700 and $3,370 that fold in property taxes, insurance, maintenance, parking, and every utility but electricity. Then the caveat that outranks all of it: nothing is approved. The county's file holds one pre-application, closed June 4, no site development plan has been filed, the plan sheet is stamped not for construction, and the golf club's company is still the owner of record. The unit count and the price sheet ran in Issue #23.
The former Old Crows Antiques building, 10081 West Bowles, on the Plains side of Ken Caryl. A rezoning application landed on the old antique mall in September, and the owner's cover letter asks the county to rezone the 3.75-acre site to a mixed-use planned development so its tenant, ASA Food Trading, can run a combined wholesale and retail food operation on the ground floor of the 41,764-square-foot building, the old Albertsons. State records list an ASA Foods Inc. at the address, doing business as Asia Foods since 2017, and a wall-sign permit for Asa Foods is ready to issue. The letter also asks for the right to build apartments above the store and on the land around it. Nothing is approved and no hearing is set. Old Crows itself is open again in Golden, on West Colfax. The filing ran in Issue #25 and the plans in Issue #26.
Walmart drone delivery from the Coal Mine store, 13420 West Coal Mine Avenue. On September 9 Walmart's law firm asked Jefferson County's planning director to rule that drone delivery counts as an accessory use of the Supercenter, the zoning term for something that comes with the store, like its parking lot. The partner is Wing, the drone company owned by Google's parent, which already flies Walmart orders in Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, and Charlotte. The letter describes an 18-stack charging pad on the property and a delivery radius of roughly six miles, which covers most of this zip. It's a request, not a permit, and as of late September the county hadn't answered. The full letter ran in Issue #25.
Westend Ridge, the old church site behind Dutch Ridge near Kipling and Coal Mine. The congregation sold its 10.77 acres for $4.9 million in June of last year to GMCD Westend LP, a Delaware partnership run from a Toronto office suite. The approved plat carves the land into 103 lots, 51 detached homes and 52 attached, under zoning that allows up to 109 units, and the brokerage that sold the site has announced Dream Finders Homes as the builder. No Dream Finders company owns a lot there yet, and no home permits show up in the county's files. Future buyers should read the tax fine print, because the lots sit in their own metro district, about 172 mills against roughly 99 for the houses across the fence. That's roughly 75 percent more property tax on the same dollar of home. The project has carried county violation cases since June, both still open in late August, when a storm pulled apart the top courses of a retaining wall above the neighboring backyards. The wall's own engineering file shows its tallest section cleared the county's stability minimum by 0.01, a margin the family next door had flagged in writing months earlier. The sale and tax story is in Issue #20, and the engineering-file story is in Issue #22.
Senior living proposed at 5649 South Alkire, now listed at 170 units. A site development plan filed July 20 proposes a senior living facility on Alkire, up the street from the Summit Steak Bar building. The county's own case description called it 300 units for weeks, then quietly changed to 170 in late August, a number that exactly matches the pre-application that closed this spring. No new documents explain the change, the application still sits in the county's earliest review stage, and nothing is approved. First reported in Issue #20, the shrinking number in Issue #22.
In-N-Out at Mineral and Southpark Terrace. The filed plans describe a 3,887-square-foot restaurant with a 30-car drive-thru queue. The site improvement plan has been under review with the city of Littleton since last fall, and the companion subdivision plat for the same Mineral address moved to resubmittal pending in the city's file on August 18. The newest word is the city's own: a staff slide at the September 15 council meeting read In-N-Out is "moving forward on 1st pad site," while the restaurant's site-plan file still says under review. We covered the Mineral corridor push in Issue #1 and the pad-site line ran in Issue #25.
Scheels and Costco at Mineral Place, 700 West Mineral. Costco is going up now at 1000 West Mineral, west of Broadway, and the city pegs its opening for spring 2027 after the council moved the store's incentive deadline a year, to October 1, 2027. Next to it, Scheels is under contract for about 14 acres and wants a 300,000-square-foot store. On September 15 the City of Littleton's council approved the sales-tax deal that gets it there, 6-1: for 30 years after the store opens, the city keeps 40 percent of the sales tax collected there and rebates the rest each quarter, about 55 percent to Scheels and 5 percent to the developer, and the rebate only pays out on sales that actually happen. The city's timeline is construction starting early 2027, doors in spring 2029, and 550 jobs. The deal and the numbers ran in Issue #25.
Shea Homes at the TrailMark entrance. The last undeveloped parcel at South Wadsworth and TrailMark Parkway, 7.68 acres, proposed for roughly 27 single-family homes. That takes a rezone plus a land-use map change, and the City Council hearing moved to December 1 at the applicant's request. The postponement story is in Issue #16.
Dutch Creek Horse Farm, 6859 South Iris Street. Just across the zip line in 80128, about a mile north of the Westend Ridge site. The owner has applied to rezone the farm from agricultural to Planned Development for up to 47 single-family lots. The county file shows the applicant revising the application after the first referral round, with the county's clock pointing at November or December, and no hearings are scheduled. An opposition petition stood at 1,849 signatures when I checked in early August.
Also watching: Black Rock Coffee has taken pre-application steps at RiverPark, 7755 South Platte River Parkway, per the city of Littleton's development files. Pre-application only, so "proposed" is the strongest word this one has earned. STEM School has taken pre-application steps toward a rezone at 1101 and 1151 West Mineral, with no formal application filed. The Portillo's pre-application from last year was administratively closed in September, and nothing new has been filed since. If any of these moves, it lands in the Friday email first.
If dirt is moving somewhere in 80127 and it's not on this page, tell me: [email protected]. Half the best stories in the newsletter start with a neighbor asking what's going in there. And if you'd rather not check back, subscribe free and get every update in the Friday issue.
More field guides from the Post: the new-restaurants page for what's opening to eat, the trails page for where you can actually hike around here, the bears page for what to do when a bear finds your trash cans, the Halloween page for every trunk-or-treat and pumpkin patch near 80127, and the 2026 ballot page for what each measure does and costs.
Your weekly guide to Littleton, Ken Caryl, and the SW Denver foothills. Events, restaurants, trails, development news, and the stuff your neighbors are talking about.