Jason Romero is adding a second location for his business in a place many restaurants and bars overlook – Virginia Village.
The CEO of LoHi’s Recess Beer Garden said he’s opening a location in the Denver neighborhood this fall.
One of his business partners, who grew up a block away from the future site, said he’s never seen his neighborhood add much in the way of new retail. Romero’s friends in the area expressed similar sentiments. So, when the landlords of a shopping center at Holly Street and Florida Avenue hit him up about bringing the beer garden there, he pounced on the opportunity.
“We’ve created a brand over the last 11 years, people know us. … We’ve been known as one of the best patios in the Denver metro,” said Romero, 44.
And patio space will come in abundance in Virginia Village, with its new landlord building a 10,000-square-foot courtyard right outside the beer garden’s future front door.
The business will be inside half of an 8,000-square-foot former Family Dollar store at 1417 S. Holly St. A local, private real estate partnership acquired the store and the entire 5-acre strip mall last year for $13 million.
“There’s not a lot of competition for this type of restaurant, retail. … Competitive retail is really just Colorado Boulevard,” said Todd Snyder, a broker with Kentwood Commercial who is working with the new ownership.
The new owners are putting $3.5 million into the property, which they’ve dubbed The Village Park. They’ve leased space to Tia’s Taqueria, The Local Butcher, Yoga Box and Copper Door Coffee Roasters, which will also serve ice cream. Two 1,100-square-foot vacancies remain.
Before launching their play into Virginia Village, the ownership group turned around Oneida Park on both sides of Oneida Street between 22nd and 23rd Avenues in Park Hill. There, they also installed a courtyard and brought in an ice cream operator.
That caught Romero’s eye.
“I’ve done my research, and I really like what they’re doing,” he said.
The price tag on the build-out of Recess’ new location is around $1 million, Romero said. He plans to replicate the menu of the LoHi spot, which is known for its smashburgers.
“I think we’re really going to crank with food,” he said.
Virginia Village is a different animal from LoHi. Located east of Colorado Boulevard, south of Glendale and north of Evans Avenue, the neighborhood is mostly single-family homes occupied by families. Romero, meanwhile, said LoHi, which has had an influx of apartments, has gotten much younger in recent years.
That’s actually made business a bit tougher there.
“The younger generation of kids, they’re not drinking, they’re not partying as much,” he said.
Romero recalls meeting with some “higher-ups” at Jameson, the whiskey brand that used to be Recess’ “biggest producers.” The distiller told him sales are “way down.”
“People are drinking the clear stuff,” he said, noting that it’s perceived as healthier.
Recess has felt the crunch a bit, too. Sales were down year over year from 2024 to 2025 after a few years of growth, Romero said. But the business overall remains profitable with healthy margins, he said. The same partnership that owns Recess also owns and operates Campus Lounge near the University of Denver.
“We wouldn’t be opening a new location if our other businesses weren’t doing well,” Romero added.
A second Recess has been contemplated for a while. Romero said he considered RiNo but found it too saturated with bars and too close to LoHi. A Morrison spot is being considered, but that’s still a ways away from becoming reality, he said.
Romero, a Denver native, joined Recess in 2022 as CEO. He and his eight business partners are financing the build-out of the new location with their own money, he said. Before managing the Beer Garden, he helped open and run the South Broadway Country Club.
He’s worked in restaurants and bars his entire career. After graduating from Colorado State University, he held jobs in the front of the house at the since-closed Mel’s Bar & Grill and Elway’s steakhouse, both in Cherry Creek. He noted that his wage was $2.13 an hour when he started working 20 years ago, a far cry from today’s tipped wage of $16.27 per hour in Denver.
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