Marina Square Is Gone. Here's What's Replacing It at Belleview and Ulster.

"The idea is to bring Cherry Creek sizzle to the Tech Center." That's how Shea Properties executive Peter Culshaw described the plan for the corner of Belleview Avenue and Ulster Street, the same corner where a roughly 45-year-old, 94,000-square-foot shopping center sat before crews tore it down. If you've driven past that intersection any time in the last two years and wondered what happened to the strip mall that used to anchor it, or why there's a construction fence where Zane's Italian Bistro used to be, the short answer is that Marina Square is gone for good. The longer answer, and the more useful one if you live or work nearby, is what's replacing it.

What Actually Closed

Marina Square wasn't a landmark. It was a working retail center that had been quietly serving the Denver Tech Center since the 1980s, most recently home to tenants like Zane's Italian Bistro, Poke City and Which Wich. Shea Properties had owned the property since 2003, when it paid $16.8 million for the site. According to Culshaw's account, the center had seen bigger names come and go over the decades, including a high-end women's clothing store called Montaldo's and a restaurant called Marina Landing that was considered a hip spot in its day. COVID finished off most of what remained. By the time Shea decided to demolish the building and start over, there wasn't much left to save.

That's a useful detail if you've assumed the redevelopment was about filling empty storefronts. It wasn't. Shea tore down a fully leaseable, functioning shopping center, not a vacant eyesore, because the format itself had stopped working for how people actually want to spend an evening in this part of Denver.

The Rebuild: Smaller Footprint, Bigger Bet

The new project has gone through a name change of its own. What started as "Marina Square" is now marketed as "On The Square," and the plans have shifted some as approvals moved through the city. The current build is roughly 40,000 square feet of retail and dining space, smaller than the old center's footprint, but it's paired with something Marina Square never had: rooftops directly on top of it.

That residential piece is called Eclipse, a seven-story, 481-unit apartment building going up on the same site, with a 68-foot sculptural centerpiece planned as the visual anchor of the plaza at Belleview and Ulster. Eclipse is being built with a fitness center, a pool and a party pavilion, the kind of amenity list aimed at people who plan to spend their evenings on-site rather than driving somewhere else for dinner.

That's the actual mechanism behind Culshaw's "Cherry Creek sizzle" line. The old Marina Square depended entirely on daytime office workers and drive-in traffic. On The Square is being built with hundreds of paying residents living directly above the restaurants, which changes what kind of tenant can survive there and what hours the block stays busy. Confirmed retail tenants so far include Sweetgreen and Solidcore, both chains that already have locations in Cherry Creek, LoHi and RiNo, which tells you something about the caliber Shea is aiming for on this corner.

Two Restaurant Announcements Landed in the Same Summer

If you've been half-following this project for the last year, this past summer is when it stopped being renderings and started being real commitments.

In April, 9News reported that Barcelona Wine Bar, the Spanish tapas chain that's operated in Denver's Five Points neighborhood since 2018, signed on for a roughly 4,000-square-foot space at 8107 E. Belleview Ave. The build includes a 1,000-square-foot enclosed four-season patio plus a second open-air patio, meaning the covered space is designed to keep outdoor seating usable through a Colorado winter. The company says the location will bring around 80 jobs to the DTC. No firm opening date has been announced, but the target is as early as 2027.

Then in August, Mile High CRE reported that Shucking Good Hospitality, the restaurant group led by founder Sean Huggard, signed a lease for a new concept called The Coastal Service, an East Coast-style seafood and oyster bar planned for the same On The Square development. Huggard's flagship, Blue Island Oyster Bar & Seafood, is built around the group's own oyster farm on Long Island. The Coastal Service takes a different angle, drawing on Huggard's years working as a chef on Nantucket rather than the farm itself. Huggard has said plainly that the Tech Center didn't have an oyster bar, and that gap is what drew him to the site. The Coastal Service is also a sibling concept to Shucking Good Hospitality's Oliver's Italian, which already operates nearby in Greenwood Village, so this isn't the group's first bet on this part of the metro.

Two serious restaurant groups committing to the same corner within a few months of each other isn't a coincidence. It's a signal that the operators who study these leases for a living think the Eclipse rooftops and the daytime office population together are enough to support something more ambitious than a sandwich shop.

What This Actually Changes for Someone Who Already Lives Here

None of this opens tomorrow. Barcelona Wine Bar and The Coastal Service are both targeting early 2027, and On The Square's own materials list a late 2026 opening for the first phase, so what you're watching right now is construction, not a ribbon cutting. If your daily routine runs through Belleview and Ulster, the next year looks like fencing, cranes and a slow reveal rather than a finished plaza.

What's worth paying attention to in the meantime is the pattern, not the calendar. The corner that used to be built around a captive lunch crowd from nearby office towers is being rebuilt around people who live on top of it and plan to walk downstairs for dinner. That's a different kind of retail than what Marina Square ever supported, and it's why the tenant list reads more like Cherry Creek North than a typical suburban strip.

If you want something to do this weekend while the corner finishes taking shape, Little Man Ice Cream's Greenwood Village location is still running its free Summer Sunday Tunes series through September 6, with music from 7 to 9 p.m. It's a short drive from the construction site and a decent way to see what the neighborhood's evening foot traffic already looks like, before Barcelona and The Coastal Service give people another reason to stick around.

Watching a corner of your own neighborhood get rebuilt is one thing. Knowing what it means for property values, timing and your own next move is another conversation entirely. If you're thinking about what a changing Denver Tech Center means for your home, Debbie Niedergerke would love to talk it through. Work with Debbie. Let's connect about your next move.