Denver Tech Center New Restaurants Near Belleview and Ulster

"DTC didn't have an oyster bar," Sean Huggard said in August, when his group, Shucking Good Hospitality, signed a lease for The Coastal Service at Belleview Avenue and Ulster Street. He's right that the gap was there. Now two restaurants with raw bars are being built in the Denver part of the Tech Center. Troy Guard's G&G Surf Club is on East Union Avenue, and Huggard's place is at the old Marina Square.

Both restaurants share another detail that's easy to miss. Neither one is going onto fresh ground. Each is moving into a site where an earlier plan ran out. One is a finished dining room nobody ever cooked in. The other is a shopping center that was torn down to the slab. The DTC's dining comeback is being built on top of what came before, and that history explains a lot about the timing, the size of these places, and why both landed on seafood.

The Union Avenue Dining Room That Was Finished Before Anyone Cooked In It

G&G Surf Club is going into 8100 E. Union Ave., inside the Penterra Plaza building. Guard signed a 15-year lease with the landlord, Edgewood REIT. The space was built out for an upscale restaurant called Golden Oak. Oak View Group, the venue hospitality company that moved its headquarters to Denver in 2023, was developing it and planned to use it to train its chefs. Golden Oak was supposed to open in early 2025. It never did. Sources told BusinessDen the firm spent more than $10 million on the build-out.

Before Golden Oak, the address was a McCormick & Schmick's. Westword describes the space as vacant for years after that restaurant left. So when G&G opens, it will be the first restaurant to serve in that room in a long time, even though the room itself is close to new.

Guard told the Denver Post he talked with this landlord about putting a Guard and Grace there five years ago, but they couldn't make the numbers work. Then the landlord called back. "It's got great bones," he said, and he plans to spend "significant dollars" adjusting things around the edges, including an island bar and a raw bar. The concept is a seafood-leaning version of his flagship steakhouse. It will serve high-end steaks, salads and pastas alongside more fish dishes, and Guard ties the menu to growing up in Hawaii, Seattle and San Diego.

Westword toured the site in September and described an 8,500-square-foot restaurant. It will have a wraparound bar with a lounge, a raw bar, a sushi bar, an open kitchen, a private dining room, roughly 225 seats inside, and two large patios. The Denver Post's June story put the space at 9,000 square feet. Either way, it's a big room for a suburban office corridor.

The timing is still loose. In June, Guard said he expected to open by Nov. 1. On Sept. 4, Westword reported a November target. By Sept. 16, the room was still wrapped in construction plastic, and the window had widened to October or November. As of early October, the restaurant's own website has a "First to Know" signup and an inquiry form. It doesn't show a menu or a reservation link yet.

Belleview and Ulster Started Over From the Slab

The Coastal Service's site went the other way. Instead of reusing a finished room, Shea Properties demolished the whole Marina Square center and started over. The old shopping center at the northeast corner of Belleview and Ulster was about 45 years old and covered 94,000 square feet. Shea broke ground on the redevelopment of the 13-acre site in summer 2025. The address is inside Denver city limits. Council District 4 lists it among its development projects.

Peter Culshaw, who runs Shea's Colorado operations, remembers when the center was busy. Montaldo's, a high-end women's clothing store, was there, and so was Marina Landing, which he called a hip restaurant. Over time the tenants left, and after COVID the remaining businesses closed. That's when Shea decided to demolish. Shea bought the property for $16.8 million in 2003, and Culshaw put the redevelopment cost at more than $200 million.

The new project is called On The Square, and it's built very differently. The old center was 94,000 square feet of retail. Shea's current brochure lists 481 apartments and 38,000 square feet of retail on the same 13 acres. Public records cited by the Denver Post in October 2025 showed 32,000 square feet for 10 retailers, and Mile High CRE's August report rounded it to about 40,000. Whichever figure ends up right, the corner will have well under half the retail space it used to, plus several hundred households living on top of it.

Shea's brochure lists this tenant roster. Only some of these businesses have published timelines.

GOLFTEC is the one tenant coming back. Culshaw signed the lease for the company's first storefront at this corner in 1995, and GOLFTEC now has more than 250 locations around the world. Shea's project site says it's opening in late 2026 and describes a public plaza at Belleview and Ulster built around a 68-foot sculpture called "eclipse." In October 2025, Culshaw said he hoped tenants would be open by about now, and that the apartments would take longer. The two restaurants with published dates are both set for 2027.

Why Both Bets Landed on Seafood

The two operators explain their moves differently, but both had the same problem to solve. Each needed a reason for people to stay in the Tech Center for dinner instead of driving north.

Culshaw said it plainly. He lives five miles west of the site. He can drive to Cherry Creek, but it's half an hour, and he doesn't want to deal with the parking. "The idea is to bring Cherry Creek sizzle to the Tech Center, available for folks living and working here," he told the Denver Post. Shea runs its own Colorado operations from 8351 E. Belleview Ave., in an office building converted from a former 24 Hour Fitness next door to the project. So the developer sees this corner every working day.

Huggard's reasoning was about what was missing. The Coastal Service is a sibling to his flagship, Blue Island Oyster Bar & Seafood, which is built around the group's own oyster farm on Long Island's Great South Bay. The new place draws on his years as a chef on Nantucket. The plan covers a raw bar, fresh seafood, seasonal coastal dishes, premium steaks, and a full wine, martini and cocktail program. The name is a play on the Postal Service. His group already runs Oliver's Italian in nearby Greenwood Village, so this is a second Tech Center restaurant for an operator who already has one here.

Guard came back by a different route. He moved to Houston two years ago after building his restaurant group in Denver. Westword reported that he had cited high operating costs and long city approval and permitting processes, and that he's now weighing offers from landlords who want proven operators in long-vacant spaces. The Union Avenue space was one of those offers. A $10 million room that's already built removes much of the construction cost and permitting delay he had pointed to.

This explains the pattern. Landlords holding empty or rebuilt space are courting operators with track records, and those operators are choosing raw bars, which the area didn't have. The Coastal Service is coming to a brand-new corner. G&G is reusing a finished room. Both are going to sites where an earlier plan ended.

What You Can Actually Eat Nearby Right Now

G&G Surf Club and everything at On The Square are still ahead. The newest addition you can visit today is The Sen Tea House at 4940 S. Yosemite St. in Greenwood Village, which Westword listed among its August openings. Oliver's Italian is already open in Greenwood Village.

Here's the timeline on record:

1. Now through November 2026. G&G Surf Club at 8100 E. Union Ave. is aiming for an October or November opening. There's no firm date yet, and the restaurant's website signup is where an announcement would likely appear first.
2. Late 2026. Shea's stated opening window for On The Square, with no dates for individual tenants.
3. Early 2027. The Coastal Service at Belleview and Ulster.
4. 2027. Barcelona Wine Bar at 8101 E. Belleview Ave., the company's second Denver location after the Larimer Street original that opened in 2018.

There's one more site to keep an eye on. In October 2025, Shea filed plans with Denver to replace the U.S. Bank branch at 8401 E. Belleview Ave. with a 239-unit apartment complex and two retail buildings totaling 7,000 square feet along the street. If that moves forward, the Belleview frontage east of Ulster will get its own round of rebuilding after On The Square.

If you live near Belleview and Ulster or work along Union Avenue and want to talk through how these openings and the U.S. Bank site plans could affect your block over the next year, I'm glad to share what I'm watching. Reach out to Kelly Mauro for a personalized consultation and home valuation.