Drive south on Santa Fe Drive past Mineral Avenue and you will notice the same patch of dirt that has sat empty for years. For most of that time it was just a placeholder, five acres of scrub next to South Platte Park that everyone assumed would eventually become townhomes. That assumption changed this year. But if you have only caught the headlines about a Peyton Manning-branded restaurant landing in Littleton, you are missing the actual story, which is that this one corner is about to absorb four separate development projects inside roughly the same eighteen months.
That is the part worth understanding if you live anywhere near this stretch of south Littleton. It is not one celebrity restaurant opening on a quiet lot. It is a restaurant, an events barn, a public turf field, a Costco, a 370-unit apartment building, and a river park rebuild, all converging on the same half-mile at nearly the same time, driven by four different organizations that are not coordinating with each other so much as arriving at the same address independently.
Four projects, one half-mile
Here is what is actually confirmed for the corridor around Santa Fe Drive and Mineral Avenue, inside the larger RiverPark development that developer Evergreen Devco has been assembling for years next to the Mineral light rail station.
| Project | What it is | Status as of September 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| 1st Street Farms | Restaurant, event barn, public turf field | Incentive package approved June 9, 2026; construction reported starting or underway |
| Mineral Place (Costco) | Littleton's first Costco, gas station, tire center, second big-box retailer, nine smaller retail spaces | Under development, Costco projected to open in 2026 |
| The Sullivan | 370-unit luxury apartment community by Embrey | Part of Mineral Place buildout |
| Reynolds Landing Park | River, trail and habitat redesign along the South Platte | First phase underway since 2024, budgeted at roughly $15.5 million, targeted to wrap this year |
None of these four is dependent on the others to move forward. They are simply landing in the same place because the same forces, a light rail stop, an open river corridor, and one of the last large undeveloped parcels in the city, made this particular half-mile attractive to four unrelated players at once.
What's actually happening on the ground right now
This is where the coverage gets genuinely confusing, and it is worth untangling rather than repeating whichever version you saw first. In mid-June, Denver7 reported that construction on 1st Street Farms was expected to begin in the fall of 2026 and take around two years to complete. Around the same time, CBS Colorado quoted Gastamo Group CEO Peter Newlin saying the company hoped to break ground by the end of the year, targeting a 2028 opening. Both of those point to a project that had not yet started as of late June.
By August 13, a Bucket List Community News report on the ongoing debate over the city's incentive package described the site plainly as under construction. That is not necessarily a contradiction. Site work, utility relocation, and grading often begin before a project is publicly described as having "broken ground" in the ceremonial sense. But it does mean that if you are relying on a single article from earlier this year to picture what that lot looks like today, you are probably picturing the wrong thing. The most honest summary right now is that the site has moved from vacant lot to active construction zone sometime between June and August 2026, and a two-year build window puts a realistic opening somewhere in 2028, which lines up with what Gastamo's own leadership told BusinessDen back in April.
If you live nearby and care about noise, dust, or truck traffic on Santa Fe Drive and Mineral Avenue, that is your actual planning window: not a grand opening next spring, but an active construction site for roughly the next two years.
The corner isn't just Manning's restaurant
The 1st Street Farms name comes from the street in New Orleans where Peyton Manning grew up, and Manning himself holds only a minority equity stake in the $28 million project. The operating company is Gastamo Group, the Denver-based team behind Park Burger, Homegrown Tap & Dough, and Perdida, led by founder Jean-Philippe Failyau and CEO Peter Newlin.
The plan itself is bigger than a single dining room. City documents describe a 15,000-square-foot restaurant serving Southern-inspired, Colorado-rooted dishes like shrimp and grits, alongside a 13,000-square-foot glass-enclosed event venue called the Field House that can hold up to 450 guests for weddings and galas. There is also a public turf field, named Little's Field after Littleton founder Richard Sullivan Little, plus a bike repair station and crusher-fines trail extensions tying into the Mary Carter Greenway.
The financing has been the more contested part of the story locally. On June 9, the Littleton City Council voted 4 to 3 to approve the city's first-ever public-private partnership, giving the project roughly $5.5 million in incentives, including a $2 million loan carrying 5.28 percent interest, funded through business use tax revenue rather than the general fund. Mayor Kyle Schlachter voted against the structure of the deal while saying he still supported the project. Mayor Pro Tem Andrea Peters, who voted in favor, has framed the public benefit in terms of trail access: without the partnership, she has said, the alternative was more townhomes on the site, which would have meant losing the trail connections tying into the Platte River system. Two months later, a Bucket List Community News report found city leaders still fielding questions about whether the public got enough in return. That debate has not fully settled, and it is worth knowing about even if you have no stake in city budget politics, because it is part of why this particular lot is getting built out the way it is rather than becoming the roughly 270 townhomes the property owner had filed as a backup plan if the incentive deal had failed.
Costco, apartments, and a park rebuild next door
While the restaurant story has gotten most of the attention, the rest of RiverPark is moving in parallel. Evergreen Devco's own project description places Mineral Place just south of the Mineral light rail station, which handles more than 4,500 riders a day, and lays out four districts: multifamily housing, a daily-needs retail area with drive-through space, a lifestyle district for sit-down restaurants with outdoor seating, and a destination retail district along the South Platte River Trail. The anchor is Littleton's first Costco, a 159,000-square-foot warehouse store with a gas station and tire center, projected to open sometime in 2026. The Sullivan, a 370-unit luxury apartment community developed by Embrey, is part of the same buildout, with amenities that include a private clubhouse, a pickleball court, and direct trail connections.
A few blocks north, the city has been separately rebuilding Reynolds Landing Park along the South Platte River since work started in September 2024. The first phase, budgeted around $15.5 million and funded through a partnership that includes Littleton, the Mile High Flood Control District, South Suburban Parks and Recreation, and Arapahoe County Open Space, is targeted to wrap up this year. The project grew out of a straightforward flood control and habitat need but expanded to include vegetated terraces, improved seating, and a redesigned trail alignment meant to reduce the friction between walkers and bicyclists on the Mary Carter Greenway where it currently cuts between the park and the river.
None of these four projects appears on a shared master schedule anywhere. They simply happen to be landing on the same stretch of river corridor at the same moment, which is the actual reason this particular part of Littleton has felt like a constant construction zone for most of 2026.
The food map is already shifting
Even before 1st Street Farms opens, the restaurant scene in this part of Littleton has been changing quickly enough that a visit from a year ago would already feel out of date.
- Bistro 36, a French-inspired bistro at 2620 West Belleview Avenue from co-owner Michael Cote, opened roughly eight months before a March 2026 Westword profile and is already nearing completion on a second concept.
- Cellar 36, an Italian red sauce concept from the same team, opened earlier this year further west in Littleton.
- Nanu's Kitchen, an Indian restaurant from owner Bibek Rauniyar, who also runs Curry Kingdom in Wheat Ridge and Curry Kitchen in Lakewood, secured its liquor license in December 2025 and has been moving into the Jefferson Marketplace center on South Kipling Parkway.
None of these openings are directly tied to RiverPark. They are simply evidence that the same appetite for new dining options driving Gastamo Group's much larger bet on Santa Fe and Mineral is showing up in smaller, faster-moving projects across the rest of the city at the same time.
What this means if you live near Santa Fe and Mineral
If your daily routine already runs through this corridor, the practical takeaway is timing rather than excitement. Expect active construction on the 1st Street Farms site through roughly 2028, based on the two-year build estimate reported in June. Expect the Costco at Mineral Place to open sometime later this year, which will shift traffic patterns at that intersection well before the restaurant does. Expect trail users on the Mary Carter Greenway to encounter construction-related detours as Reynolds Landing Park's first phase continues. And expect the restaurant map in this part of town to keep changing month to month, with Bistro 36's team alone adding a second concept while you read this.
None of that requires you to do anything differently today. But if you are the kind of resident who likes to understand why a familiar drive suddenly has three orange cones and a new fence line, this is the answer: four unrelated projects, one shared stretch of river, and a timeline that is still being written in real time by city council votes, developer press releases, and whichever construction crew shows up next.
If you are weighing what any of this means for your own home's value or timing a move around it, Glenn Janda has been tracking Littleton's market and its neighborhood-level shifts for years. Schedule a free consultation to talk through what a changing corridor like this one actually means for your specific street and your specific plans.
