I've been watching what happens to neighborhoods when the right operators decide to bet on them. RiNo is a good example. A decade ago it was loading docks and spray paint. Now Ravi DeRossi is opening Soda Club there, inside the Ramble Hotel on Larimer Street, and that tells you something about where the district has landed.
DeRossi runs a constellation of bars and restaurants in New York, most of them centered on craft cocktails and serious food. Soda Club isn't his first foray outside Manhattan, but a Denver outpost inside one of RiNo's better boutique hotels is a particular kind of statement. The Ramble sits at the edge of the art district where the galleries and the new residential towers converge. An operator who chooses that corner is reading the foot traffic closely.
What the Ramble Signals About RiNo
The Ramble Hotel opened a few years back as one of the first upscale properties to plant itself fully in the RiNo experiment rather than the safer ground of LoDo or Cherry Creek. It's worked. Rates are strong, the bar downstairs draws a mix of hotel guests and neighborhood regulars, and the building became a reference point for the block. Adding Soda Club to that property doubles down on the same thesis: RiNo can support the kind of tenant that would previously have defaulted to a more established neighborhood.
I've had clients ask me whether RiNo is peaking, whether the early energy has been absorbed into commodity. I don't think so. What I watch is what kind of operator is still choosing to sign a lease here. DeRossi isn't signing for the novelty. He's signing because the numbers pencil.
Hearth Patisserie in Highland
Across the South Platte, Highland is getting Hearth Patisserie, a bakery concept opening on 32nd Avenue. If you know Highland, you know 32nd is the main commercial corridor, the one that connects the old neighborhood to the newer residential density that's been building toward Jefferson Park. A quality pastry shop on that stretch isn't a small thing. It anchors foot traffic in the morning, it supports the coffee shops and lunch spots that came before, and it tends to signal that a block has reached the density where retail works.
Bakeries are worth paying attention to as a real estate signal. A patisserie doesn't survive on a block that empties out at night. It survives because enough people are walking to it in the morning, which means they live nearby and they have money to spend on a proper croissant. That's the resident profile that makes residential property values move.
Two Neighborhoods, Same Signal
RiNo and Highland are different bets. RiNo is younger, denser, and still running on creative energy. Highland is more settled, with a mix of longtime residents and newer buyers who paid up to be in a walkable neighborhood close to downtown. Both are attracting the kind of operator who makes location decisions carefully.
When I'm working with buyers who want walkability and don't want to commute from the suburbs to get to good food, these two neighborhoods come up constantly. The question isn't whether they're desirable. They are. The question is what's available and at what price. Both have been supply-constrained, and properties that come to market in either one tend to move.
Soda Club and Hearth Patisserie are arriving at the same moment. That's not a coincidence. It reflects a broader pattern of operators reading the same data buyers are reading: the demographics in these neighborhoods support premium food and beverage, and the market is growing.
If you're considering buying in RiNo or Highland, our advisors at the Denver shop know both blocks well. Our shop is also a Board of Governors member of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce and a preferred referral partner of both the Chamber and the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation. When employers bring people here, we're often the first call about where they're going to live, and right now those people are looking at exactly these neighborhoods.
