"We think there are some other ways we can activate the street besides dinner and the farmers market on Sunday," Kevin Rifkin told BusinessDen in July, after his firm filed plans for a new building at 1550 S. Pearl St.
Rifkin was talking about his own project. His line also fits most of what has happened on Old South Pearl over the past year. A bakery now serves food all day. A cooking school fills weeknights and kids' birthday parties. A proposed restaurant and a long-rumored grocery store would both bring people to the street outside the usual peaks. All of these changes are aimed at the rest of the week, and none has moved as fast as its first announcement suggested.
A Bakery That Runs From Morning to Afternoon
Reunion Bakery opened in its new home at 1240 S. Pearl St. in early May. Axios Denver called it "Reunion Bakery." The Denver Post's earlier coverage used "Reunion Bread." Baker Ismael de Sousa first opened the business inside The Source market hall in RiNo in 2018. He drew on his Portuguese family's roots in Caracas, Venezuela, and was nominated for a James Beard award. The Post reports that the nomination came in 2023, in the Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker category, and that the bakery got a rave from Bon Appétit in its first year.
The move matters more than a new address usually does. De Sousa told the Post the Pearl Street space is more than twice the size of his stall at The Source. "This is just not the same Reunion," he said. "You're in a bakery that feels a little bit like a restaurant."
The menu shows the change. Axios's July visit found:
- An all-day menu with brunch dishes such as the "Eggsession," an open-faced sourdough sandwich with soft-scrambled eggs and bacon or lox
- A fattoush-inspired kale salad with Kalamata olives, goat cheese and sourdough croutons
- A refrigerated case of cream puffs and tarts, with rotating flavors like lemon meringue and mango choux
- The "Santiago" almond cake
- Fresh bread service Wednesday through Sunday
The Portuguese and Venezuelan pastries that built the bakery's name are still on the menu, including the Nata, an egg custard tart, and the Golfeado, a Venezuelan sticky bun. An open kitchen lets customers watch the baking. Shelves hold cookbooks from Colorado chefs. In February, de Sousa told the Post he hoped to get a liquor license so he could sell wine in the afternoons. That would stretch the bakery's day even later.
Weeknights and Birthday Parties Next Door
The Post reported that Reunion's building is also the new home of Food Lab, a recreational cooking school. Food Lab's own contact page gives its address as 1230 S. Pearl Street, so expect to see both numbers for the same building. 5280 reports that Food Lab opened in November. Edible Denver had announced a first public class for November 1, 2025, so Food Lab was open months before Reunion.
Food Lab has the same idea as Reunion, applied to a different part of the day. It offers hands-on classes for date nights, groups of friends or solo cooks. It also runs team-building sessions, private events, kids' camps, kids' classes and birthday parties. Its October calendar includes dim sum, knife-skills workshops, Moroccan Nights, Everyday Indian and Korean BBQ. One building on the north end of the strip now covers morning pastries, a weekday lunch, an evening class and a Saturday kids' party.
Every Project Has Run Behind Its First Date
Reunion is open now, but it took about a year longer than planned. De Sousa told the Post he had hoped to open on Pearl in May 2025. The space had been newly partitioned and had no plumbing or electricity. Construction and city permitting pushed the opening back and added thousands of dollars in renovation costs. In February 2026, the Post said the café could open by the end of March. It opened in early May.
That record is useful when reading news about the other two projects. Here is where each one stands as of early October 2026:
| Project | First public timeline | Latest reported status |
|---|---|---|
| Reunion Bakery, 1240 S. Pearl | Hoped to open May 2025 | Opened early May 2026 |
| Food Lab, same building | First public class announced for Nov. 1, 2025 | Operating, with fall classes on its calendar |
| Outwest Investments, 1550 S. Pearl | Proposal filed July 2026 | Restaurant tenant not named, and no city approval or construction date reported |
| Kentro Group project, Louisiana and Pearl | Developer "hopeful to break ground in 2026" | No 2026 update found, and Trader Joe's has not confirmed |
The Restaurant With No Name Yet
Rifkin and Greg Bechler are Denver natives who run Outwest Investments. In May, they bought the building at 1550 S. Pearl for $1.6 million from a group of physical therapists who had practiced there. The building dates to 1963. Their proposal would replace it with a two-story building. The ground floor would hold a 2,500-square-foot restaurant and a 4,300-square-foot parking garage, with four or five offices upstairs.
Rifkin would not name the restaurant. He said only that it will be "very big news for south Denver" and that the partners "saw a need for something different from what's currently on the street." The Denver Post republished the story the next day. We found no later report naming a tenant, an approval or a construction schedule.
The location matters. The farmers market runs on the 1400 and 1500 blocks of South Pearl, between Iowa and Arkansas. That puts 1550 S. Pearl inside the stretch the market uses every Sunday. The upstairs offices would bring weekday workers to the same block. That fits Rifkin's stated goal of adding activity outside the Sunday market and dinner hours.
The Trader Joe's Question
The biggest pending change sits on the north end of the strip, and it also has the least confirmation. In August 2025, BusinessDen, the Denver Post, Denverite and Westword all reported that Trader Joe's was planned for a mixed-use project by Denver-based Kentro Group. The site includes the closed 7-Eleven at 567 E. Louisiana Ave.
The plans described then included:
- A five-story apartment building with the grocery store on the ground floor. The old 7-Eleven would be torn down, along with other nearby buildings.
- A 1.29-acre site at 1261 Pearl St. with 170 rental units, 14,000 square feet of retail, office space and about 300 parking spaces. Denverite noted these plans were not final.
- A 13,500-square-foot retail space for the grocer, according to the Post.
Westword's headline said the store would arrive in 2026. The developer's own statement was more cautious. Kentro co-founder Jimmy Balafas told the Post, "We're hopeful to break ground in 2026." Breaking ground and opening a store are a building cycle apart. Trader Joe's had not confirmed the location to Denverite when the news broke. We found no 2026 report from a major Denver outlet showing the project has started construction, set an opening date, been delayed or been canceled. For now, the Trader Joe's is still a plan. If it opens, it would be the strip's clearest example of a weekday errand drawing people to the street.
What's Left on This Year's Calendar
The street's regular events still have a few dates left in 2026.
- Old South Pearl Street Farmers Market. Sundays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. through November 8. Counting tomorrow, October 4, there are six market Sundays left.
- Final Friday Art Walk. The final Friday of each month, June through October, from 5 p.m. until dark. The last one this year is October 30.
- South Pearl Oktoberfest. Held September 12 with its entrance at Colorado Avenue and South Pearl. It's over for the year.
- Winterfest. The merchants' association page still shows last year's dates, December 5 and 6, 2025. No 2026 date has been posted yet.
After November 8, the Sunday market tents come down for the season, and Reunion's Wednesday-through-Sunday bread service will be one of the strip's regular weekly draws.
If you own a home near South Pearl and want to know how the 1550 S. Pearl proposal or the Kentro project could affect your block, Brian Harris and Jamie Harris follow these filings and would be glad to talk through what they could mean for your plans. Contact Us when you're ready to talk.
