The Lakewood shopping center anchored by Casa Bonita has changed hands in a $30.25 million deal, with two companies now in charge of the property and reportedly planning upgrades to the site. Lamar Station Plaza, sitting at the northeast corner of West Colfax Avenue and Pierce Street, is best known as the home of the elaborate pink-stuccoed Mexican restaurant that has drawn visitors from well beyond the metro area for decades.
According to The Business Journals, the shopping center was acquired for $30.25 million and purchased by two companies, which plan upgrades to the property. Property materials from DLC Management Corp. list the center at 6431-6791 West Colfax Avenue in Lakewood, with 186,793 square feet of gross leasable area across the property.
Casa Bonita itself occupies a substantial footprint within that larger plaza. Per the same property materials, the restaurant is an anchor tenant with 54,916 square feet of space, plus an additional 3,758 square feet of storage. The listed tenant mix at the center also includes Ross Dress for Less, Dollar Tree, Adventure Dental, Arc Thrift and WestFax Brewing.
A Shopping Center That Has Changed Hands Before
This is not the first time the property has traded. Broad Street Realty bought the Lakewood shopping center in 2014 for $8 million, back when, as reported by The Denver Post, the 190,000-square-foot center sported 30 percent vacancy. By 2017, the center had been renamed Lamar Station Plaza, and its building facades and parking lot had been upgraded.
That same year, Ross Dress for Less moved to open a 23,800-square-foot discount apparel and home décor store in the center, a move the Post reported was expected to drop the center's vacancy rate to 10 percent. The improvements and new leasing activity marked a turnaround for a property that had struggled to fill its storefronts just a few years earlier.
Casa Bonita's Own Costly Comeback
Casa Bonita's own ownership history has been just as eventful as the plaza around it. The restaurant had been shuttered since March 2020 because of the pandemic, according to The Gazette, before new owners took over in 2021 and launched a sweeping renovation. Those owners estimated they would spend more than $12 million on renovations and upgrades to bring the beloved cliff-diver attraction back to life.
The Gazette also reported that the restaurant's operators hired roughly 550 employees to staff the reopened eatery, underscoring just how large an operation Casa Bonita has become within the broader shopping center. The restaurant's outsized presence, both in square footage and local lore, has long made it the plaza's defining tenant.
What the Market Says About the Deal
Property materials describe the area surrounding Lamar Station Plaza as a rapidly improving trade area experiencing significant population growth and ongoing redevelopment, according to the DLC Management Corp. listing. Separately, a retail market report from Innovate Commercial Real Estate notes that deals over $5 million in the Colorado market are scarcer and tend to lean toward value-add centers carrying more leasing risk, a dynamic that could inform how the new owners approach the property going forward.
Cottonwood Plaza, another nearby Lakewood center, also sold. Elsewhere in the state, Shopping Center Business has reported that The Promenade Shops at Centerra in Northern Colorado, a 494,500-square-foot center, is undergoing its own multimillion-dollar, property-wide renovation, illustrating a broader pattern of reinvestment in Colorado retail centers.
For now, the identities of Lamar Station Plaza's new owners and the specifics of their planned upgrades remain undisclosed in available reporting. What is clear is that Casa Bonita, with its cliff divers and cult following, will continue to anchor the Lakewood plaza as its new owners chart their next moves.
