5074 E Hampden Avenue
Call Your Mother Deli has filed permits for a 1,578 SF tenant build-out at 5074 E. Hampden Avenue, taking over the corner Happy Canyon Shopping Center unit that has sat dark since Starbucks closed the location last fall as part of its national downsizing.
The permit lists construction value at roughly $64,000 and identifies the project as a new deli tenant finish with a full commercial kitchen and dining room. The zone lot is S-CC-3X.
The Happy Canyon center has been through a noticeable churn at the upper end of its tenant mix. Birdcall opened in the center earlier this year, and the surrounding parcel still carries a vacancy that other Hampden corridor retail does not, anchored by the dark big-box that Amazon Fresh walked away from before ever opening.
The unopened Amazon Fresh has been one of south Denver's more visible retail question marks since the company paused its grocery rollout, and the space remains on the market with no announced replacement. Backfilling the Starbucks unit with a regional operator already at scale in Denver is a good play for the center, and pairs with Birdcall to reposition Happy Canyon as more of a food-led neighborhood stop than a quick-service drive-through cluster.
Call Your Mother itself is one of the more closely watched bagel and deli operators expanding into the Mountain West. Andrew Dana and Chef Daniela Moreira opened the first shop on Georgia Avenue NW in Washington in October 2018 and crossed state lines for the first time in May 2023 with the Tennyson Street location in Berkeley. Denver has since absorbed shops on Pearl Street in Capitol Hill, South Holly Street in Hilltop, Central Park, and Washington Park. The Hampden unit is one of three Colorado outposts still in permitting alongside a Golden shop and a Union Station location at 1607 Wewatta Street, and will bring the chain's statewide footprint to ten when all three open.
The Hampden floor plan is built around the brand's standard format. The space is permitted for 14 indoor seats and 16 outdoor seats with a 7-person max staff per shift, and the operator is projecting roughly 300 breakfasts and 200 lunches a day with about 70 percent of orders going out the door as carry-out. That carry-out share is consistent with how the chain operates in its other Denver locations, where lines move fast in the morning and the bagel sandwich program drives most of the volume.
Tweed Studio of Denver is the architect of record. Proficient Engineering is handling the MEP design, and Acme Restaurant Equipment of Savage, Maryland is producing the foodservice plans.
The Happy Canyon parcel sits at one of south Denver's higher-traffic retail intersections, and the corridor has long absorbed national tenants on the strength of demographics in Hampden, Cherry Hills Village, and Greenwood Village.
The slow churn at the center is real but uneven, with strong food and beverage activity offsetting a still-empty grocery anchor. Whether the Amazon Fresh box eventually lands a credible replacement will shape how the rest of the center reprograms.