"We would be in the red on a $2 million loan for seven to probably closer to eight or nine years." That's Littleton Mayor Kyle Schlachter, on the record this June, explaining why he voted against the deal that will bring a Peyton Manning-backed restaurant and event venue to the last big open parcel near South Platte Park. The council approved it anyway, 4 to 3, in the city's first-ever public-private partnership.
If you've seen the headlines, you know the shorthand: Broncos legend, restaurant, event barn, turf field. What most coverage skips is the part that actually explains why the vote was close. The land at Santa Fe Drive and Mineral Avenue wasn't sitting empty waiting for someone to have a good idea. It already had a use lined up. This deal only makes sense once you understand what it replaced.
What's Actually Going Up on Santa Fe and Mineral
The project is called 1st Street Farms, named for the street in New Orleans where Manning grew up. It's going up in the River Park development zone, on one of what Denver7 described as Littleton's last large undeveloped plots of land, tucked against South Platte Park and the Mary Carter Greenway trail network.
The build itself has three pieces. A 15,000-square-foot restaurant anchors it, serving what city documents call Southern-inspired, Colorado-rooted food, with nods to Manning's Louisiana upbringing and Tennessee college years: shrimp and grits, oysters, five private dining rooms. Next to it sits a 13,000-square-foot event venue called the Field House, built to hold up to 450 guests across its indoor and outdoor space, according to reporting from BusinessDen. A separate glass-enclosed wedding space rounds out the built portion. Outside, a public turf field for youth sports connects to walking paths, gardens, and the existing trail system. The turf field itself is named Little Field, after Richard Sullivan Little, the city's founder.
Gastamo Group, the Denver company behind Park Burger and Homegrown Tap & Dough, will build and run it day to day. Manning holds a minority equity stake and lends his name and image for promotion. He isn't the operator, and depending on which week you check the estimate, the project has been priced anywhere from $28 million to $30 million across different rounds of city filings.
The Money Behind the Menu
Here's where the story gets more interesting than "celebrity restaurant gets a subsidy." The incentive package the council approved isn't a straight handout. It's a bet the city is making against tax revenue the project hasn't generated yet.
"It's about what do we want the city to look like? What do we want that area to feel like?"
That's Councilmember Joel Zink, framing the vote for his colleagues. The mechanics behind that framing look like this:
| Piece of the deal | What it actually does |
|---|---|
| $2 million construction loan | Paid directly to contractors during the build, not handed to the developer as cash |
| Sales tax rebate | 100% of the project's own sales tax goes back to the developer for up to five years, capped at $3 million |
| Fee and use-tax waivers | Roughly $93,000 in development fees per 9News, though Colorado Politics puts the combined fee and use-tax total closer to $531,000 |
| Total package | Capped at a net present value of $5.5 million, though Mayor Schlachter pegged the real value closer to $6 million |
| City's payoff | Full sales tax collection resumes in year six, projected between $775,000 and more than $1 million annually |
The loan is technically forgivable, but as one city official explained during debate, that label undersells what's happening. The city is advancing tax revenue the project is expected to generate later, then paying itself back out of the portion it keeps once the five-year rebate period ends. It's less a gift than a line of credit against a bet on future foot traffic.
The Vote Nobody Expected to Be Close
The Economic Partnership Incentive Policy that made this deal possible has existed since 2024. This was the first time Littleton actually used it, according to reporting from 9News on the council's June session.
Mayor Schlachter, Councilmember Merrill Stillwell, and Councilmember Robert Reichardt voted no. Schlachter's objection wasn't to the project itself. It was to the years of red ink the loan structure creates before the city sees a return, at a moment when he argued the money could cover needs the city already has. Stillwell, who described himself as a Broncos fan, said his concern came down to weighing what the project brings against what it asks for.
Mayor Pro Tem Andrea Peters and Councilmember Zink argued the other side: that a two-million-dollar risk was worth taking for a piece of placemaking the city wouldn't otherwise get built. The math on both sides is defensible. That's usually a sign the underlying trade-off matters more than the vote count.
The Land's Backup Plan Was Never Empty
Here's the part that changes how you should read this whole story. If Gastamo Group had walked away from the funding gap instead of getting the loan, the parcel didn't sit vacant. It reverts to its prior entitlement: roughly 270 townhomes, already zoned and ready to build, according to CBS Colorado's reporting on the proposal.
The housing connection wasn't incidental. Evergreen Devco, a developer with its own multifamily project underway just north of the site, presented alongside Gastamo Group at the council's April study session on the incentive package, according to the Littleton Independent's coverage of that meeting. The two projects sit close enough on the same stretch of Santa Fe that the study session treated them as connected pieces of the same land-use decision, not separate deals.
So the choice in front of the council was never restaurant versus vacant lot. It was restaurant, event venue, and public turf field versus roughly 270 more units of housing on one of the only remaining large parcels the city has left to develop. Neither the yes votes nor the no votes were arguing about whether that land would get built on. They were arguing about what should get built on it, and whether a five-to-nine-year municipal bet was the right price to pay for the answer.
What Opens, and What You Get to Use in the Meantime
Construction is expected to start this fall, with an opening targeted for 2028, according to Denver7's reporting on the project timeline. In the meantime, the public-access terms of the deal are specific: residents get use of the turf field, trails, and open space throughout the loan period, and the city and local nonprofits get free use of the event venue during the initial five-year tax-sharing window, per Colorado Politics' breakdown of the agreement terms.
That means the parts of 1st Street Farms that don't require a dinner reservation, the field, the paths, the green space stitched into the existing South Platte Park trail system, are the parts residents will actually be able to walk into well before the restaurant ever opens its doors.
Whichever way you land on the vote, the corner of Santa Fe and Mineral is going to look different in two years than it does today, and the reason has less to do with a Super Bowl quarterback than with a council deciding what kind of density it wanted on one of the last blank spaces on the map. If you're the kind of person who likes watching a neighborhood's shape get decided in real time, keep an eye on that intersection.
If a moment ever comes when you're curious what a home near South Platte Park is actually worth, given everything rising a few blocks away, Lifestyle International Realty Colorado is glad to talk it through, whenever the timing is yours.
