If you've walked the Yampa River Core Trail past Little Toots Park this summer, you've seen it: a chain-link fence around a bare, graded lot at the corner of 12th and Yampa, sitting empty since early May. No cranes yet. No concrete poured. Just dirt, a fence, and a construction sign for a building most locals have opinions about but haven't actually watched go up.
Here's what most people driving by don't know. That empty lot represents two and a half years of one local restaurateur's effort, four separate votes by city boards, one 2-2 tie, one 4-3 reversal, and a building that shrank by 11 percentage points of lot coverage before anyone would sign off on it. The corner didn't get simpler because everybody agreed. It got smaller because the votes kept staying close.
The Corner That Took Four Tries
Collin Kelley, the local restaurateur behind Cypress and Primrose on Yampa Street, bought the property at 1124 Yampa with a long-term redevelopment in mind, and by January 2024 had opened an interim space called Little Sister in the old Double Z building, partnering with Westerly gallery owner Ryan Scheer to host pop-up dinners and First Friday shows catered out of Primrose. That was the placeholder. The real project, a three-story mixed-use building with eight condo units and a ground-floor restaurant, took a much longer and rockier path through City Hall. By the time the final vote came through in June 2026, Kelley described it as two and a half years of work.
Here's how that path actually broke down:
| When | Body | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| March 2026 | Planning Commission | Split 2-2, sent forward with no recommendation |
| April 2026 | City Council | Voted 4-3 to remand the project back to Planning Commission |
| Early May 2026 | Demolition | Giovonni Construction clears the site while the revised plan is still under review |
| May 2026 | Planning Commission | Votes 3-2 to recommend the redesigned project |
| June 2026 | City Council | Approves final plan 4-1 |
That May demolition date is worth sitting with. The Steamboat Pilot & Today reported that Giovonni Construction crews pulled down the buildings in early May, before the Planning Commission had even taken its second look at the redesign later that month. The corner was cleared while the plan that would eventually use it was still working its way back through review.
Everything That Used to Stand There
The buildings coming down mattered to a specific kind of Steamboat local, because that corner has a real bike history. Moots Cycles, the frame builder that grew into a name in the mountain biking world, started there in 1983. The Eriksen and Bingham bike-building operation worked out of the same lot before it became Sore Saddle Cyclery and later Orange Peel Bicycle Service, which has since relocated to Steamboat Basecamp on the west side of town.
The tin, cone-shaped building on the property had its own separate history. It started life as a wood-waste incinerator for the Mill Creek Sawmill, which harvested timber off Sand Mountain and Meaden Peak starting in 1956. The mill moved the burner to Fairview in 1962, pulled out of Fairview entirely by 1971, and left the burner behind. The city ended up owning it and sold it to Kent Eriksen for one dollar in 1978.
Eriksen was there when the excavators came through. Asked how it felt to watch the building come down, he didn't dress it up:
"I'm all for the next generation and totally understand. Collin has some energy. I've been there and done that."
Before demolition, Eriksen pulled a few pieces out for himself, including the hobbit-shaped door that led into his old bike shop and the very top of the cone-shaped burner, which had been hinged so it could open on a hydraulic system.
Why the Design Had to Shrink
The version approved in June looks different from the one first pitched in March, and the difference is measurable. Architect Sarah Tiedeken of Vertical Arts Architecture, the project's design firm, walked commissioners through the changes at the May hearing: lot coverage dropped from 95 percent to 84 percent, the floor area ratio came down by 9 percent, and the building's overall height was trimmed by 18 inches. Three of the original nine requested variances, covering lot coverage, plate height, and glazing on the west facade, were dropped entirely.
That glazing change mattered to more than the design review board. The original west-facing wall would have blocked sightlines from Little Toots Park toward the river. The redesign added more open space and windows specifically to restore that view.
The version debated back in April would have topped out at 41 feet 6 inches, well above the standard 38-foot limit for residential structures. The 18-inch cut brought the final design down from there, though it still needs the Yampa River floodplain's special height allowance to clear code. The variances that survived into the final approval covered parking, two setback requirements, and that overall height.
The Building Finally Has Names
The approved project goes by The Latigo for the eight residential units and Lumbre for the ground-floor restaurant. Kelley picked both names deliberately. Latigo is a double meaning, the English word for the leather strap on a saddle cinch and the Spanish word for "whip." Lumbre is Spanish for the glow of a fire, and the restaurant is planned to serve Southwest cuisine drawing on both Spanish and Ute influences.
"The restaurant is an homage to fire and the building is an homage to the horses that tamed the West," Kelley said after the final vote.
Not Everyone Thinks It's an Improvement
Public comment on the project split about as evenly as the votes did. Some residents wanted the corner cleaned up no matter what replaced it. Karen Wray wrote during the March hearing that the corner was "the ugliest mismatch of structures in the whole city" and that "almost anything is an aesthetic improvement," though she also flagged the importance of keeping enough parking.
Others pushed back hard on the design itself. Laura Voig called the early renderings "just another ugly residential complex completely changing the flavor of the cool place Steamboat once was," and said the look was closer to Vail or Aspen than Steamboat.
Waterside Village owners Michelle and Stephen Caragol, along with fellow owner Toby Spikes, made a more specific argument in a joint written comment. They pointed out that this particular stretch of Yampa Street has no buildings directly across from it, only Little Toots Park, several river access points, and the pedestrian route to the library, and argued the corner deserved different treatment than the rest of the street.
Local business owner Doug Starkey and Windler Ranch owner Laurie Windler spoke in Kelley's favor, citing his contributions to local schools and the Routt County Fair youth programs. FM Light & Sons owner Chris Dillenbeck weighed in on the practical side, noting the project would add parking, some of it public, in an area where spots are already tight.
What Happens Next
As of this summer, the lot is still just dirt and a fence. Kelley's own timeline, laid out after the June approval, puts the next steps at:
- Building permits targeted for September 2026
- Construction breaking ground in October 2026
- A build process he estimates at roughly 27 months
- A hoped-for opening by Christmas 2028
So the fence around 12th and Yampa is going to be part of the walk along the river for a while yet. If you're timing a trip to the library or a float from Fetcher Pond, expect construction noise and equipment on that corner well into 2027 and 2028.
It's one lot, on one street, in a town where nearly every corner has a story like this if you go back far enough. That's part of what makes tracking a project like The Latigo worth doing. It's not really about one building. It's about watching how Steamboat decides, block by block and vote by vote, what the next version of itself is going to look like.
If you're curious about other corners of town quietly changing shape, or you want a local read on what a project like this means for the streets around it, the Shelley Stanford Team has been watching Yampa Valley development long enough to have context on most of it. Reach out any time you want the fuller story behind what's going up around here.
