The Wellshire Inn stopped serving dinner on December 29. For the rest of 2026, the Tudor building at Hampden and Colorado is a private-events room booked around a major remodel, and the restaurant that anchored this neighborhood's Sunday brunch and holiday party circuit for the better part of a century is offline. That single fact reorganizes how a resident should think about July here, because Southern Hills and Wellshire were already a neighborhood defined by what happens outside their own boundaries. With the Inn dark, the center of gravity shifts to the golf course, the canal loop, and the community-run calendar that most new arrivals never fully learn.
This is a guide for the person who already lives on Dartmouth or Franklin or Madison and wants to actually use their neighborhood this summer.
The Inn is closed. The Golfer's Pub is not.
Here is the piece the neighborhood chatter keeps getting wrong. The Wellshire Inn dining room is closed, but the Wellshire property is not. The building will be available for private events booked around the remodel, and in the meantime, the Golfer's Pub next to the pro shop remains open whenever the course is. To find out, call 303-757-2397.
That distinction matters if you have been reflexively driving past the corner assuming everything is shuttered. The pub is a walk-up option after nine holes or a casual stop on a canal loop, not a substitute for the Inn's continental menu, but a real amenity that keeps operating on the golf course's daylight schedule. The main building itself was built as a country club in 1926 and became city-owned in the 1950s, which is why a public course and a landmark event venue share the same driveway. When the remodel finishes, the Inn returns. Until then, plan around the pub.
The July 4 Bike Parade is the neighborhood's actual calendar
Every neighborhood in Denver claims a summer tradition. Southern Hills has two, and they are run entirely by the volunteer Southern Hills Community Association, which currently hosts an annual Easter Egg Hunt and 4th of July Bike Parade and provides support to Slavens School. The Bike Parade is the one that draws the block, and it is the closest thing this neighborhood has to a Kearney Street or South Gaylord moment.
A few things worth knowing if you are new to the parade:
- The SHCA is a Registered Neighborhood Organization, not an HOA, and membership is voluntary. Events are open to residents whether or not they pay dues.
- The parade is a community-funded tradition. If you value it and never write a check, that is the check.
- The Easter Egg Hunt and the Bike Parade are the two anchor events. The rest of the calendar is smaller and more informal.
If you have kids on bikes or scooters, this is the July morning to build around. If you don't, it is still the one day a year the neighborhood puts itself on the street in a way that lets you meet the people three blocks over.
The underpass changed the map. Here is the loop.
The single biggest infrastructure change to this neighborhood in the last decade was not a new build. It was two concrete tunnels.
Before June 2021, the High Line Canal Trail hit Colorado and Hampden and stopped. Users had to cross an intersection with roughly 77,000 daily vehicles on foot, then walk on a shoulderless section of Hampden or cut through a Cherry Hills subdivision to pick the trail up again. On June 3, 2021, Cherry Hills Village, Denver, and Arapahoe County celebrated the grand opening of the High Line Canal underpass at Hampden Ave. and Colorado Boulevard with a ribbon cutting and kids bike parade through the tunnels, and the trail is now fully open, creating a much safer connection for pedestrians and cyclists along the trail beneath Hampden and Colorado.
The result, for a Southern Hills resident, is that the canal edge of the neighborhood is now a genuine loop. The two underpasses are connected by a quarter mile of new trail skirting the edge of Wellshire Golf Course. Before the underpasses were built, the trail ended and users had to navigate across two busy, multi-lane roads to pick it up again on the other side. Between the two underpasses, Denver's Department of Transportation and Infrastructure also added a new, 10-foot wide multi-use trail along the north side of Hampden that gives people more space to bike and walk.
A workable morning loop from the center of the neighborhood:
- Start at McWilliams Park at Dartmouth and Adams. Locals call it Dinosaur Park because of the play sculpture, which the artist has said is technically a dragon. It was dedicated in 1967.
- Head west to Mamie D. Eisenhower Park at 4300 E. Dartmouth, where the Conservancy's segment map begins.
- Follow the canal east to the Colorado Boulevard underpass, cut under Hampden through the second tunnel, and pick up the quarter-mile connector along the golf course.
- Loop back through the residential streets or continue south into the Cherry Hills segment.
For years, this was three separate walks stitched together by a bad crosswalk. Now it is one continuous outing you can do before breakfast.
Where residents actually eat, since Wellshire has essentially no restaurants
The line residents repeat about their own neighborhood is nearly always some version of "we have no restaurants," and it is functionally true. The dining plan for a Southern Hills household is a map of the surrounding half mile, not the interior. With the Inn's kitchen closed, that map matters more this summer than it did last summer.
The nearest options worth knowing, grouped by direction:
| Direction | Place | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Across University, north | Osteria Alberico | Rustic Italian from Frasca Hospitality Group |
| Southwest into Englewood | Penn Street Kitchen | Comfort food |
| Southwest into Englewood | Zomo | Asian, family recipes |
| Southwest into Englewood | Cochino Taco | Affordable Mexican |
| At University Hills Plaza | Beau Jo's, Poppies, The Garlic Knot | Casual, walkable from the north end |
| On the golf course | Golfer's Pub | Only in-boundary option, daylight hours |
The Alberico opening is the one that reshaped the near-neighborhood dining picture. In July 2024, Frasca Hospitality Group, of Tavernetta and Pizzeria Alberico fame, opened its fifth eatery, Osteria Alberico, just outside of Wellshire on the other side of University. Pop in for elevated rustic Italian fare. For anyone who used to default to the Wellshire Inn for a Friday night that did not require a downtown drive, this is now the closest replacement of anything resembling that register, and it sits within an easy walk of the northern blocks.
For everyday errands, the University Hills Plaza handles what a Wellshire address does not. Sprouts, King Soopers, Einstein Bros, a Starbucks, and the casual dinner options above are all inside the plaza's footprint.
Slavens in July
School is out, but Slavens is not really out of the neighborhood's summer picture. The K-8 sits at the geographic and social center of the community, and the Southern Hills Community Association's programming leans on the school as a hub during the year. In July, that shows up as summer camp drop-offs, playground use, and the parade route logic. A lot of the informal weekend rhythm of the neighborhood assumes Slavens is the meeting point.
If you moved here in the last twelve months and have not yet oriented around the school as an anchor, this is the month to do it. The playground, the field, and the sidewalks feeding into it are effectively public infrastructure for the neighborhood in the summer.
A resident's honest July weekend
Here is what the summer weekend actually looks like when you build it around what is open and what is not.
Saturday morning: coffee from the plaza, canal loop from Dinosaur Park through the Colorado underpass, back through the golf course edge. Ninety minutes if you take your time.
Saturday afternoon: lunch at the Golfer's Pub if you are staying inside the neighborhood, or a short drive to Penn Street Kitchen if you are not. Neither requires a reservation.
Saturday evening: Osteria Alberico if you booked ahead. If not, the University Hills stretch will absorb a walk-in.
Sunday: the parade if it is the 4th, otherwise a slower version of Saturday. The neighborhood does not have a Sunday farmers market of its own, but South Pearl Street's is a fifteen-minute drive and runs weekly through November.
The through-line is that the Wellshire Inn's absence is not a hole in the summer. It is a nudge to use the parts of the neighborhood that were always the point: the course, the canal, the school, the parade, the plaza. The Inn will come back. The habit you build this summer is the one worth keeping when it does.
If you are thinking about what your home would be worth in a market where buyers increasingly weigh amenities like the canal loop and the Slavens boundary alongside square footage, Chriss Bond can talk through what recent Southern Hills and Wellshire sales tell you about your specific block. Contact Me to start a conversation.
