For years, the rectangle of scrub grass and gravel just north of South Platte Park was the kind of lot most Littleton residents stopped noticing. Drive down Santa Fe Drive toward Mineral Avenue often enough and a vacant parcel becomes wallpaper, the empty space you register the same way you register a stop sign, just enough to know it's there. That lot has spent most of the past decade being one of the last big pieces of undeveloped land inside city limits.
It is not wallpaper anymore. Fencing went up this summer. Dirt started moving. By mid-August, local reporting confirmed what had been a council agenda item for months: construction on 1st Street Farms was underway on the site.
Most of what circulated online about this project led with the name attached to it. Peyton Manning holds a minority stake and lends his name and story to a restaurant, event barn and turf field development that Denver-based Gastamo Group is building and will operate. The name comes from 1st Street in New Orleans, where Manning grew up, not from any farming on the property. That detail made for a good headline. It is not the part of the story that changes anything for someone who lives three blocks away.
The part that changes something is buried in the city council minutes from June 9. Littleton agreed to give up five years of the sales tax this project generates and to front a $2 million construction loan, in exchange for a public turf field, nearly four and a half acres of green space and trail connections the city could not otherwise afford to build on its own. The restaurant is the vehicle. The park is what the deal was actually for.
What's actually rising on that lot
The plans, confirmed in city documents and reporting from CBS Colorado, break down into three pieces:
- A 15,000-square-foot restaurant serving Southern-inspired, Colorado-rooted food, with dishes like shrimp and grits built around local produce
- A 13,000-square-foot glass-walled event barn, called the Field House, built to hold up to 450 guests for weddings, galas and community gatherings
- A public turf field named Little's Field, honoring Richard Sullivan Little, the city's founder, along with a bike repair station and trail extensions that Gastamo Group will maintain
That last bullet is the one worth sitting with. The field and the trail work are not amenities the restaurant happens to include. They are the specific things the city's loan money is legally restricted to funding. Under the agreement, that $2 million can only be reimbursed against invoices for public-facing construction, the trails and the turf, not the dining room or the wedding barn.
The empty lot was never going to stay empty
It is easy to assume a vacant parcel this size would just sit there another decade. That was never the alternative on the table. The property owner had a backup plan filed with the city: roughly 270 residential units if the 1st Street Farms deal fell through.
Littleton's own fiscal analysis, prepared ahead of the June vote, found that scenario would have cost the city more than it returned. Residential development in Littleton, according to that analysis, tends to draw more in municipal services than it generates in property tax revenue over time. So the real choice in front of the council was not restaurant versus quiet field. It was restaurant-plus-public-park versus 270 more homes that the city projected would run at a net loss.
What the city gave up to get it
The council approved the incentive package on a 4-3 vote. Mayor Kyle Schlachter and council members Merrill Stillwell and Robert Reichardt voted against it. Mayor Pro Tem Andrea Peters and council members Pam Grove, Amanda Henderson and Joel Zink voted for it.
The mechanics are specific. The $2 million loan carries a 5.28 percent interest rate and comes from Littleton's business use tax revenue, not the general fund, so it does not compete with police, roads or library budgets. Gastamo Group keeps 100 percent of the sales tax the project generates for up to five years, or until that revenue reaches roughly $2.97 million, whichever happens first. After that, the city keeps everything.
Schlachter's objection was not to the project itself. "This project is worthy of city investment, and we want to bring businesses like it into Littleton," he said, adding that his concerns were about the structure of the agreement rather than the development. Peters framed the public turf field differently, as a place where showing up does not require spending money. "Someone could come and simply spend time with friends, enjoy the atmosphere, and be part of the community," she said.
Two numbers that are not the same number
You may see this project described as a $24.6 million annual boost to the local economy. You may also see the city's own projection of $7.8 million in cumulative fiscal benefit through year 30. Those are not contradictory figures. They are measuring different things.
The $24.6 million is a regional economic impact estimate that includes direct restaurant and event spending, indirect spending by suppliers, and induced spending as employees spend their paychecks elsewhere in town. It is a measure of activity moving through the local economy. The $7.8 million is the city's own conservative estimate of what actually lands in Littleton's budget over three decades, after the five-year tax deferral and the loan repayment are accounted for. One number describes the whole ripple. The other describes what the city itself gets to keep. Reading the bigger figure as the city's payoff overstates what taxpayers are actually getting back.
The fence sticks around longer than you'd guess
When Gastamo Group CEO Peter Newlin spoke to reporters after the June vote, he said he hoped to break ground by the end of the year and open in 2028. Construction beat that timeline. By August, the project was already under construction, months ahead of the target Newlin himself had set.
That means the two-year build window is likely already running. If you walk or bike the trails near South Platte Park, expect the fencing, equipment and dust to be part of the scenery for a while yet. The payoff, according to the city's own timeline, is a restaurant and event barn opening around 2028, with the turf field, trail connections and bike repair station coming online as public infrastructure milestones are completed and reimbursed along the way.
None of this requires a decision from anyone reading it. You do not need to pick a side on the incentive deal to notice that the empty lot you have driven past for years is turning into something specific, with a name, a budget and a five-year clock on who collects the sales tax. That is simply what is happening at Santa Fe and Mineral right now, and it is worth knowing what you are actually looking at the next time you pass the fence.
If you are curious how development like this tends to ripple into home values and demand along a corridor once it is finished, Matthew Magee has been tracking projects like this across the foothills and south metro for years. Let's Connect.
