The Same Family Built Both Sides of Greenwood Village's Restaurant Scene

"It was 2018 when we first found this site. It's taken us a long time for one reason or another."

That's how the team behind Brinkerhoff Hospitality explained a piece of Greenwood Village real estate to BusinessDen on July 28, 2026, when they confirmed a new restaurant is finally moving forward there. Eight years is a long time to sit on a site. Long enough, in this case, for the family that scouted it to split into two separate restaurant companies before the project ever broke ground.

If you've eaten at La Loma in the Belleview Promenade and also at Savina's Mexican Kitchen or The Brinkerhoff down in Castle Rock and assumed they're cousins in the same restaurant group, you're right about the history and wrong about the present. They came from one family. They are no longer one company. And Greenwood Village is about to have both halves of that family operating inside its borders at the same time, on projects that were set in motion years before anyone chose sides.

The Sign Never Changed, But the Company Did

La Loma has been part of the Denver dining vocabulary since 1973, when Savina Mendoza started making her green chile out of her own home. William Brinkerhoff and his father bought into the restaurant in 1981 and grew it from there, eventually opening additional locations including one at 8000 East Belleview Avenue in Greenwood Village's Belleview Promenade, the space that had previously housed Il Fornaio. Renee Brinkerhoff, William's wife of 45 years, told BusinessDen she'd been involved in La Loma's operations since 2009 and got that Greenwood Village location up and running herself after a contentious divorce settlement.

The divorce is the part most diners never see on the menu. In September 2025, William walked away from the La Loma name entirely as part of the settlement, leaving it to Renee. Here's how the restaurant map split:

• Renee Brinkerhoff kept the La Loma name and now operates it in Parker, Greenwood Village, and downtown Denver's McGregor Square.
• William Brinkerhoff rebranded his remaining locations, in downtown Denver and Castle Rock, as Savina's Mexican Kitchen, a nod to the woman whose recipes started the whole thing.
• Sierra Restaurant in Lone Tree stayed under the Brinkerhoff Hospitality banner that William and his son Mark continue to run together.

Renee has said the menu at her La Loma locations isn't changing. Culinary director Paco Romeo stayed on with her, and by her account guests get the same green chile they always have. So the Greenwood Village restaurant you've been going to since last summer looks and tastes exactly the way it did before any of this became public. The ownership behind the sign is what moved.

Eight Years on a Site, Then a Restart

While Renee was getting La Loma re-established in Greenwood Village, William and Mark were building something new elsewhere. Mark Brinkerhoff and his wife Johana opened The Brinkerhoff, a Mexican steakhouse and sushi concept, in Castle Rock in the fall of 2025. It's a personal project for the couple, built as a tribute to Mark's grandfather Sonny, who settled in Cherry Hills Village in 1954 and first invested in the original La Loma out of a love of home cooking. The restaurant includes an open kitchen, a champagne room for private celebrations, and a patio with mountain views, and an adjacent event venue called Bar Hummingbird was already in the works as a follow-up.

Now that same side of the family is bringing a project to Greenwood Village on the site they scouted back in 2018, long before any of the family litigation began. The July 2026 BusinessDen report didn't disclose the concept or an exact address, but it confirmed the location and the long runway behind it. Whatever opens there will share a city with Renee's La Loma, without either side having planned it that way. The site predates the divorce. The opening will happen after it.

A Different Kind of Opening, Same Village

Not everything landing in Greenwood Village this year comes with a family history attached. In February 2026, Chicken Salad Chick opened its eighth Colorado location at 5322 DTC Boulevard, a straightforward fast-casual addition to the corridor. As part of its opening events, the restaurant raised money for Make-A-Wish Colorado, an organization headquartered right there in Greenwood Village.

Put the two stories side by side and you get a clearer picture of how this stretch of the Denver Tech Center actually grows. It isn't one kind of restaurant multiplying. It's a family-run Mexican concept working through a very public split on one end of the Village, and a national chicken salad chain quietly filling a DTC Boulevard storefront on the other. Both are real growth. Neither looks anything like the other.

What Holds Steady While the Names Change

None of this touches the restaurants that have anchored Greenwood Village's dining identity for years. Eddie V's and JING both operate out of Landmark at the Denver Tech Center, and Enso Sushi & Grill has held its spot at the northeast corner of Belleview and Yosemite. Those three aren't part of anyone's family drama or expansion plan. They're the fixed points the rest of the corridor gets measured against, which is exactly why a story like the Brinkerhoff split stands out. It's not background noise against a static backdrop. It's genuine movement in a neighborhood that mostly doesn't have much.

For residents who've watched the Belleview Promenade cycle through Il Fornaio and then La Loma, the useful thing to know isn't just what's on the menu. It's that the person behind that menu changed once already, and the family that used to run it together is now building two separate footprints in the same small city. The next time a new name shows up near DTC Boulevard or Belleview Avenue, it's worth asking who's actually behind it before assuming it's simply new.

Greenwood Village doesn't get restaurant news like this often. When it does, it tends to say more about the people building the place than about any single dish on the table.

If you're weighing a move to Greenwood Village, Cherry Hills Village, or anywhere else in the Denver metro, and you want someone who pays this much attention to the details of a neighborhood, not just its median price, Stephanie Watanabe would love to talk. Let's Connect.