"It's a place where you can come relax," Alex Pavlenko told the Lone Tree Voice. "It's about providing a memorable experience." Pavlenko is general manager of The Groove, a café and restaurant at 10930 Lyric Street. His job comes through BlueStar Resort & Golf, a boutique hospitality management firm.
What makes his restaurant stand out is where it sits and when it opened. RidgeGate's east side, the land past I-25 along RidgeGate Parkway and High Note Avenue, is being built in an unusual order. The city's buildings came first. The grocery store and the big regional park come in 2027. In between, the place on that side of the interstate where anyone can sit down, order dinner, and hear a band is a restaurant inside a neighborhood amenity center.
A Clubhouse Restaurant Anyone Can Walk Into
The Groove is part of the new 7,000-square-foot Amenity Center at Lyric at RidgeGate, a residential village planned for nearly 1,900 homes. It opened to Lyric residents in May and to the public in June. The rest of the building is private. The fitness building, the swimming pool, and the resident gathering spaces are for Lyric homeowners only. The restaurant is open to everyone.
Neighbors from Lone Tree's older streets west of the interstate can stop in for breakfast at 7 a.m. any day of the week. Current hours on The Groove's website:
- Monday and Tuesday: 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.
- Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday: 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
- Friday and Saturday: 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Some older write-ups list earlier closing times on Wednesdays and Sundays. The restaurant's own site, updated this month, has the later hours above.
Five chefs built the menu around classic American food with flavors from elsewhere. The breakfast item that took off is an Argentine-style empanada filled with egg, ham and cheese, and there's now a rotating empanada of the day you can ask your server about. At lunch and dinner, the kitchen makes its pizza dough and focaccia in-house and batters the fish and chips fresh every day. Pavlenko told the Lone Tree Voice that the sloppy joe has become a fan favorite: "It's not like a sloppy joe you've ever had." Online ordering is on the restaurant's website.
This Weekend Is the Easiest Time for a First Visit
The Groove puts on the kind of programming a town square usually would, and the next eight days are a good time to see it.
Friday, October 23: Friday Night Live is a weekly live-music night with food and cocktails. Antonio Lopez plays this week.
Saturday, October 24: Fall Fest is free and runs from 1 to 4 p.m. The restaurant lists live music, games, fall crafts, food trucks, bounce houses and a pumpkin patch.
Friday, October 30: Patrick Dethlefs closes out October's Friday Night Live lineup.
A free afternoon festival open to everyone, run out of a residential amenity center, is something you'd expect from a park or a town green. The east side's park is still under construction.
The City Built Its Civic Pieces First
The first big public building on the east side to open this fall wasn't built for gathering. The Lone Tree Justice Center opened to the public on September 14 at 12707 High Note Avenue. The 37,324-square-foot building puts the Lone Tree Police Department and the Municipal Court under one roof. The court used to meet in the Lone Tree Civic Center, which sits in a residential neighborhood. Its first session in the new building was October 8.
The building has a few features worth a walk-by: public plazas, landscaped grounds, a native demonstration garden, and a 2,900-square-foot solar canopy. Coventry Development donated the land as part of RidgeGate. The city's announcement describes the Justice Center, the new Public Works facility, and High Note Park as "creating a new area for the City."
The Public Works facility had its ribbon-cutting on August 18 at 10155 First Street. It's for operations only and offers no public services, so anyone with Public Works business still goes to the municipal building at 9220 Kimmer Drive, according to the city's September/October Timberlines magazine.
The same issue reports a groundbreaking that will add a smaller gathering spot near the light rail. Tall Tales Ranch, a Colorado nonprofit, is building a four-acre campus on the east side of I-25, across from the RidgeGate light rail station, on land it leases from the Schweiger Ranch Foundation. The plans include a coffee shop and a community event barn sized for weddings, meetings and gatherings of about 120 guests. Both will offer vocational training and jobs. The organization already runs Tall Tales Coffee Company. No opening date has been published.
The Order Everything Else Arrives In
Because the court and the maintenance yard opened first, the east side's larger gathering places are still ahead. Here is the order the public record lays out:
- June: The Groove opens to the public inside Lyric's Amenity Center.
- August and September 2026: The Public Works facility has its ribbon-cutting, then the Justice Center opens to the public.
- 2027: Lone Tree Village opens. It's a King Soopers Marketplace that broke ground April 10, with more retail and community space planned around it.
- Late summer 2027: High Note Park Phase One is expected to be finished and open, according to South Suburban Parks and Recreation.
Lone Tree Village is being built between the eastbound and westbound lanes of RidgeGate Parkway, next to High Note Avenue and Rhapsody Road. In a February 2026 announcement, developer Regency Centers described a 123,000-square-foot King Soopers anchor and about 31,000 square feet of shop space. King Soopers was the only tenant it named. The rest of the shops are still unannounced.
High Note Park Will Become the East Side's Main Gathering Place
The park is the piece that will take over the role The Groove fills today. The city and South Suburban broke ground on Phase One on April 29, 2026, along Happy Canyon Creek near I-25 and RidgeGate Parkway. The plan dates back to 2000, when Lone Tree voters approved annexing the land, and the city's groundbreaking release notes the park will be easy to reach from the RidgeGate light rail station.
Phase One is focused on everyday use. It includes:
- A 200-seat beer garden, expected to be run by Lone Tree Brewing Company
- A food truck area and community gathering spaces
- A dog park with separate areas for large and small dogs
- Two lit synthetic multipurpose fields, a playground and a water play feature
- The new Happy Canyon Trail, with connections to Schweiger Ranch and the East West Trail
Rampart Range Metro District and Mile High Flood District are building Happy Canyon Trail. It's planned to pass under RidgeGate Parkway and eventually reach Lincoln Avenue. The roughly $31 million in Phase One funding was secured in September 2025. South Suburban put in $13 million, the City of Lone Tree $9 million, Douglas County $7.5 million, the Southeast Public Improvement Metropolitan District $1 million, and Great Outdoors Colorado $580,000.
A beer garden, food trucks, and a dog park on a trail to Schweiger Ranch add up to a Saturday afternoon on the east side that doesn't depend on a restaurant's calendar. Until then, that Saturday afternoon is The Groove's Fall Fest on October 24, from 1 to 4 p.m. at 10930 Lyric Street.
If you'd like to talk through how RidgeGate's 2027 openings could shape your plans, Stacie Chadwick would be glad to hear from you. Let's Connect.
