Las Bodegas: Inside the new innovation hub that hopes to invigorate the entire community
DENVER — A large warehouse in Denver’s Lincoln Park neighborhood buzzes with the sounds of construction. Currently a smattering of metal beams and wooden frames, this warehouse will soon serve as a new community space.
Las Bodegas, the new Latino Cultural Arts Center (LCAC) campus, is a creative innovation hub that will house classrooms, artist-in-residence studios, a digital media lab, and a café.
The 10,000-square-foot warehouse has been a project in the works for several years and is set to open mid-2026. Alfredo Reyes, executive director of the LCAC and project lead on Las Bodegas, said this space won’t be just for those who identify as Latino.
“We define Latinidad geopolitically,” Reyes said. “We know that latino also includes our differences, and that’s what brings us together. We all want safety, health, love.”
The goal of Las Bodegas is to be an incubator for creative career development in Denver’s historically marginalized communities. According to the Office of Economic Development and International Revenue’s 2025 report, the creative economy in Colorado brought $19.7 billion in revenue.
“Communities of color are being cut out of that huge economic driver,” Reyes said. “That’s why Las Bodegas is so necessary.”
Along with the creative industries, patrons of Las Bodegas can also expect workshops on clean energy, entrepreneurship training, and education around cultural practices.
“It’s easy to forget that Indigenous communities, communities of color — we are the original stewards of the earth,” Reyes said.
The road to Las Bodegas began in 2019, when LCAC founder Adrianna Abarca purchased the property. Abarca, Reyes, and other parties at the LCAC piloted the multi-million dollar project with $15,000. A year and a half later, Las Bodegas received a grant for $200,000 to expand around cultural arts and social-emotional resilience.
Now, the project has received funding from the U.S. Senate, Colorado Creative Industries, and the City of Denver.
“LCAC started as a community-based research project, asking artists, educators, youth, ‘what’s missing?’” Reyes said. “We discovered that there was an urgent need for space, specifically multi-generational space.”
Reyes said that the Latino community was already in need of rebuilding after the COVID-19 pandemic. Little did they know, Reyes said, that things were actually going to get worse,, he said in reference to mass deportations.
“You can’t expect a community to heal when they are constantly in a state of fight or flight, constantly under attack,” Reyes said. “Because we aren’t given that space to heal, we also aren’t always looking outside of the immediate needs to see how we can engage with creative spaces.”
A new study from CU Boulder found that the closure, and lack of, community spaces is a public health concern. A primary goal of Las Bodegas is to provide a multi-generational space for families to come together, and the study shows that without those spaces, there can be “lasting effects on communities’ social, economic, and health outcomes.”
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