Walk down to the Dillon Marina this week and you'll see two things that don't belong in the same sentence unless you already live here. The docks sit lower than they should, with some gangways resting directly on exposed shoreline instead of floating above it. And behind them, a tiki bar with a brand-new sign is still running a summer menu, months after the brewery that occupied that spot for 51 years closed its doors for good.
Both of those facts are true. Neither one caused the other. That's the part worth understanding if you live near the lake, because it's easy to lump "the marina is different this year" into one story when it's actually two, running on two completely separate clocks. One is weather. The other is a real estate decision the town made in February. Knowing which is which tells you what to expect next spring, and what's permanent no matter how much snow falls this winter.
What "77% of Normal" Actually Looks Like From the Dock
Dillon Reservoir peaked for the season on June 17 at 80% capacity. That's the highest the lake got all year, and it's a steep step down from last year, when the reservoir didn't top out until June 27 and reached 99.5% capacity, according to Summit Daily News. Denver Water's supply manager Nathan Elder put the gap in plainer terms: last year the reservoir was about 1,000 acre-feet from full at its peak. This year it was roughly 50,000 acre-feet short.
By September 16, storage had drifted down to 170,821 acre-feet, or 77% of what's typical for that date, based on federal gauge data compiled by Snoflo. Elder has called this one of the four or five worst years on record for Dillon Reservoir storage, though still well above the historic bottom of 35% capacity hit in the spring of 1978. Denver Water expects the reservoir to keep dropping through the fall and bottom out around 60% capacity by next April, before spring runoff starts refilling it again.
| Point in the season | Dillon Reservoir level |
|---|---|
| Peak, June 17, 2026 | 80% capacity |
| Peak, June 27, 2025 (for comparison) | 99.5% capacity |
| Current, Sept 16, 2026 | 77% of normal for the date |
| Forecast low, April 2027 | ~60% capacity |
The number that matters for anyone who lives here isn't the percentage. It's what happens at the shoreline while that percentage falls: gangways that normally float now rest directly on exposed ground, and the marina has had to change how it operates just to keep boats moving.
Why September 13 Is the Deadline This Year
The Dillon Marina's own notice to boaters is direct: because of dropping water levels, every customer boat has to be out of the water by September 13. That deadline is a direct consequence of the drought numbers above, not a scheduling choice the town made for its own convenience. The marina is still renting boats, kayaks, and paddleboards as long as conditions allow, and it's offering a fall discount to keep people on the water through the tail end of the season.
The reservoir's other marina isn't doing that at all. Frisco Bay Marina, across the lake from Dillon, ended all powerboat and paddle-sport rentals for the 2026 season entirely because of low water. That leaves Dillon Marina as the only launch ramp and Aquatic Nuisance Species inspection site on the entire reservoir this year, which has meant longer waits and heavier weekend traffic at the one ramp still open. The marina's blue crane, normally used to launch and retrieve larger sailboats, was inoperable all summer, so Etchells and other big boats had to use a loader instead. The amphitheater's floating dock never went in this year either. It got relocated to the launch ramp to help keep boats moving through a single choke point.
None of that stopped the Dillon Yacht Club, which calls itself the highest sailing club in North America at 9,017 feet of elevation, from running its annual Dillon Open Regatta August 21-23, Colorado's largest sailing regatta in Summit County. Low water changes the logistics. It hasn't stopped people from sailing.
The Building Nobody Expected to Sell This Fast
The tiki bar story starts a year before any of this became visible to most residents. Pug Ryan's Brewery had operated the marina's lakefront tiki bar under a lease that dated back to 2011, extended eight separate times, with a final expiration set for November 1, 2026. In August 2025, the Dillon Town Council began drafting a request for proposals for a new concessionaire to take over once that lease ran out, expecting an orderly handoff sometime in 2027.
That plan changed in February 2026, when the Dillon Urban Renewal Authority voted to purchase the Pug Ryan's building outright at 104 Village Place. Once the town owned the building, there was no reason to wait for the lease to expire on its own schedule. Pug Ryan's closed for good on April 5, after 51 years in business, well ahead of the November date anyone had been planning around.
The council had already selected Justin and Elissa Slezak, owners of Keystone Coffee Co. and STEEP Brewing and Coffee Co., as the winning proposal for the marina's next tiki bar operator, originally slated to start in summer 2027. When the building sale accelerated the timeline, the Slezaks agreed to move their takeover up by a full year.
A Different Bar Under the Same Roof
The new operation opened under the name STEEP Brewing Lakeside Tiki Bar, with a soft opening over Memorial Day weekend and a full grand opening on Father's Day weekend, June 20-21. The Slezaks already run a small group of Summit County food and drink businesses, including Snowbird Cafe and Bistro, Breckenridge Coffee House, and Breckenridge Coffee Roasters, and they brought staff over from those locations to get the tiki bar open on a tight timeline.
The reopening came with a few specific changes worth knowing if you haven't been down there since the switch:
- A new tiki-themed menu, including shrimp tacos, a tiki burger, and poke wonton nachos
- A grand-opening hula party with hula dancers, a pig roast from Highside Brewing & BBQ, and dock dogs diving off the pier
- A live music partnership with the Summit Music Relief Fund, a nonprofit that connects local musicians with paying gigs
Justin Slezak said the response from local musicians wanting to play the space has been strong. "I think, right now, they have 48 people that want to play down here," he told Summit Daily News, adding that the goal is live music a couple of nights a week once a full schedule is set. Part of the intent is to give people something to do before Dillon Amphitheater concerts, a short walk up the hill from the tiki bar.
The Restaurant That's Still Just a Set of Drawings
There's a second waterfront project that predates all of this and hasn't caught up to it. Back in the summer of 2024, the town hired architecture firm Cushing Terrell for $65,000 to sketch conceptual designs for a separate, larger restaurant near the marina, distinct from the tiki bar. The firm showed preliminary concepts in February 2025, then returned with a final two-level design on June 24, 2025, featuring a full-service restaurant upstairs, flexible event space below, and public restrooms serving the bike path and marina beach.
Town officials have been clear that this restaurant wouldn't replace the tiki bar. Marina director Craig Simson has said the tiki bar is too central to the lakefront's character to lose, even with a flagship restaurant nearby. Any further build-out near the water is also tied to a seawall replacement that hasn't been scheduled. In other words, the design exists, but nothing suggests it's moved past the conceptual stage or that construction has a start date.
What Doesn't Reset Next Spring
Here's the distinction that actually matters if you live around the lake. The water level is a weather story. A strong winter could push next June's peak back toward a more typical year, the way Dillon Reservoir has recovered from past drought cycles. The boat pull-out date, the fall discount, the single-ramp bottleneck: all of that is tied to snowpack, and snowpack is unpredictable year to year.
The tiki bar is not a weather story. It's a permanent change in who operates the marina's social center and how the town structured that deal. Even in a wet winter, the Slezaks are still running that bar next summer, the new menu isn't reverting, and Pug Ryan's isn't coming back. If the reservoir recovers to a more normal peak next June, the docks will float higher and the season will run longer, but the building at the water's edge will still belong to a different operator than it did a year ago.
Understanding which of these two stories you're watching helps you know what to actually expect. Ask a neighbor about "the marina this year" and you'll get an answer that blends both. Knowing they're separate tells you which parts will look the same again next summer and which ones already changed for good.
If you're thinking about what a place like Dillon means for your own plans, whether that's a lakefront property, a rental investment, or just understanding how a market like this holds value through a drought year, Good Neighbor Realty works Summit County alongside the Denver metro every day. Get a free valuation and investment plan and talk through what you're seeing on the ground.