There goes the neighborhood. Kuma’s Corner, a heavy-metal-playing burger chain with five locations in Chicago, is expanding to Denver by the end of the year.

The restaurant is one of a handful of new businesses announced Friday for the developing River North Promenade area, which spans Arkins Court from 29th to 38th streets. Kuma’s Corner, Denver’s Logan House Coffee and Vīb Hotel (a trendier Best Western brand), are all in the works around 35th Street and Brighton Boulevard.

The burger joint is known for its metal-themed menu, with names like High on Fire (roasted red pepper, prosciutto, grilled pineapple, chili paste and sriracha) and Lair of the Minotaur (brie, bourbon poached pear, caramelized onions and pancetta). In Chicago, it serves local beers and spirits and forces its customers to listen to local metal music.

“Kuma’s and metal goes together like beef and bacon, ” the restaurant’s website says. “We don’t care if you don’t like metal, you’ll be jamming along with us in no t..

When it comes to owning a home in metro Denver, some consumers may feel like they do when in a store staring up at a product high on a shelf and wondering how they are going to get that thing down and into their hands.

But compared to many cities, the homeownership shelf isn’t so high in Denver that it can’t be reached with a small jump in income, according to an affordability analysis from the Canadian real estate brokerage Zoocasa.com.

Zoocasa looked at 35 major cities in the U.S. and Canada to determine how far the median income would stretch when it came to purchasing the median-priced home in a given market.

In 18 of those markets, or just over half, the median household would need to boost their incomes by $20,000 or more. In San Francisco, the median home price is $1.36 million, which requires an income of $236,268 a year to afford, assuming a 30-year mortgage at 4.5 percent and a 20 percent downpayment.

Problem is, the median household income is $96,265. That is rich by U.S..

Home values in metro Denver appear to have peaked last summer and are heading lower for the first time in seven years. That may provoke a sense of dread for those who struggled to stay afloat during the last housing downturn or lost everything in a foreclosure.

But on the whole, most homeowners along the northern Front Range have built a thick equity cushion, one that should help them weather whatever storm is coming.

“Denver has continued to maintain a healthy housing market with the percent of seriously underwater properties being some of the lowest in the nation,” said Jennifer von Pohlmann, director of content for ATTOM Data Solutions, a real estate data provider based in Irvine, Calif.

Metro Denver and other parts of the northern Front Range have enjoyed some of the strongest home price gains this decade, enough so that around 35 percent of mortgage borrowers in metro Denver are “equity-rich,” meaning their homes are worth at least twice as much as what is owed on the property,..