Old Colorado City's Storefronts Keep Turning Over. The Funding Behind Them Just Got Voted Out.

Walk Colorado Avenue this month and it looks like the neighborhood is either dying or booming, depending on which block you're standing on. A barbecue joint just took over a taproom that closed. A spice shop is packing up for Minnesota. A houseplant store that spent nearly four years here left for a bigger space downtown. And a Wendy's that had been on the Avenue for years is just gone, boarded windows and all.

If you live here, you've probably already stitched together a story about what's happening to your commercial strip. The story most people land on is wrong, or at least incomplete. The turnover you're seeing has almost nothing to do with the Avenue's health. The thing that actually matters to whether Colorado Avenue gets nicer or stays exactly as it is happened at a City Council meeting most residents never watched, and it's not finished yet.

The Avenue's Businesses Are Turning Over. That Part Is Normal.

Start with what actually changed hands this year, because the reasons are all different, and none of them point to a neighborhood in trouble.

Stage Stop OCC Bar & Smokehouse opened on May 29 at 2925 W. Colorado Ave., in the space that used to be Trail's End Taproom. It's owned by Mark and Eve Trabandt Childers, who already run the original Stage Stop Cantina, Rentals & Stables out on Old Stage Road. Eve runs the kitchen at both locations, and the OCC menu mirrors the barbecue lineup from the original spot, right down to four house sauces (Red Mild, Red Hot, Carolina Gold, Alabama White). This is a business expanding, not a neighborhood attracting new blood out of desperation.

Gather Food Studio & Spice Shop, the cooking studio and spice shop at 2011 W. Colorado Ave., is closing. Owners Cortney Smith and David Cook are relocating the business to Minnesota. In their note to customers, they described the move as carrying Gather with them into the next season of life. That's a family decision, not a market signal.

Hortum, the boutique houseplant shop that spent almost four years on Colorado Avenue, moved to 101 N. Tejon St. downtown at the end of June. Owner Clay Hapke said he'd become a little stagnant in Old Colorado City and wanted to try downtown. The new space is roughly twice the size, with south-facing windows that give his tropical plants better light than the old north-facing storefront ever could. Again, growth, not flight.

The Wendy's at 3036 W. Colorado Ave. closed in March, alongside a second Wendy's downtown on Wahsatch Avenue. That one really is about the neighborhood in the sense that it's about no neighborhood in particular. Wendy's confirmed the closures were part of a national plan called Project Fresh, aimed at trimming the chain's restaurant footprint across the country. It happened to include two Colorado Springs locations. It says nothing about foot traffic on Colorado Avenue specifically.

Four storefronts, four unrelated reasons: expansion, retirement-adjacent relocation, a bigger space downtown, and a corporate cost-cutting plan written in Ohio. That's what normal small business churn looks like in a district with more than 400 businesses. It is not a story.

The Vote Nobody Watched

Here's the story. On August 26, the Colorado Springs City Council voted 5-4 to dissolve the Old Colorado City Downtown Development Authority, the entity voters approved back in 2024 to fund larger improvements along the Colorado Avenue corridor. A second and final vote is scheduled for the council's next meeting this month, which will make the dissolution official if it passes again.

The DDA wasn't a small thing. Its boundaries ran the full length of Colorado Avenue from the Interstate 25 overpass to the Manitou Springs border, covering both the historic OCC blocks and the businesses and homes strung along that stretch. Unlike a narrower business improvement district, a DDA can levy residential properties and capture sales tax revenue from visitors, not just fees from commercial tenants. That funding structure is exactly what was in the process of getting a development plan approved by city staff when council pulled the plug, which means the authority never got to spend a dollar on the improvements it was created for.

Tee Crespin, who opened her store Mush Love, Tee in December, put the stakes plainly at the council meeting:

"It gives over 400 west-side businesses a unified voice and a structured way to improve our district. Removing it leaves us fragmented and unprotected."

The council's disagreement wasn't really about whether Colorado Avenue needs investment. It was about which tool should deliver it, and whether Colorado Springs needs what some members called a second downtown taxing district. Jariah Walker, director of the Colorado Springs Urban Renewal Authority, argued a business improvement district could accomplish similar goals without that complication. The problem, as DDA supporters pointed out during the debate, is that a business district can only collect from commercial properties, leaving out the residential stretch of the corridor entirely, and no timeline exists yet for standing up any replacement.

Here's what that funding structure difference means for your sidewalk, practically. The two options aren't interchangeable:

What Still Runs on Autopilot

None of this touches the basics. The blocks most people mean when they say "Old Colorado City" are covered separately by a Special Improvement and Maintenance District through the city, which funds smaller recurring work like landscaping, snow removal, and light maintenance along the main blocks. That district isn't affected by the DDA vote and isn't going anywhere. Your sidewalks will still get plowed this winter.

What's paused is the bigger vision, the kind of capital project a development authority is actually built to fund. For now, the Avenue keeps its day-to-day upkeep and loses its shot at a coordinated bigger investment, at least until the city and the business community figure out what replaces the DDA, if anything does.

The Calendar That Doesn't Care About Any of This

Whatever happens at the council table this month, the rhythm of the neighborhood keeps running on its own schedule.

The Old Colorado City Farmers Market at Bancroft Park runs Saturdays from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. through October 17, the same 40-plus-year tradition it's always been.

First Friday ArtWalk happens monthly, and this September's edition features potter Steve Becker and painter Patrick Kochanasz showing new work at 45º.

Cerberus Brewing Company's beer garden hosts Lightnin' Al & Smokin' Joe on September 10 from 6:30 to 9 p.m., a blues and Americana duo built around Al Chesis on harmonica and Joe Dotson on vocals and guitar.

The Ten-Minute Play Crawl returns for its third year on September 20, ten short plays written for local actors and staged inside actual OCC businesses, with tickets upgradable to include treats from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory.

And Pumpkins in the Park lands at Bancroft Park on October 24 from noon to 6 p.m., the neighborhood's fall family event with live music, art, seasonal food, and a pumpkin patch for the kids.

None of that changes whether the DDA survives its second vote. The Avenue's businesses will keep turning over the way small business districts always do, some growing into bigger spaces, some closing for reasons that have nothing to do with the neighborhood, some replaced by concepts nobody saw coming. What's actually at stake this month isn't the businesses you already love. It's whether the next round of investment in the Avenue itself has a funding vehicle at all, or whether that conversation starts over from scratch.

If you're weighing what any of this means for a home near the Avenue, that's a conversation worth having with someone who's actually watching both stories, the storefronts and the council votes, instead of just one. Rachel Ford-Wilkinson and the team at Ranger Real Estate can talk you through it. Schedule your free consultation.