What's Actually Changed on the Avenue: An Old Colorado City Summer Update

Walk east on Colorado Avenue from 27th on a Saturday in July and the surface reads the same as last summer. Brick sidewalks, planter boxes, dogs tied to the bike racks outside Bancroft Park while their owners load tote bags at the market. The awnings haven't moved. The gallery windows still rotate every First Friday.

Underneath that continuity, the tenant list is quietly reshuffling. Three storefronts between 20th and 30th have changed hands, gone dark for renovation, or announced a move in the last ten weeks. The Avenue's summer isn't about a new identity. It's about which operators can hold the foot traffic while the anchor addresses rotate.

The BBQ address stayed BBQ

The most consequential change happened at 2925 W. Colorado Ave., the corner that used to be Trail's End Taproom. As of May 29, it's Stage Stop OCC Bar & Smokehouse, owned by Mark Childers and Eve Trabandt Childers, the same couple behind Stage Stop Cantina, Rentals & Stables at 6620 Old Stage Road. Eve is running the kitchen and the menu is a close cousin of the original: brisket flatbread with pickled onions and chipotle mayo at $18, a barbecue brisket sandwich at $17.25, smoked Gouda and white cheddar mac at $12 with burnt ends as a $6 add-on. Four house sauces sit on the table, and the Red Hot is honest about the name.

That handoff matters more than a menu swap. Trail's End had held that corner as a taproom-and-food-truck hybrid, and the space is built for high-turnover casual service. The Childers already run food trucks at Mash Mechanix Brewing and Urban Animal Beer Co., which means Stage Stop OCC arrives with an operating rhythm the room was designed for. Current hours are 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, and the full bar is still evolving toward a complete wine list.

For residents, the practical read is this: the BBQ slot at the western edge of the district didn't collapse into a coffee shop or a boutique. It stayed a bar with smoked meat, which preserves the walking pattern of anyone who used to end a Saturday there.

The storefront about to open up

Two blocks east, the change runs the other direction. Gather Food Studio & Spice Shop at 2011 W. Colorado Ave. is winding down. Owners Cortney Smith and David Cook, who opened the shop in 2019 and built one of the more loyal followings on the Avenue through cooking classes and their curated spice wall, announced in an email to customers that they're relocating the business to Minnesota. They asked customers to redeem gift cards and store credits before the doors close.

Gather occupied a prime address between the Michael Garman Museum end and the concentration of galleries at 24th and 25th, which is the exact stretch that decides whether a First Friday walker keeps going or turns around. Whoever takes that lease will set the tone for the eastern half of the district for the next few years. If you have opinions about what the Avenue needs more of, this is the storefront to have them about.

Front Range's long shadow

The third change is the one nobody announces, because it's an absence. Front Range Barbeque, one of the pillars of the west end and a First Friday standby, has been closed for renovations since earlier this year. As of March, Axios Colorado Springs was still telling date-night readers to plan around it. That closure has pushed the ArtWalk dinner crowd toward Mother Muff's and Thunder and Buttons across the street, and it's changed which end of the Avenue feels busy at 7 p.m. on a Friday. Once Front Range reopens, expect the center of gravity to shift back west. Until then, the tables at Mother Muff's fill faster than they used to.

What July actually looks like on the calendar

The event lineup is denser than most residents realize once school lets out. Here is the shape of it:

The market is the anchor. More than 80 vendors set up every Saturday morning, run by Pikes Peak Farmers Markets, which has been organizing this footprint for more than 40 years. Corn, squash, cantaloupe, herbs, baked goods, and enough handmade product that you can finish a birthday gift before the coffee cools.

The summer concert series is worth planning around. John Long plays Bancroft Park on July 7, the Springs Contemporary Jazz Big Band takes the bandshell July 8, and High Drive Bluegrass follows on July 14. Bring a chair. The lawn fills earlier than you would guess.

The galleries doing something worth walking for

First Friday on August 7 will be the next full walk after the July 3 evening, and the gallery lineup is unusually strong this cycle. A short list of things residents have been trading notes about:

• Blue Pony Artist Gallery hit its third anniversary at the June walk. The four founders, Tammy Meeske, Ed Penner, Julia Evans, and Terry Sanchez, work in the space in real time, which is a different experience from the standard hang-and-hope gallery model.
• Hunter-Wolff Gallery featured oil painter Marlene Kort as June's Artist of the Month, with new work inspired by Colorado landscapes. Their walks tend to include refreshments and a conversation with the artist rather than a crowd shuffle.
• Squash Blossom hosted watercolor artist Eric Fetsch on July 10, and his Colorado wildflower and wildlife pieces are worth a stop even outside the walk hours.
• Meraki Springs is featuring Kari Merritt's Spokes and Seasons, a series painted on vintage windows.
• The Enchanted Fox runs a DIY workshop each walk. July's was candle dressing with herbs and oils; supplies for a small fee, no reservation required.
• Indico's Creative Lot at 2222 W. Colorado Ave. hosted a free open-air evening on July 3 with local makers, live art, food trucks, and an ice cream truck. It's a format worth watching if it becomes a monthly fixture.

Add one non-gallery item to the August plan. The Fifty-Niner at 2409 W. Colorado Ave. is launching an adults-only comedy night on Friday, August 7. Doors at 6 p.m., show at 7:30, seating limited, introductory price at $15. It's the first Friday of the month, which puts it on top of ArtWalk, so plan the evening in that order or expect to choose.

A resident's Saturday, honestly plotted

If you already live here, the useful question isn't what to do but how to sequence it without wasting a parking spot. One workable route in July:

1. 7:30 a.m. at the market. The corn and stone-fruit vendors sell out first, and the coffee line at Jives is short before 8.
2. 9 a.m. walk east toward the Garman museum end and turn around at 22nd. That's the stretch where the retail changes fastest and it's the best temperature check on what's new.
3. Late morning at Stage Stop OCC for the brisket flatbread. It seats faster on the smokehouse side than at the bar.
4. Afternoon errand at Gather while gift cards are still redeemable.
5. Dinner at Mother Muff's or Thunder and Buttons if it's a Front Range night out of habit, or a west-end return once the renovation ends.

Why any of this matters if you already live here

None of these updates changes the character of Old Colorado City. That's the point. The district's value to the people who live within a ten-minute walk of Bancroft Park has always been that the tenant mix rotates slowly and the streetscape stays legible. What summer 2026 shows is that the rotation is still working. A proven west-side operator took over a corner instead of it going dark. A seven-year specialty retailer chose to move on, which frees a prime lease for the next operator to test. A beloved kitchen is investing in itself rather than closing for good.

For anyone thinking further out, the pattern is worth watching. Storefront turnover between 23rd and 27th is one of the quieter leading indicators of how a walkable district holds its value over a decade. The Avenue keeps passing that test.

If you have a question about how the Westside is trading this summer, or how a specific block is holding up as the tenant list shuffles, Innovative Moves tracks this neighborhood block by block. Let's Connect.