If it feels like every week brings news of something new opening in Colorado Springs, you're not imagining it. But look closer at where these openings are landing, and a pattern shows up that most of the roundup articles miss: the city is having two completely different kinds of growth spurts at the same time, and they're happening in two different parts of town for two different reasons.
North of downtown, along the Interstate 25 corridor near Northgate and Interquest, businesses are building on open ground. South and east of there, in the neighborhoods that filled in decades ago, the story is almost the opposite: restaurants are moving back into buildings that already used to be restaurants, sometimes the exact same address they left.
North Of The City, Everything Is New Construction
Drive the stretch of I-25 near Polaris Pointe and you'll see cranes that have barely stopped moving in the past two years. That's where Surf Shack opened on Aug. 1, 2026, bringing an indoor FlowRider wave machine to a city that Dr. Michael Kofford, the local orthodontist who spent three years and roughly $10 million building the facility, calls "the perfect place to live" with almost no natural water nearby. The 12,000-square-foot building at 13208 Touchstone View sits next to Top Golf and the Air City 360 trampoline park, part of a cluster of entertainment venues that's grown up around Polaris Pointe rather than downtown. Kofford told the Gazette the response before opening day was already strong:
"We're excited about it. We have had a lot of interest in it, people calling and asking when we will be open."
A few miles away, Texas de Brazil opened its first Colorado Springs location on Aug. 5, 2026, at 140 Spectrum Loop. The company's own announcement described the surrounding Northgate and Interquest district as "one of the region's fastest-growing destinations for shopping, dining, entertainment, and business," which is corporate language for a fact locals already sense: this is where the newest square footage in the city keeps landing.
Angelo's Taverna and Carboy Winery followed the same logic when they opened on June 30, 2026, at 7115 Commerce Center Drive, right where I-25 meets Woodmen Road. It's the first Colorado Springs location for both brands, built into the former Old Chicago Pizza + Taproom space with rooftop views of Pikes Peak. Carboy CEO Kevin Webber marked the occasion by noting:
"We've spent the last decade building Carboy and Angelo's one guest at a time."
None of these three businesses had ever operated in Colorado Springs before this year. All three chose addresses within a few miles of each other along the same growth corridor. That's not a coincidence of timing. It's where the available land and the highway visibility both exist right now.
Everywhere Else, Restaurants Are Moving Back Into Their Own Old Buildings
The story in the older, built-out parts of the city looks nothing like that. Instead of new ground, 2026's openings there are reoccupying spaces that already had a restaurant in them, in some cases the very restaurant that's now coming back.
The clearest example is The Blue Star. Before it closed in 2017, it had spent decades as one of the city's defining dining spots in the Ivywild area. Owner Joe Coleman opened the original Blue Star in Old Colorado City in 1995 and moved it to 1645 S. Tejon St. a few years later. In March 2026, the Pikes Peak Regional Building Department confirmed that permits had been issued for a remodel of that same Tejon Street building, meaning the restaurant is returning to its own former address rather than picking a new one. As of this writing there's no confirmed opening date. Springsmag reported in late 2025 that the team was eyeing a third-quarter opening, and Coleman's Blue Star Group has kept fans engaged in the meantime through wine tasting events and WSET certification classes rather than a soft launch. If you drive past South Tejon expecting an open sign this month, you're early, but the wait is shorter than it's been since 2017.
A similar pattern is playing out at 5710 S. Carefree Circle on the east side, where the original Jose Muldoon's closed in January 2024 after 13 years, with owners Concept Restaurants citing financial challenges (the downtown Muldoon's location stayed open through the closure). Rather than sit empty, that building is being converted into the first Colorado Springs location of Homegrown Tap and Dough, a Denver-based pizza and craft beer chain, with a late-summer 2026 opening planned. It's new to the market, but it's landing inside an existing restaurant shell instead of new construction.
Guthrie's Chicken Fingers took a third approach when it opened its first Colorado location on July 14, 2026, at 1520 S. Nevada Ave. It's a genuinely new concept for the market, the original chicken finger chain dating back to 1965 in Alabama, but it's entering a South Nevada corridor already packed with chicken-focused competition. The Gazette's own rundown of the area lists Angry Chicken, Birdcall, Buffalo Wild Wings, Chick-fil-A, Chicken Salad Chick, Daddy's Chicken Shack, Dave's Hot Chicken Wings, KFC, Popeyes, Raising Cane's, and Slim Chickens all within reach, plus El Pollo Loco, which opened its first Springs location the previous fall. Betting on an already-saturated strip is a different kind of decision than staking new ground where nothing existed before, and it says something about how much confidence a national chain has in this specific stretch of the city.
Why It Splits This Way
None of this is random. The Northgate and Interquest corridor has been under continuous construction for years, which is exactly why it can absorb three first-to-market concepts in a single summer. There's simply room to build. The center of the city doesn't have that kind of open land left, so growth there has to come from somewhere: an empty storefront, a closed restaurant, a building that's been sitting dark since its last owner ran out of runway. That's not a sign of a slower market. It's what growth looks like in a city that's already filled in its older neighborhoods.
What This Means For Your Fall Calendar
If you're deciding where to spend a Saturday between now and the end of October, both halves of the city have something worth the drive.
- Fiestas Patrias brings live music, dancing, and food to downtown on Sept. 12, 2026, marking Mexican Independence Day with one of the larger cultural festivals of the fall.
- Military Appreciation Week at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo runs Sept. 14 through 20, 2026, with 50% off base admission for active duty, veteran, and retired military and their dependents.
- The Pikes Peak Regional Airshow returns to the city in September 2026, per Visit Colorado Springs' event calendar.
- The Acacia Park farmers market downtown runs every Sunday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. through Oct. 25, 2026, according to the Downtown Partnership's events page.
- If you haven't tried the FlowRider yet, Surf Shack is booking sessions now, with a grand opening celebration planned for September.
Whether you end up north chasing a new patio or south catching up with an old favorite finally coming back, the city's growth this fall is genuinely two-directional, and knowing which kind of opening you're walking into changes what you should expect when you get there.
For more on how daily life here keeps shifting neighborhood by neighborhood, our Colorado Springs neighborhood guide is a good place to start, and if you've ever wondered how the city's outdoor options shape the way people actually choose where to live, we've written about that too in how the Colorado Springs outdoor lifestyle shapes home choices.
If you're the kind of person who likes knowing what's changing in this city before it shows up in a listing description, that's exactly the kind of local detail Leslie Neumann keeps track of. Let's Connect.
