For years the honest description of Briargate went something like this: a residential grid with a nice outdoor mall in the middle, a park on the north end, and a highway on the west edge that you took to get to anything interesting. If a friend visited, you drove them somewhere else.
That description quietly stopped being accurate over the last twelve months. Enough has opened, reopened, or filled in on this side of I-25 that you can now plan a full Saturday, from splash pad to dinner, without merging onto the interstate at all.
What changed, in one paragraph
The shift is not one big anchor. It's the compounding effect of about a dozen small ones since spring 2025. Jungle Reef, Colorado Springs' first interactive touch aquarium, opened inside Chapel Hills Mall on March 20, 2026. A second Shake Shack in the city opened at 7465 N. Academy Blvd. in the Shops at Falcon Landing on May 14, 2026. Seoul BBQ, Arhaus, Fjällräven, Columbia Sportswear, and Face Foundrié have all joined the tenant lineup at The Promenade Shops at Briargate. MilkShake Factory hit its first birthday at the Promenade in April 2026. Add John Venezia Community Park, which has become the default summer weekend anchor for the north side, and Briargate now contains its own day.
The thesis for a current resident: you no longer have to leave Briargate to entertain out-of-town guests, kids on a summer Saturday, or yourself on a slow evening. The neighborhood finally cleared that bar.
9 a.m. — Start at John Venezia
The park at 3555 Briargate Parkway is the anchor a lot of new Briargate residents don't fully use until their second summer here. It sits on 30 acres at Briargate Parkway and Union Boulevard and opened in 2017, which by neighborhood memory is still "new" but by kids-who-grew-up-here memory is now a decade of splash pad Saturdays.
Reasons to start early rather than midafternoon:
- The ranch-themed sprayground runs more than 50 individual spray nozzles, and parking gets tight by 11 a.m. on hot weekends.
- Eight pickleball courts and an in-line hockey rink both fill up on a first-come basis.
- Park hours run 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. April through October, so early is genuinely available.
If your Saturday happens to overlap with National Mill Dog Rescue's Festival in the Bark, which the Gazette's summer calendar lists at John Venezia from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., pivot the whole day around it. Adoptable dogs, local vendors, and a shaded pavilion beat almost anything you'd drive downtown for.
11 a.m. — Chapel Hills Mall's second act
For a long stretch, the polite thing to say about Chapel Hills Mall was that it was "still there." The mall lost Kmart in 2009, and its slow reshuffling since has been the kind of story that gets written every few years without much changing.
Jungle Reef changes it. The touch aquarium sits on the lower level at 1710 Briargate Blvd., behind Dick's Sporting Goods, and it is not a modest installation. Owner Jon Hepworth's team built out a 60,000-gallon shark tank, a 30,000-gallon stingray tank, and roughly 87 species between marine and terrestrial exhibits, according to reporting from KKTV before the opening. Visitors can feed stingrays, walk into a parakeet room, and touch starfish. Most of the animals were rehomed from rescue and rehabilitation situations rather than sourced commercially, per coverage in Springs Magazine.
The practical upshot for a Briargate resident: a rainy Saturday used to mean a drive to the zoo or a drive to Denver. Now it means a two-mile trip inside the ZIP code.
12:30 p.m. — The lunch decision that didn't exist a year ago
Briargate now has a legitimate burger debate, which is a real sign a neighborhood has arrived.
On one side, the second Colorado Springs Shake Shack opened at Shops at Falcon Landing on May 14, 2026, four miles south of the original InterQuest location. Same crinkle-cut fries, same hand-spun shakes, no forty-minute InterQuest drive-through line. On the other side, Bad Daddy's Burger Bar at the Promenade has been holding down the "full sit-down burger with a beer list" slot for years. If you're eating with kids after the sprayground, Shake Shack wins on speed. If you have the afternoon open, the Promenade patio wins on ambiance.
A third option worth knowing about: Seoul BBQ opened at the Promenade as part of a wave of new tenants brought in by property manager Hines. Coverage from Mile High CRE framed it as part of a deliberate modernization push at the center. For a neighborhood that had exactly one Korean option within a ten-minute drive as recently as 2024, this is the biggest addition to the lunch rotation.
2 p.m. — The Promenade, updated
The Promenade Shops at Briargate opened in 2003 at 1885 Briargate Parkway and, by Gazette reporting from May 2026, still holds more than 50 tenants across 240,000 square feet. The interesting thing isn't the count. It's how much of the mix has turned over recently.
| Tenant | What it is | Roughly when it landed |
|---|---|---|
| Seoul BBQ | Korean barbecue | 2022–2023 addition |
| Arhaus | 15,000 sf home furnishings | Opened in a 15,000-sf space per Mile High CRE |
| Columbia Sportswear | Outdoor apparel | Recent Hines-era addition |
| Fjällräven | Outdoor apparel | Recent Hines-era addition |
| Face Foundrié | Facial and skincare bar | Recent, per Visit COS |
| MilkShake Factory | Handcrafted shakes and chocolates | Opened April 2025, celebrated one year April 25, 2026 |
The pattern here matters more than any single opening. The Promenade spent its first decade as a place to buy things you couldn't get elsewhere in the Springs. The current wave is different: it's leaning into experiences you'd otherwise drive to Denver for. A facial bar, a specialty milkshake shop, a Nordic outdoor brand. The tenants read as a bet on Briargate households treating the center as a Saturday destination rather than a weekday errand.
Practical note if you're bringing a dog: the center is officially pet-friendly, and stores displaying a "Pets Welcome" decal will let you bring them inside. It's a small thing that changes how long you can linger.
5 p.m. — What to do with the last hours
Two directions from here.
If you skipped the aquarium in the morning, the late-afternoon slot works better anyway. Weekend crowds thin after 4 p.m. and the parakeet room is a lot easier to enjoy when the field-trip volume drops. If you did Jungle Reef already, drift back to the Promenade patio for dinner. Ted's Montana Grill, Biaggi's, and P.F. Chang's all still hold down the anchor sit-down slots. Menya Ramen & Poke rounds out the Asian lineup alongside Seoul BBQ.
For a lower-key ending, the two-mile interior sidewalk loop at John Venezia connects to the Briargate Trail along Briargate Parkway. Sunset over Pikes Peak from that stretch is, honestly, the best free thing in the neighborhood, and one of the reasons the Trails & Open Space Coalition still lists Venezia as one of the most-used family parks on the north side despite being only eight years old.
Why this matters if you already own here
There's a version of this post that would frame all of the above as a reason to move to Briargate. That's not really the story. The story is that people who bought here five or ten years ago made a bet on a neighborhood that was still under construction as a place to spend time in, and that bet has quietly paid off. The five-minute drives got shorter. The Saturday plans got easier. The reasons to cross I-25 got fewer.
If you're thinking about the next step, whether that's a move up within Briargate, a downsize while staying in the same ZIP code, or just a candid conversation about what your current place would sell for now versus a year ago, that's the conversation I'd rather have with you than pitch. Kevin James Bond has lived in Colorado Springs since 1992 and worked Briargate transactions since 2016. Let's Connect when you're ready to talk about what any of this means for your specific block.
