Walk north on Tejon Street starting at Colorado Avenue and the sidewalk under your feet is new the whole way to Kiowa Street: wider walkways, fresh concrete, a patch of granite pavers at the corner where Tejon crosses Pikes Peak Avenue, the corner everyone downtown just calls the Historic Busy Corner. Cross Kiowa and keep going, and the upgrade simply stops. Same street, same storefronts, older sidewalk.
That two-block stretch is the finished half of the Tejon Street Revitalization Project, an $8.6 million collaboration between the city and the Downtown Partnership's Downtown Development Authority that wrapped up this spring after just over a year of phased construction that began in March 2025. It widened sidewalks, cleared room for outdoor dining, added new trees and lighting, and set those granite crosswalks into the Historic Busy Corner. It is a real improvement, and it covers exactly two blocks: Colorado Avenue to Kiowa Street.
Here's what's odd. Four notable businesses have opened downtown over the past few months, and only two of them are inside those two blocks. The other two skipped the finished sidewalks entirely and landed farther out, in stretches of downtown that haven't gotten a dollar of that investment yet. If you live down here, that split tells you something the ribbon-cuttings alone don't: the people betting money on this neighborhood aren't waiting for the city to finish paving before they show up.
Two Blocks, $8.6 Million, One Long Wait
The Historic Busy Corner intersection, where Tejon crosses Pikes Peak Avenue, was the last piece to finish, with new granite pavers set into the crosswalks this spring. Funding came partly from a $1.6 million Revitalizing Main Streets grant through the Colorado Department of Transportation, with the city's Parking Enterprise covering the rest. It's the kind of project that shows up in a press release with words like "walkable" and "signature street," and for the two blocks it touched, it delivers.
But downtown Colorado Springs is a lot more than two blocks, and the businesses opening farther down Tejon this year know it.
Where the Sidewalks Are Nice
Two of this summer's openings landed right in or next to the newly finished stretch.
Lolley's Ice Cream opened its second location at 216 N. Tejon St. on May 16, directly across from Acacia Park. Co-owner Shelley Sapp said the goal was to give the neighborhood a place to slow down, not just buy a scoop, and the location does double duty: it catches families leaving the Acacia Park playground and evening walkers circling the park loop. It's a Monument-based, family-owned shop that makes its ice cream in small batches in a dedicated gluten-free kitchen, the kind of detail that tells you it's not a chain filling a vacant storefront.
A few doors up, Slice 420 announced an express version of its New York-style pizza shop at 107 N. Tejon St., well within the finished blocks, with owner Christian Patriarca aiming to open within about 90 days, putting it on track for early summer with 2 to 3 a.m. closing times built for the crowd spilling out of the nightclubs on Tejon and Kiowa after last call. It joins Gaia Masala and Burger a few blocks south, open until 3 a.m. nightly, and Fat Sully's inside the Atomic Cowboy as one of downtown's only late-night food options, and residents had already voted the original Slice 420 the city's best pizza in the 2025 Best of the Springs poll, so the express spot arrived with a built-in following.
Both of these openings make sense exactly where they are. New sidewalks, new patio space, foot traffic from Acacia Park and the nightlife strip. Predictable.
Where They Aren't
The other two openings did not wait for their sidewalks to catch up.
The Sportsbook Bar & Grill opened its fourth Colorado location on June 5 at 402 S. Tejon St., tucked beneath the SpringHill Suites and Element hotels, south of Colorado Avenue and well outside the revitalized stretch. Co-owner Jeremy Malone talked about wanting to become part of the neighborhood, which is a fair goal for a block that still has the old sidewalks and none of the new patio allowances.
Then, on July 18, chef James Africano opened The Warehouse Urban Grocer at 27 W. Cimarron St., not on Tejon at all, but attached to his existing Warehouse Restaurant in a building he says is around 130 years old. The project took longer than planned, closer to six months than the estimated 100 days, because renovating a century-old structure rarely goes as scheduled. What's inside is worth knowing about regardless of the construction delays: a butcher case stocking yak, rabbit, and elk alongside more familiar cuts, a fresh pasta station, specialty oils and chocolates, and grab-and-go meals like braised short ribs and beef stroganoff that don't appear anywhere on the restaurant's own menu. Africano said the store adds another 20 to 30 jobs on top of the roughly 20 the restaurant already supports.
Neither business is on a block with new sidewalks. Both opened anyway.
Business | Address | Opened | Relative to the finished blocks |
|---|---|---|---|
Lolley's Ice Cream | 216 N. Tejon St. | May 16, 2026 | Just north of the revitalized stretch, across from Acacia Park |
Slice 420 Express | 107 N. Tejon St. | Announced spring 2026, targeted for early summer | Well within the finished blocks |
The Sportsbook Bar & Grill | 402 S. Tejon St. | June 5, 2026 | South of Colorado Avenue, outside the project entirely |
The Warehouse Urban Grocer | 27 W. Cimarron St. | July 18, 2026 | Off Tejon, near the Cimarron corridor |
The Other Side of Tejon Has Been Asking About This
The unevenness hasn't gone unnoticed by the people running businesses on the wrong side of the line. Andy Schlesinger, co-owner of The Exchange on South Tejon Street, put it plainly to a local reporter earlier this year.
"The parades, the special events, everything happens on that side of Tejon, on that side of downtown."
His complaint isn't abstract. He pointed out that a brewery across the street from his restaurant has room for exactly one table on the sidewalk, and that delivery trucks bringing in something as basic as 50 gallons of milk get ticketed if they park in the middle of the street to unload, because there's no dedicated zone for it. Richard Mulledy, the city's public works director, has said a fix like that is possible and has been done before on the finished blocks. It just hasn't happened yet on Schlesinger's block.
What the Map Is Actually Telling You
If you live within walking distance of Tejon, this is the useful part. Downtown isn't one district improving at one speed. It's two overlapping stories: a two-block core that just got a facelift and a longer corridor, north past Acacia Park and south past Colorado Avenue toward Cimarron, that's still running on old infrastructure but attracting real investment anyway.
That's not a coincidence and it's not really about the sidewalks. A fourth-location sports bar and a chef whose restaurant next door already has a following don't need granite pavers to tell them where people already are. They're reading existing foot traffic, hotel guests, and an established restaurant's customer base, and betting that the infrastructure will eventually follow the businesses rather than the other way around. For a downtown resident, it means the "unfinished" side of the neighborhood might be the more interesting one to watch over the next year, not the side that already got its ribbon cut.
A Weekend That Covers Both Sides
Here's a route that actually crosses the line, using things that are happening downtown right now.
- Start at the Sunday Market in Acacia Park, running 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. every Sunday through October 25, and grab something from one of the produce vendors.
- Cross the street to Lolley's for a scoop, since it sits directly across from the park.
- Head south, crossing Kiowa Street where the new sidewalk begins, through the Historic Busy Corner at Tejon and Pikes Peak with its granite pavers, and on to Colorado Avenue, where the upgrade ends again.
- If you time it right, catch the Weenies & 'Tinis Passport, running from August 14 through the end of the month, at one of the ten participating spots that includes Red Gravy and The Brit Pub.
- Cross Colorado Avenue and end at either the Sportsbook Bar & Grill or the Warehouse Urban Grocer, both on blocks that haven't seen a construction crew yet.
You'll notice the sidewalk quality change under your feet at least twice on that walk. You'll also notice the businesses don't seem to care which side they're on.
Downtown Colorado Springs has been genuinely two different neighborhoods for a while now, one polished and one still catching up, and this summer's openings are the clearest evidence yet that the people investing here already know that and aren't waiting around. I've lived here since 1992 and watched this stretch of Tejon go through a few versions of itself. If you're curious about what any of it means for a specific block or building, I'm always happy to talk it through. Reach out to Kevin James Bond and let's connect.
