Walk West Colorado Avenue this week and the first thing you notice is the traffic moves differently. One lane each direction instead of two, a center turn lane down the middle, and parking kiosks where the old meters used to sit. Crews started restriping the corridor in June, cutting the historic strip from four lanes to three between roughly 8th Street and 31st Street. It is meant to be temporary, a twelve-month test before the city commits to anything permanent.
Here is the part that does not add up if you have lived here a while. Old Colorado City voters approved a Downtown Development Authority back in 2024 specifically to guide investment along this corridor. That board still has not approved a development plan or spent a dollar on the street. And on August 25, the Colorado Springs City Council will vote on whether to dissolve it entirely, before it ever gets the chance.
So the street already changed. The group that was supposed to decide how it should change might not survive the month.
The board that was built for this and never got to act
The Old Colorado City Downtown Development Authority covers Colorado Avenue from the Interstate 25 overpass to the edge of Manitou Springs, taking in the historic core along with hundreds of homes and businesses. Voters in the district approved it in 2024, and it has been around for less than two years, according to Colorado Springs Gazette reporting from earlier this month. The council first floated dissolving it on July 14, giving the authority less than a week's notice ahead of that meeting. The vote itself is now set for August 25.
District 3 Councilmember Brandy Williams, who represents the area, has said she is not convinced the authority is the right tool for the corridor. Board members disagree, arguing it is still the best path to stability and improvements that reach beyond the handful of blocks at the historic heart of OCC. Echo Architecture founder Ryan Lloyd, who bought the Sluice, the oldest standing building in Colorado Springs at 2752 Colorado Ave, got involved in creating the authority in the first place. He wanted the benefits of a revitalized main street to reach further down the avenue than they currently do.
Meanwhile, the physical work already underway on the street has nothing to do with that authority. The lane restriping is funded through the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority and federal dollars, guided by a separate planning process called the Midland Corridor Transportation Study. City staff set up a feedback booth at Territory Days this spring to gather input, and the Colorado Avenue Improvements Project page describes a second phase, full reconstruction and streetscape work, starting in late 2027 or 2028.
Two different systems are shaping the same roughly two-mile stretch of pavement at the same time. One has already poured concrete. The other might not exist by September.
One month in, the street is arguing with itself too
A KKTV report published August 8 caught the corridor mid-adjustment. One person told the station the avenue "needs to be more pedestrian friendly, bike friendly," and a cyclist passing through gave the redesign a thumbs down over the lack of bike lanes. Nina Hamilton, bar manager at Thunder and Buttons, said the business still has not recovered from paid parking replacing what used to be free spaces along the avenue. "Nobody wanted the paid parking," she told the station.
Not everyone sees it the same way. Nick and Brandi Haskins opened FFO Goods in March, just before the changes went in, and they told KKTV they have noticed a difference in foot traffic and like what they see so far, though they admit they never got a clean before-and-after comparison since the redesign started so soon after they opened.
The city's own framing is that fewer lanes should mean slower speeds and a safer walk between shops. An earlier KOAA report, filed about a month into the test back in July, found businesses split roughly the same way even then: some noting slower traffic and safer crossings, others already frustrated by the parking change. City staff have said the meter revenue is funding other corridor fixes and that paid spots increase turnover, meaning more parking availability for more customers over the course of a day, not less.
Here is the rough shape of what happens next.
| Phase | Timing | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 (current) | Summer 2026 to roughly summer 2027 | Three-lane restripe, new paid parking stalls, data collection on speed and safety |
| Phase 2 | Late 2027 or early 2028 | Full streetscape reconstruction, permanent design based on Phase 1 findings |
Whatever the council decides about the development authority on the 25th, this test phase runs on its own timeline, funded by its own source, answering to its own data.
The food map moved while everyone argued about lanes
Business owners did not wait for the lane question to settle before opening doors. Stage Stop OCC Bar & Smokehouse opened May 29 in the former Trail's End Taproom space at 2925 W. Colorado Ave. Owners Mark Childers and Eve Trabandt Childers already run Stage Stop Cantina, Rentals & Stables out on Old Stage Road, and Eve brought the same barbecue menu west, smoked Gouda and white cheddar mac and cheese with burnt ends, a brisket flatbread with pickled onions and chipotle mayo, and a brisket sandwich served with a choice of four house sauces.
A few blocks down, Codswallop brought British fish and chips and homemade pies to 3012 W Colorado Ave, a sister concept to The Brit Pub. Monse's Sweet Kitchen opened inside the existing Monse's Pupuseria, adding a dessert and drink menu to a spot that was already a neighborhood fixture. And Ice Guys, Dice Guys, the combined ice cream shop and game store that has anchored a corner of OCC for years, expanded with a second location downtown off Tejon.
None of that required a functioning development authority or a finished road project. It happened because people who already bet on this stretch of Colorado Avenue kept betting on it.
The rhythm that doesn't wait for city council
Whatever gets decided on the 25th, the weekly pattern that actually runs daily life here keeps going on its own clock. The Bancroft Park Farmers Market fills the park every Saturday from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. through October 17, with more than 80 vendors and food trucks rotating through the season.
Tuesday evenings belong to Dizzy Charlie's free summer concert series, also at Bancroft Park, six to eight o'clock, running through September 29. This week brings el paso on the 11th. Later in the month, on August 25, Randy Stephens & the Groovemakers take the same stage the evening the City Council decides the fate of the development authority a few blocks away. One meeting will get more headlines. The other is the one most people in the neighborhood will actually attend.
First Friday ArtWalk runs the length of the season too, free gallery hours from 5 to 8 p.m. along Colorado Avenue between 17th and 31st Street, with the next one landing the first Friday of September. It is the closest thing OCC has to a monthly reset, a chance to see which storefronts changed hands since the last one.
What actually holds this place together
The lane count on Colorado Avenue might look different again by next summer. The development authority might not exist in its current form come September. Neither of those facts changes what happens at Bancroft Park on a Saturday morning, or which restaurant just added your new favorite lunch spot to the block. The street is mid-argument with itself about who gets to decide its future. The neighborhood keeps showing up anyway.
If you already call this stretch of the west side home, that contradiction is probably not news to you. If you are watching from outside and wondering what it actually feels like to live somewhere that changes its mind out loud, in public, in city council chambers and in the parking debates at the bar down the street, that tension is part of what makes Old Colorado City worth paying attention to.
Brent and Jen Patterson watch corridors like this one closely, because the small decisions, a lane count, a board vote, a new restaurant lease, tend to say more about a neighborhood's direction than any single listing ever could. If you are curious what a street in the middle of an argument with itself means for property values, timing, or your own plans on the west side, Brent Patterson is glad to walk through it with you.
