Old Colorado City's Holiday Season Arrives on a Narrower Colorado Avenue

Old Colorado City's big fall and holiday events this year, from Scarecrow Days on Oct. 1 to the final Christkindlmarket night on Dec. 23, are centered on a street the City of Colorado Springs still calls an experiment. The one-lane-each-way layout on Colorado Avenue is temporary by design. The city says it will keep collecting feedback and traffic data through the year, and it will use them to decide whether the change helps or hurts this part of town.

So a Saturday at Pumpkins in the Park or an evening at the Christmas Stroll counts as more than a night out. This is the test layout's first holiday season, and what happens on those nights becomes input for the version of the street the city plans to rebuild in 2027 and 2028.

The Street Under the Scarecrows Is Still a Draft

Crews were scheduled to start narrowing Colorado Avenue on June 1. The test stretch runs from Limit Street to 30th Street. Four travel lanes became three: one lane each way plus a center turn lane. Temporary delineators, new pedestrian crossings and curb bump-outs in the Old Colorado City blocks round it out. The city says the test may run up to 12 months, which puts the entire holiday season inside it. Reconstruction and permanent streetscape work are planned to start in late 2027 or early 2028.

The permanent rebuild is focused on the core commercial blocks between 24th and 27th streets. Those same blocks hold Bancroft Park and most of the storefronts on the fall calendar. The city describes it as a voter-approved project funded mainly through the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority, with federal money added.

According to Ryan Phipps, who leads the project for City Engineering, the reason for the center turn lane is to separate turning cars from through traffic on a corridor with a history of rear-end and T-bone crashes. About a month in, he described early results this way:

"We're seeing that traffic is generally flowing the speed limit, and you definitely notice it as you travel from Old Colorado City into downtown as soon as the lane configuration opens back up, traffic speeds go back up."

That's an observation, not a dataset. The city has not published before-and-after speed or crash numbers on its project page, and it hasn't said how the delineators and bump-outs will be handled during snow plowing or street events. For now, the best evidence of how the layout works comes from the businesses facing it.

Anna Holloway of Sweetwater Flower Market told KOAA in July that, through the shop's front glass, traffic looked slower. Emma Hunter, a manager at Eclectic, said the street felt safer and that people seemed more willing to walk around. Hunter also said customers first needed help figuring out the new parking, though a month in, most had it down. Nick and Brandi Haskins of FFO Goods opened in March, shortly before the changes. They told KKTV the corridor feels calmer and quieter, and that drivers who use it as a cut-through to Highway 24 like the change less. The test does not include bike lanes, a choice the city traces to the Midland Corridor Transportation Study.

Paying to Park Got Easier

The second change on the avenue this summer was the payment hardware. On July 28, the Colorado Springs Parking Enterprise launched its "Now You Know" campaign. By then the city had replaced individual meters along Colorado Avenue's Old Colorado City corridor with kiosks. Keep these details in mind before the holiday weekends:

1. Meters run 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1 to 8 p.m. on Sunday. A Sunday afternoon on Colorado Avenue is not automatically free.
2. Citywide meter rates as of July 2026 start at $1.50 an hour closest to the city center and drop to $1.25 and $1 farther out. Meters are free on certain holidays.
3. The city's free-Sunday rule applies to its three garages and six public surface lots, not to meters.
4. You can pay with coins, cards, tap-to-pay, text-to-pay or the ParkMobile app. Text-to-pay and ParkMobile let you add time without walking back to the kiosk.

Paid parking still gets debate on the avenue. Thunder and Buttons bar manager Nina Hamilton told KKTV that night business has been slower since paid parking replaced free spaces. She said patrons who used to leave a car overnight and take an Uber home now worry about getting a ticket. The city has said parking revenue pays for road and parking improvements in the area and that time limits bring more customer turnover. Old Colorado City Associates lists free parking for the Christmas Stroll.

The Calendar That Will Put the Most Weight on the Street

Over the next 11 weeks, the pressure on the test layout builds. October 17 is the last Saturday for both weekly markets, so the regular summer crowds thin out just before the seasonal events take over. Pumpkins in the Park on Oct. 24 is free. Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory is the presenting sponsor, and the program includes a pumpkin patch, costume and carving contests, a Cheyenne Mountain Zoo ZOOmobile visit, and a Peak School of Dance performance from 1:30 to 2 p.m. The Christmas Stroll on Nov. 28 adds Santa photos at Bancroft Park, live reindeer, carolers and street musicians to three hours on the avenue.

December is the longest stretch. The Christkindlmarket runs 16 days this year, and its organizer advertises a bigger layout and more days than before. Opening night is Dec. 4, the same evening as the Holiday First Friday ArtWalk, which runs 14 blocks from 17th to 31st streets. That puts both events on a corridor where the test zone covers everything up to 30th Street.

Storefronts Changing Around the Test

The businesses on the avenue have kept shifting during the test. Sweetwater Flower Market moved half a block, to the other side of the street, and stayed in the district. Holloway said the shop wanted to stay in Old Colorado City to keep the store's character intact. Stage Stop OCC Bar & Smokehouse opened May 29 in the former Trail's End Taproom space at 2925 W. Colorado Ave. Hapke's Hortum left its Old Colorado City storefront and reopened at 101 N. Tejon St. downtown at the end of June.

Base Camp Restaurant, at 2611 W. Colorado Ave., serves its last day today, Sunday, Oct. 4. It opened in March 2025 with seasonal menus built around Olathe corn, Palisade peaches, Pueblo chiles, bison and trout. In its closing announcement, the restaurant asked the community to keep supporting other small local businesses.

Who Shapes the Next Version Now That the DDA Is Gone

The other big change came last month. In a 5-4 vote, City Council dissolved the Old Colorado City Downtown Development Authority. Voters had created it in 2024 to raise money for improvements along Colorado Avenue, but they rejected the five-mill levy meant to fund it, and it never began a project. Councilmembers Dave Donelson, Kimberly Gold, Nancy Henjum and David Leinweber voted to keep it.

DDA chairman Adam Stepan told Colorado Politics the decision "leaves the community in the same way they've been struggling along for years, relying on local fundraising and volunteer efforts." Jariah Walker, executive director of the Colorado Springs Urban Renewal Authority, has floated a business improvement district as a replacement. He estimates a 10-block district with a 10-mill levy on businesses would raise about as much as the DDA would have. Stepan doubts businesses would approve a higher levy in another special election.

That changes who weighs in on Phase 2. The street rebuild is already funded through PPRTA, so it doesn't depend on the DDA. The district no longer has a formal body of its own to push for a particular design. Every event on this season's calendar is put on by an independent group: Old Colorado City Associates, the Old Colorado City Historical Society, the German American Chamber of Commerce–Colorado Chapter, and individual shops like Mush Love, Tee. The city has promised more community engagement before the permanent design is final. It also says feedback will stay open during and after the test. The project page doesn't list a fall meeting date yet, but its online survey is open now.

The survey is at coloradosprings.gov/ColoradoAve. Responses sent after the Christmas Stroll and the Christkindlmarket weeks will reflect how the test layout handled the holiday season.

If you own on the west side and want to know how a 2027–2028 rebuild of the 24th-to-27th Street blocks could affect a property near the avenue, Jordan and the team at DogHouse Real Estate Group follow this project block by block. Schedule a free consultation and we'll walk through what we know so far.