The Colorado Springs-area population continues to grow and its economy continues to evolve — and that means changes to the local residential and commercial landscape, including new stores, restaurants, housing projects and the like.

Some of those projects take shape without much difficulty after developers obtain financing and government regulatory approvals; others might drag out longer for various reasons.

Here are updates on a handful of high-profile projects The Gazette has reported on over the past year and longer, and where they stand now:

• Nationally branded hotel still eyed south of downtown.

It’s been nearly a decade since the Colorado Springs City Council approved an urban renewal project for roughly 100 acres on the east and west sides of Nevada Avenue, about 1½ miles south of downtown. During that time, several aging hotels, pawn shops and other buildings declared blighted by the city have been torn down — mostly on Nevada’s west side — and replaced with fast-food and quick-serve restaurants, groceries and other businesses.

But a Marriott-branded hotel proposed by a local development group along Tejon Street, just west of Nevada and part of the urban renewal project, remains on the drawing board. Financing hurdles have caused a delay, though the development group hopes to launch construction of the hotel this year, near the Ivywild neighborhood southeast of the Prime 25 steakhouse and along Cheyenne Creek.

As now envisioned, the hotel would be a four-story, 176-room Marriott Tribute, said Colorado Springs developer Ray O’Sullivan. Marriott’s website describes the brand as “a family of independent, boutique hotels.”

“After COVID, all the banks got out of the hotel business,” said O’Sullivan, who’s part of the hotel development group that’s headed by attorney and hotelier John Goede and includes local businessman Mark Morley and Dr. Kenneth Kurica, a longtime, prominent Colorado Springs orthopedic and trauma surgeon.

“The (California-based) Silicon Valley Bank and a couple of those other banks failed and the government was going to put in a new set of regulations,” O’Sullivan said. “Everybody was just really afraid to do more commercial lending.”

The development group was being offered so-called “hard money” loans, which financial websites describe as short-term, riskier financing; they carry higher interest rates and are secured by an asset — such as real estate — and not a borrower’s creditworthiness or future revenue streams. Goede, as the development group’s general partner, rejected that type of financing, O’Sullivan said.

At the same time, Colorado Springs businessman and nightclub owner Sam Guadagnoli, who was part of the hotel’s original development group, died in September 2022.

Financial institutions, however, are moving back into commercial lending, and the development group is working with a couple of banks to secure financing, O’Sullivan said.

The group remains optimistic about the project and is targeting an April 1 start for the hotel’s foundation, which would be followed by roughly 15 months of construction, he said. That timetable could mean a hotel opening in 2026.

“It’s been a rough go between COVID and the banking crisis,” O’Sullivan said. “Things are starting to settle out a little bit, and people are a little more optimistic right now.”

• Goodwill’s expansion to Falcon area remains on target.

Goodwill of Colorado has yet to start construction on a 23,000-square-foot thrift store and donation center that was supposed to open late last year in the Falcon Marketplace shopping center, northwest of Meridian and Woodmen roads in unincorporated Falcon, just outside Colorado Springs. Goodwill officials held a ceremonial groundbreaking for the store Aug. 29.

But Goodwill still is coming to Falcon, and the store is now set to open in the fourth quarter of 2025 or the first quarter of 2026, said Stephanie Bell, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit. The store is slated to be built as part of a 3.67-acre site that Goodwill purchased on the west side of a King Soopers grocery that anchors Falcon Marketplace and opened in January 2024.

Goodwill has experienced “delays that are typical of a construction project,” Bell said, though she didn’t have specific details about what caused those delays. She also wasn’t sure when passers-by might begin to see construction at the site.

“We’re working closely with our contractor to ensure construction goes smoothly and look forward to welcoming the community to our new Falcon location in the near future,” Bell said via email.

• Specialty grocer now not so sure of new store on Colorado Springs’ north side.

H Mart, the Korean- and Asian-themed, New Jersey-based grocery chain that has been saying for more than three years it would expand to northern Colorado Springs, now appears less certain about its plans.

In November 2021, H Mart representatives submitted a proposal to city government officials that showed the grocery would build a 29,000-square-foot store at Victory Ridge, the mixed-use development southeast of InterQuest and Voyager parkways.

A few months later, an H Mart entity paid $1.8 million to purchase 2.6 acres at Victory Ridge, and the entity continues to own the land, El Paso County land records show.

Since then, Brendon Choi, general affairs manager for H Mart’s locations in Aurora and Westminster, has said the grocer was working its way through the city’s regulatory process, and that a Victory Ridge store was a question of “when” and not “if.”

Recently, however, Choi said he could no longer firmly say that H Mart will build a store at Victory Ridge — though that remains the goal.

The grocery’s ownership is concerned about the rising cost of construction, and that’s one factor that has held up the store, Choi said. As a result, H Mart representatives are pursuing building changes in an effort to lower costs, he said.

“We are trying to get the correct budget for the construction portion of it,” Choi said. “We’ve recently worked with the architects that worked on it and tried to get some changes made so we can get a better construction bid.

“We’re trying our best to make it happen, by whatever necessary means it may be,” he added. “In that sense, we’re trying to get the H Mart open, yes. Do we have an answer to when it’s expected? No.”

Though the project now is uncertain and there’s no timetable for when a decision will be made on its future, shopper interest remains high in the store, Choi said.

“Even at the H Mart in Aurora, we’re still getting a lot of people asking about it,” he said. “Even customers just coming in and asking about it, ‘hey are you guys opening the one in Colorado Springs?’ The same thing we can answer to them is, we hope to get it going, but I can’t say for certain that things are being done as they need to be.

“The goal is to make it happen,” Choi added. “But the terms required to make it happen and the progress is still unknown at this point.”

• McDonald’s follows through on two restaurants, though shelves a third.

Fast-food giant McDonald’s, which over the last 18 months had submitted proposals to Colorado Springs city government officials showing it planned to add a trio of restaurants in town, has moved forward on its expansion — though only on two of the three locations.

In the past few weeks, one of the McDonald’s opened northeast of Circle Drive and Galley Road in the center of the city. A multitenant retail building on the site — sandwiched between Cheers Liquor Mart on the north and a Safeway fuel station on the south — was torn down to make way for a 4,268-square-foot McDonald’s with a dual drive-thru.

Meanwhile, McDonald’s continues to move forward with plans to build a restaurant northwest of Marksheffel and Barnes roads, as part of the Willowind Commercial development, said Mark Useman, a senior broker and retail specialist with NAI Highland, a commercial brokerage that’s marketing the property.

The retail center is currently home to a multi-tenant retail building and a free-standing 7-Eleven convenience store; Starbucks, a Public Storage self-storage facility and Les Schwab Tire Centers are among other uses planned at the development, according to an NAI Highland marketing brochure.

A timetable for the Marksheffel and Barnes location was unknown.

But a third McDonald’s, proposed northwest of Centennial Boulevard and Fillmore Street, has been shelved.

That restaurant would have been built north of a King Soopers-anchored shopping center, according to plans McDonald’s had submitted to city government officials in August 2023.

Nearby residents, however, opposed a McDonald’s at the site, said Russ Perkins, a principal with Evergreen Devco, a real estate company that purchased the property in September. Evergreen Devco, which has offices in Denver, Arizona, California and Utah, has developed several projects in the Colorado Springs area, including shopping centers and apartment complexes.

“The neighborhood nearby … they had a different vision for what was appropriate on that property,” Perkins said.

As a result, and though the property’s zoning would have supported the restaurant, McDonald’s and Evergreen Devco decided to heed the wishes of nearby residents and dropped the project, he said.

“We (Evergreen Devco) honored one of the values we try to live by, which is to leave behind good relations wherever we develop,” Perkins said. “And so, we’ve pivoted and McDonald’s decided that it wasn’t in their best interests and we decided it was fine for us to consider other alternatives.”

A day care center now is planned for the site, Perkins said.

McDonald’s, based in Chicago, didn’t respond to emails seeking more information about its Colorado Springs restaurants.

• Surf’s up in northern Colorado Springs.

Surf Shack, a two-story, 12,000-square-foot recreation center that would offer indoor simulated water surfing, is targeted for a summer opening, said Dr. Michael Kofford, a Colorado Springs orthodontist who proposed the project. It’s being built at the Polaris Pointe mixed-used development, southwest of North Gate Boulevard and Voyager Parkway in northern Colorado Springs

Concrete has been poured for the building’s foundation and parking lot, Kofford said, while its metal frame has been brought to the site in anticipation of more construction soon. Kofford said he’s now waiting for a building permit to be issued by the Pikes Peak Regional Building Department.

“The hard part’s done; the foundation and a lot of the underground work’s done,” he said.

Surf Shack will use a sophisticated wave machine manufactured by a California company to simulate ocean waves for riders. The facility also will have locker rooms, food and beverages areas, conference and party rooms, a sauna and outdoor sand volleyball courts.

The project’s price tag has been higher than he originally budgeted, Kofford said, and he’s been hoping for interest rates to ease to reduce his borrowing costs. Though supply chain issues still could pose an issue, the project will “definitely move forward,” he said.

“I’m preparing for August; I’m hoping for July,” Kofford said of an opening date.

• Event center still planned at former Sunbird restaurant site.

An event center that would host weddings, parties, corporate gatherings and other activities still is planned for the site of the former Sunbird restaurant on Colorado Springs’ northwest side and could open as early as next year, said Colt Haugen, chief operating officer and co-owner of the Springs-based WickedThink advertising agency and part of a group that purchased the Sunbird property in May 2021.

The group — also composed of WickedThink CEO Kim Shugart and Shugart’s son, Mike, a WickedThink vice president — demolished the Sunbird two years after buying the site.

Since then, the event center proposal moved through the city’s planning process as the development group sought regulatory approvals. A development plan that spells out project details was approved by the city in late September, Haugen said. The group now is seeking approval of a building permit via the Pikes Peak Regional Building Department, he said.

“Everything’s been submitted multiple times, back and forth, with changes,” Haugen said. “We are going ahead full steam; as soon as Regional Building signs off on the permit, we’re ready to rock and roll.”

In a best-case scenario, construction on the event center would begin in late spring or early summer, Haugen said. Construction would take 12 to 18 months, which would mean the venue could open in spring or summer of 2026, he said.

One caveat: an economic downturn or a change in world events in the next several months might cause his group to hold off another year on the project, Haugen said.

But, “for right now, our plan is to break ground in the spring or summer,” he said.

The event center, to be called The High Garden, has been redesigned and enlarged; it now will seat up to 400 people at one time for a plated meal, Haugen said. A basement addition also will make it three levels, he said.

The former Sunbird site, at 230 Point of the Pines and northwest of Interstate 25 and Garden of the Gods Road, is perched on a hillside and enjoys scenic views of the city and mountains. The Sunbird restaurant, opened in 1975, was popular for many years. It closed in 2018.

“It’s going to be beautiful, the space is going to be amazing,” Haugen said of the new project.

• Downtown movie theater remains without a user.

The Kimball’s Peak Three Theater in downtown Colorado Springs, which has been vacant since the death of theater operator Kimball Bayles in January 2023, remains idle, and no new tenants are in the offing, said property manager Ryan Murphy. He’s part of Murphy Constructors, the longtime local general contractor that owns the theater property at 115 E. Pikes Peak Ave.

A few possible users have looked at the property, and one potential tenant showed interest in leasing the space, Murphy said. Property improvements and remodeling upgrades, however, would have been costly for the potential tenant and for Murphy Constructors as the owner, Murphy said.

“It’s an old building,” Murphy said of the theater, which El Paso County Assessor’s Office records show was constructed in 1900. “It never had sprinkler systems put in, and so we need to get sprinklers put in. That was a big expense. And then renovation costs to help them, and also upgrading possibly the storefront and lots of different things like that. The number was big for both of us to swallow.”

As a result, Murphy Constructors and the potential tenant took a step back and put the deal on hold, Murphy said. He didn’t rule out that an agreement with the tenant for the theater’s use could be reached in the future.

For now, the theater remains vacant, and Murphy Constructors continues to pay for the building’s maintenance and upkeep, including insurance and utility costs and property taxes, Murphy said.

“Nothing’s happened, but … nothing’s off the table, either,” he said.