Last year was one to remember for the Colorado Springs Chamber and EDC, the group said at its annual business snapshot, formerly known as the state of the Chamber.

The Chamber celebrated 2025’s economic development wins and encouraged businesses to do the same. The Chamber did not linger on the regional losses experienced in 2025 during its Monday morning event.

The event was punctuated with a keynote address by Steve Lerch, a former executive at Google who now runs Story Arc Consulting.

Economic development

Last year, Colorado Springs attracted the attention of nine major economic development projects, the group said. This translates to 1,115 jobs and nearly $500 million in new capital investment, said Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer, the Chamber and EDC’s president and CEO.

Notably, one of the companies is homegrown. ITS LLC, a defense and cyber company located in the Victory Ridge area off Voyager Parkway, was founded in Colorado Springs in 2017. Led by founder and CEO Hassan Campbell, an Air Force Academy graduate, the company hopes to add more than 500 jobs over eight years. Campbell announced the expansion in July.

Another company, Utah-based Swire Coca-Cola, announced it will build a 620,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in the city. The $475 million capital investment could create 170 jobs for the region and will help fill out the massive Peak Innovation Park near the Colorado Springs Airport.

The city’s nine economic development projects exceed 2024’s eight, but lag behind 10 in 2023. However, not all projects panned out, as past coverage by The Gazette shows.

Among those that didn’t last year was Project Kiwi, which was an attempt to get the governing body of USA Gymnastics to relocate its headquarters to Colorado Springs. The move would have included the construction of a new training facility.

Nor did the Chamber dwell on the loss of Space Command, the U.S. military’s joint command for space operations, but it did come up at the end of the session. Seth Harvey, the co-founder and CEO of Bluestaq, a local tech, defense and space company, briefly mentioned it at the end of the event.

He said losing the command hurts, but emphasized the mission has been part of Colorado Springs’ fabric for multiple generations.

“That mission is not going anywhere because Space Force is still here,” he said. “That lawsuit was politically minded. The amicus brief, from my opinion, is not politically minded.”

Rather, it is El Paso County and Colorado Springs stepping up and saying “this is what’s best for us as a community,” Harvey said.

AI and what’s new

As businesses in the region look to the future, Lerch encouraged them not to fear or discount what is new and different.

Lerch shared a video from a baseball game. The camera crews kept focusing on a group of girls taking selfies with their gameday attire and concessions. The announcers made fun of them repeatedly.

But Lerch saw some of the best fans Major League Baseball could have hoped for.  They bought “overpriced ballpark concessions” and most of them were wearing baseball shirts, he said. They were just finding a different way to enjoy a baseball game, drawing the ire of traditionalists.

This is an understandable reaction, Lerch said, adding that it is human nature to be skeptical of change. But inevitably, change comes, he said.  

He used the baseball example as a segue to talk about artificial intelligence and its potential. Artificial intelligence has generated negativity and backlash in some cases. But its use can be a catalyst for accelerating business, Lerch said.

In five seconds, someone using generative AI can get a series of ideas flowing, he said. Not all of them will be good, but it can get the process going.

“Make artificial intelligence the first step any time you’re trying to tackle something new,” he said.