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People walk along Colorado Avenue past the former location of Jorge’s Restaurant, which served up Mexican cantina staples like burritos and enchiladas, just after noon on Monday, Dec. 30, 2024. The Slice 420 pizzeria a couple of doors down will move into the former Jorge’s space.
Matt Blum of Jewelers Services describes how he created a bracelet made with roped metal on Dec. 30, 2024. Jewelers Services opened 30 years ago in 1995 on Tejon Street in downtown Colorado Springs. The store is relocating to 2522 W. Colorado Ave. on Feb. 1, 2025, in the former location of the Holly Leaf year-round Christmas store.
A section of historic Colorado Avenue in Old Colorado City will welcome new storefronts in locations in the 2500 and 2400 blocks, pictured here, that have recently been left vacated by longtime community favorite shops.
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People walk along Colorado Avenue past the former location of Jorge’s Restaurant, which served up Mexican cantina staples like burritos and enchiladas, just after noon on Monday, Dec. 30, 2024. The Slice 420 pizzeria a couple of doors down will move into the former Jorge’s space.
A section of historic Colorado Avenue in Old Colorado City will welcome new storefronts in locations in the 2500 and 2400 blocks, pictured here, that have recently been left vacated by longtime community favorite shops.
A flurry of new businesses will open along a section of historic Colorado Avenue in the coming weeks and months, occupying spaces recently vacated after several storefronts recently closed at year’s end.
With longtime Old Colorado City favorites like the year-round Holly Leaf Christmas store, Buffalo Ridge Trading Post, Out West T-shirt and souvenir shop and Jorge’s Restaurant across the street now shuttered, a jeweler, two pizzerias and a new souvenir retailer are preparing to occupy their spaces in the 2400 and 2500 blocks of Colorado Avenue.
“There will be no vacancies. I think that shows how robust the Old Colorado City market is,” said Tim Leigh, founder of and broker with Colorado Springs-based commercial real estate agency Hoff & Leigh. The agency represented the listing and sale of each of the four business deals.
“Everything that’s going to happen here, I feel … is going to bring tremendous new value to Old Colorado City and everyone will be delighted with who the new tenants are,” he said.
Jewelers Services, which has operated out of its second-floor suite at 31 N. Tejon Street in downtown Colorado Springs since it opened in 1995, will move into 2522 W. Colorado Ave., in the space formerly occupied by The Holly Leaf.
The successful, longtime family-owned business has grown out of its current location and Old Colorado City has a strong small business community, making it an attractive area to move shop, said Matt Blum. He co-owns the store with his father, Ted Blum, and his wife Crystal Blum helps operate it.
Matt Blum of Jewelers Services describes how he created a bracelet made with roped metal on Dec. 30, 2024. Jewelers Services opened 30 years ago in 1995 on Tejon Street in downtown Colorado Springs. The store is relocating to 2522 W. Colorado Ave. on Feb. 1, 2025, in the former location of the Holly Leaf year-round Christmas store.
“We’ve been such a fixture here for so long and we’ve really built up a big clientele. But it’s time for us to move; we’ve just outgrown this space. I will miss being downtown because I kind of grew up here,” said Blum, who began working at the store in 2001. “We are just looking for more reach into the community.”
The Blums plan to open in the Old Colorado City location in early February.
Over the decades, Jewelers Services has built its reputation as a creative custom jeweler and professional repair shop that caters to a variety of clientele, from collectors to designers, Blum said. The store does insurance appraisals, jewelry repairs and restorations, and jewelry design and production.
Blum plans to feature the shop and his showroom on the same floor in the new location, so customers can peruse completed pieces and peek behind the curtain to see how they’re made.
“The charm of this place is we are showing what we do and the art we produce. … The jewelry is the best part of this business,” he said. “We’re looking forward to being able to make jewelry and sell it, and we’re really excited for the future.”
About a block down, Christina Lyons is opening the business she dreamed of starting one day with her sister Andrea.
Lyons will open her T-shirt and souvenir shop in the location of the former Out West store at 2426 W. Colorado Ave. She will sell similar items as the former retailer, including novelty T-shirts, Native American jewelry, semi-precious stones, toys and other souvenirs.
The shop is called Sister’s Gift House in honor of her sister’s memory, Lyons said. Andrea, who owned a similar gift shop business in Williams, Ariz., died unexpectedly in a motorcycle accident in April 2022. Lyons is working to open her business in Old Colorado City by March, ahead of the third anniversary of Andrea’s death, she said.
The sisters planned for Andrea to semi-retire from her Arizona operations and move to Colorado to open a store with Lyons. The obligations of daily life got in the way and they hadn’t found the right store location, however, so plans for a joint business venture stalled.
Lyons was working full-time as a manager for Edelweiss German Restaurant in Colorado Springs for example. The family of Lyons’ husband, Norman Ross, owns and operates the German eatery; Lyons started there as a waitress in 2001 and recently worked her last day at the restaurant.
“Andrea, she always wanted to open up a store with me. But you know how life is — I was working my other job, we didn’t have the right location, but I always kept my eye out. Sure enough, when I saw that this location came up, I said I was going to open the business in memory of my sister,” Lyons said.
“It means the world to me to do this. I’m proud and happy I could do it, and have the opportunity to do it, to show all the good she has done for me in life. She’s looking down on me. I hope it all goes well.”
Lyons will have her son and daughter-in-law near, too, because they’re opening a pizzeria just a few doors away.
For Chris and Lindsay Lyons, opening the second location of their Pizzeria Leopold (named after their first child, their son Leopold) in Old Colorado City is both a welcome return home, close to family, and an exciting new business opportunity.
They plan to open Pizzeria Leopold at 2430 W. Colorado Ave. by late May, the weekend of Old Colorado City’s annual Territory Days celebration that attracts thousands of visitors to Colorado Avenue every year, Lindsay said.
Chris and Lindsay married, moved to Denver from the Colorado Springs area, and opened their pizza business in Lakewood in late 2018. Pizzeria Leopold serves up handcrafted pizza, Italian sandwiches and desserts from scratch, using sustainable, local and organic products, as well as those imported from Italy — and business has taken off.
Patrons will be able to enjoy the same high-quality service and ingredients at the new Old Colorado City location, Lindsay said. Their new store will also have a small imported grocery section and deli, just like in Lakewood, so people can conveniently pick up homemade Italian food like meatballs, cheese by the pound and homemade sauce.
“We take a lot of pride in our product. We’ve taken a lot of time to get to where we are with our recipes and quality. If we wouldn’t feed it to our kids, we wouldn’t feed it to our customers,” Lindsay said.
Chris and Lindsay also plan to build a rooftop bar for their pizzeria, where they envision eventually including an outdoor oven to cook woodfire-style pizzas in the summer.
They’re not worried about stiff competition from Slice 420, a beloved New York-style pizzeria that opened across the street at 2501 W. Colorado Ave. in September 2017. The Lyonses want to be part of a community pizza collective, so to speak.
“We aren’t coming here to take anything away. We are just hoping to add to the area, which has been so good for small businesses,” Chris said.
Every pizzeria has its own style, too. Slice 420 offers New York-style pizza, while Pizzeria Leopold is a bit of a hybrid of East Coast pizza styles.
“Like when we travel, we go to places where there’s lots of coffee shops all in one area to try. We think it brings people more options,” Lindsay said. “We’re hoping to bring another true family spot to town. We used to live here before we moved up to Denver … and we’re happy to be back and give back to this community.”
There are big plans to expand the ever-popular Slice 420 pizzeria in Old Colorado City, too.
Owner Christian Patriarca recently purchased the building formerly occupied by Jorge’s Mexican Restaurant at 2427 Colorado Ave., a stone’s throw from Slice 420’s current Old Colorado City location. He’s currently remodeling the 3,800-square foot space, including several existing vacant apartment buildings above the restaurant.
The bigger space will allow Patriarca to serve items at his Old Colorado City location that right now are only available at the Slice 420 location at 3725 Oro Blanco Drive in Colorado Springs, like pasta and wings.
He also plans to build outdoor patio space for the new Old Colorado City eatery, and wants to feature a glass dough room so patrons can see how dough is made and fermented. Patriarca too is considering operating a late-night pickup counter on weekends.
“We want to keep impacting the community and keep just being a light,” he said.
He and his wife Stefany Patriarca closed their successful pizzeria in Florida, called A Bronx Tale, and moved their family to Colorado after their daughter Sofia was diagnosed with a severe form of cerebral palsy when she was 2 years old. Sofia was experiencing as many as 100 seizures a day, so the family moved to Colorado to treat her with medical marijuana. The Patriarcas opened Slice 420 to help other “medical refugees” find support, raise awareness and donate to various causes, their website states.
“We want (this place) to be a gathering, for people to know that it’s a safe place for everybody. We operate off of love and integrity. That’s what we stand by for our team, that’s what we stand by for our community, and that’s what we stand by for our families. And just having a good impact,” Patriarca said.
As for the current Slice 420 location on Colorado Avenue, Patriarca envisions turning it into a deli of sorts, selling desserts, New York-style sandwiches, gyros, fresh bread and wholesale items including imported flour, olive oil and truffle salt, for example.
Patriarca hopes to open the expanded Slice 420 space in the early summer.
Like previous years, Colorado Springs and the Pikes Peak region saw their share of retail and restaurant openings and closings in 2024 — wheth…
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