Downtown Woodland Park has spent 2026 running two experiments on the same three blocks of Midland Avenue, and neither owner was watching the other's clock. One project started as a landowner's idea years before its 2024 groundbreaking, survived a pandemic-era stall, cleared a Colorado Department of Transportation road requirement, negotiated a tax-increment financing fight with the town's own Downtown Development Authority, and finally opened this spring after six years and $6.9 million. The other signed a lease, hired two people, and was serving burgers to a packed patio within two weeks.
Both are busy right now. That's the part worth sitting with if you live here, because it says something about this town that a single grand opening never could.
The Six-Year Build
Tava House sits on 6.6 acres just south of the old Woodland Station train depot, and CEO Derek Waggoner had been shaping the idea for years before a shovel ever hit the ground. The project broke ground in September 2024, on land that had swallowed other proposals before it. By the time it opened, investors had put roughly $2 million into infrastructure alone, including an extension of Saddle Club Drive and a reconfiguration of the turn lanes off Highway 24, work the Colorado Department of Transportation required before the building could go up. Financing came from an unusual pairing: Native American Bank, the country's first national American Indian-owned community development bank, put in $3.8 million, and locally rooted Park State Bank & Trust added $3.1 million, for a combined $6.9 million.
What that money bought is three distinct businesses stacked into one building. The ground floor Taphouse pours from a beer wall stocked with local and craft options, with room for more than 40 guests inside and another 50 on the patio. The River Room banquet hall books weddings and corporate events. Upstairs, Firebrand Chophouse seats about 60 people behind floor-to-ceiling windows facing the back side of Pikes Peak.
The kitchen answers to Chef Victor Matthews, who owns Black Bear Distillery in Green Mountain Falls and founded the Paragon Culinary School. Tava House even absorbed some of that school directly into its staffing, building a kitchen team stocked with Paragon graduates, including chef de cuisine Justin Edgar.
The building got its temporary certificate of occupancy in early May 2026, with Firebrand trailing behind for a late-May opening. By the time the Gazette toured the space near the end of May, general manager Brad Beck was blunt about demand: the Taphouse had a waitlist, and the River Room was booked that same night for the mayor's retirement party. Chef Matthews, moving through the dining room, could barely take a few steps without someone stopping him for a handshake or a hug.
That's a long way from where the site sat for most of the last decade. Mayor Kellie Case has been candid about why the project took as long as it did, calling one of the town's defining traits a certain "rigidity." She's also been clear about what she thinks Tava House can do for Woodland Park beyond the building itself, describing it as the kind of project that could spark the next round of development along the corridor.
The Two-Week Flip
A few blocks away, at 110 W. Midland Avenue, a much smaller story played out on a much faster clock. That address used to house 110 Reserve, a spot locals remember for its large outdoor patio right on the main drag. When Levi and Miranda Kleeb went looking for their next restaurant venture, that patio and that view were exactly what pulled them in.
They signed the lease and had customers within two weeks. The Woodland Social opened over Independence Day weekend, serving food, drinks, and live music on a soft-opening menu built around burgers, including a pimento bacon cheeseburger, plus a four-layer chocolate cake for dessert. Salads, more starters, and possibly pizza are coming as the menu grows.
What hasn't grown as fast is the staff. As of mid-July, the Kleebs were running the place with two employees in addition to themselves, and Miranda was candid about why. She and Levi also own a coffee shop, and hiring there looks nothing like hiring here.
"At the coffee shop we post an ad and we get hundreds of applicants within the first day. But here, it's been a little different."
She's hoping to bring on six or seven more people before extending hours. Right now the Woodland Social runs 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., with plans to open three hours earlier once the team is big enough to cover it.
Same Wall, Different Scale
Here's the part a quick scroll through Yelp or Tripadvisor won't tell you. Tava House and the Woodland Social sit at opposite ends of nearly every measure that usually separates a restaurant story, timeline, financing, footprint, ownership structure, and they still ran into the exact same problem at the exact same moment: not enough people to hire in a town of roughly 12,800.
A $6.9 million project with institutional bank financing and a culinary school feeding it staff still needed to stagger its own opening, soft-launching the Taphouse and River Room weeks before Firebrand was ready to seat its first guest. A two-person ownership team with a proven concept next door still can't extend hours until six or seven more hires come through the door.
If you've noticed a new sign in a window downtown but haven't seen the doors fully open, or if a place you've been meaning to try still has limited hours months after its opening weekend, this is probably why. It isn't a capital problem or a demand problem. Both of these businesses are full. It's a labor pool problem that shows up whether you're financing a three-concept building or flipping a beloved patio, because Woodland Park's workforce doesn't scale up just because a new business does.
What Fills the Calendar While They Staff Up
None of this slows down the rest of downtown's fall rhythm, which keeps running on its own schedule regardless of who's hiring. The Main Street Program's Fall Window Decorating Contest closes entries September 9, with public voting running September 10 through October 9 and winners announced October 10. Categories include Best Overall Display, Best Fall Theme, and Most Creative, and any downtown business owner curious about entering can reach Anita Riggle, the city's economic development and budget analyst, directly through the city.
A couple of other dates worth having on hand:
- Creek Week Community Cleanup, Saturday, October 3, 8 a.m. to roughly 1 p.m., at Cavalier Park on Woodland Avenue. It's run in partnership with the Fountain Creek Watershed District as part of the largest watershed-wide cleanup effort in the state.
- The 5th Annual Pumpkin Dive at the Woodland Aquatic Center, where kids dive into the pool for pumpkins, then decorate them poolside with candy to follow.
None of that depends on whether Firebrand has hired its full front-of-house staff yet, or whether the Kleebs have found their sixth hire. Downtown's civic calendar and its restaurant scene are running on separate tracks this fall, and that's arguably a good sign. The town doesn't need both anchors fully staffed to feel busy right now. It just needs them to keep filling seats while they get there.
That's the actual story behind the two openings, not that Woodland Park suddenly has more restaurants, but that it just proved its downtown can absorb a multimillion-dollar destination and a scrappy two-person flip in the same season, and both are already past the point of having empty tables. The building took six years. The lease took two weeks. The town said yes to both.
Whenever a conversation about a place like this turns from what's new on Midland Avenue to what a home nearby might actually be worth, that's a different kind of question, and it's the one The Johnson Team spends its days answering for Woodland Park specifically, not Colorado Springs generally. Get Your Free Home Marketing Plan whenever you're ready to have that conversation.
