The first Monday of August in Monument goes like this. A Dairy Queen at 16577 Cinematic View unlocks its doors for the first time. Twenty minutes south on I-25, crews are moving dirt on a 30-acre retail pad off Baptist Road. And at 6:30 the Wednesday after, a cover band starts a set in Limbach Park while a farmers market packs up two blocks north on Jefferson. Nothing about that sequence is unusual for a growing town. What is unusual is how cleanly it splits.
Monument is running two calendars this month. One belongs to the I-25 corridor, where the news is jobs, chain openings, and a shopping center that will not exist for another fourteen months. The other belongs to the older core streets, where nothing about the summer routine has changed in years and residents seem to prefer it that way. If you live here, you are on both calendars at once, and August is the month that makes the split obvious.
The corridor is having a month
The Falcon Commerce Center off Baptist Road picked up a marquee tenant on July 30. ACCO Engineered Systems, an employee-owned HVAC and piping fabricator based in California, announced a $36 million expansion into one of the VanTrust buildings next door to the UPS distribution facility that opened in 2022. The company expects to add up to 135 jobs at an average annual wage of just over $87,000, which the state's Office of Economic Development pegged at 133% of the El Paso County average. Monument competed for the project against Peoria, Arizona, and used its first-ever local incentive package to win it.
That announcement lands three months after the Town Council cleared the Legacy at Jackson Landing project, a 225,000-square-foot retail center on 30 acres just south of the Home Depot at Baptist and I-25. Mayor Mitch LaKind confirmed Target, Marshalls, HomeGoods, Chick-fil-A, and Firehouse Subs as anchors. Legacy Development Partners, the Phoenix-based developer, is still filling the remaining space. Construction has started, and the grand opening is targeted for October 2027.
The Dairy Queen opening on August 3 is a smaller story on its own, but it fits the pattern. It is locally operated by Karlye Brooks, who grew up in Monument, and it is the second El Paso County location for the same ownership group. All three of these are corridor stories. None of them are downtown.
The old core kept its Wednesday
Two blocks of Second Street and one block of Jefferson still run the town's social calendar the way they have for years. The Wednesday farmers market at 146 N. Jefferson operates on the same rhythm. Concerts in the Park at Limbach Park (151 Front Street) fill the Wednesday evenings from early June through late July, and the Tri-Lakes Chamber's summer roster of Monu-Palooza and Monument Pours in the Park uses the same lawn.
The businesses in that footprint are stable in a way the corridor is not. Lolley's Ice Cream, the Sapp family shop on Second Street, spent the pandemic experimenting with recipes on a home Cuisinart and has become common enough shorthand for "downtown Monument" that when Shelley and Dustin Sapp signed a lease at 216 N. Tejon in Colorado Springs earlier this spring, the Gazette treated it as a Monument-expanding-south story rather than the other way around. Covered Treasures Bookstore, Monumental Miniatures and Toy Shop (Gayle Wade has been running it for more than two decades), and 3 Hundred Days Distilling, hand-batched by retired Army veteran Mike Girard, are the anchors people default to when out-of-town family visits.
| Old core | I-25 corridor | |
|---|---|---|
| Center of gravity | Second, Jefferson, Front | Baptist Road at I-25 |
| August headline | Wednesday farmers market, Cars & Coffee first Sunday | Dairy Queen opens Aug 3, ACCO announcement July 30 |
| On the calendar | Monu-Palooza, Pours in the Park, tree lighting | Legacy at Jackson Landing under construction, ACCO fit-out |
| Who runs it | Family owners, chamber, town | Regional and national tenants |
Neither side is winning. They are addressing different things.
The Ford Amphitheater is doing the heavy calendar lifting
If you have lived in Monument for more than two summers, you already know August is the month the venue on the north edge of Colorado Springs pulls the region's music traffic toward the Tri-Lakes side of I-25. The 2026 lineup is dense: Alison Krauss & Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas on August 14, Lauren Daigle on August 15, and Danny Elfman's Music from the Films of Tim Burton on August 22, with Brantley Gilbert following on September 5.
For a resident, the practical effect is simple. Show nights change how the frontage roads move, they change how long the wait is at the restaurants clustered near Baptist and Jackson Creek, and they add weekend demand to short-term rental inventory that used to sit quiet. The venue is not in the Town of Monument, but it functions as Monument infrastructure most weekends. Plan errands accordingly.
A first-Sunday habit worth keeping
The Tri-Lakes Cruisers run Cars & Coffee in the VCA Animal Hospital lot at 487 CO-105 on the first Sunday of every month from April through October. The club also runs a stand-alone truck show and hosts one-off shows at Jackson Creek Senior Living. Roughly $6,500 goes to Tri-Lakes Cares from the annual car show alone, which is a meaningful number for a food pantry that also runs the summer snack-pack program for local kids out of Limbach Park.
The rest of the season anchors, in the order they land:
- Monu-Palooza — the local music festival on Second Street, regional and hometown bands.
- Monument Pours in the Park — Limbach Park, local breweries, distilleries, cideries, and non-alcoholic makers.
- Town birthday celebration — Monument turns 148 this year, live sets from WireWood Station and the Joey Fletcher Band.
- Tree lighting at Limbach Park — the informal end of the calendar, with food trucks and a non-perishable food drive for Tri-Lakes Cares.
None of these are new. That is the point. They are the reason the old core has not needed to reinvent itself while the corridor sorts out what it wants to be.
When the mayor pitched the Legacy retail center, his summary was that residents would stop having to drive south to Colorado Springs or Castle Rock for basic shopping. Some longtime residents heard that as progress. Others heard the same sentence and started thinking about Palmer Lake. Both reactions are on the record. Both are Monument.
What the ACCO number actually says
The $87,000 wage figure is worth pausing on, because it is the first hard datapoint in a while that describes what kind of employer Monument is now attracting. County average wages in El Paso County have been dragged upward by aerospace and defense in the south end for years. A fabrication and mechanical-services employer landing on the north end at 133% of that average is a different signal than another warehouse tenant. It suggests the Falcon Commerce Center will fill with skilled trades and technical roles rather than pure logistics, and it means the daytime population near Baptist Road is about to include a shift of engineers, fabricators, and project managers who will want lunch, coffee, and a haircut somewhere close.
The old core is not set up to catch that traffic, and probably will not try. Legacy at Jackson Landing is set up to catch exactly that traffic, and will not open for more than a year. The 14-month gap is where the interesting local business decisions get made. Watch which existing spots along Jackson Creek Parkway adjust their hours and menus during the second half of 2026. That is the leading indicator.
A short answer to "what should I actually do this weekend"
- If it is a Wednesday evening in early August, Limbach Park.
- If it is a first Sunday, 487 CO-105 for coffee and cars before it gets hot.
- If a name on the Ford Amphitheater lineup lands, leave for dinner earlier than you think.
- If out-of-town family is visiting, walk them from Lolley's on Second to Covered Treasures and let them meander.
- If you want to see the town that will exist in 2028, drive the loop from Baptist Road to Jackson Creek Parkway and note what is fenced off.
Monument in August 2026 is a town in the middle of a specific transition, but the transition is easier to read once you accept that the corridor and the core are not competing. They are doing separate jobs, and residents are getting the benefit of both. The people who know this town well are the ones who can tell you which restaurant to skip on an Alison Krauss night and which Wednesday concert is worth the folding chair.
If you are thinking about your own next move inside or into this market, Colorado's Choice Homes lives on both of Monument's calendars and can talk through what the corridor build-out means for a specific street, a specific school walk, or a specific commute. Reach out for a free home valuation or relocation plan when you are ready.
