Friday, September 4th, started on Tejon Street with a ribbon and a pair of scissors. By 10 a.m., a small crowd had gathered outside the DeGraff building at 118 N. Tejon for the official ribbon-cutting of Stoney's Bar & Grill, the Denver-based sports and music bar taking over the space that Oskar Blues Grill & Brew abruptly vacated back in December. Eight hours later, on the same three blocks, a different crowd was carrying popsicle passports between galleries and storefronts for the Popsicle Promenade, September's First Friday dessert crawl. Neither event bumped the other off the calendar. They just took turns.
That's the thing worth understanding about downtown Colorado Springs this month, if you already live here and are trying to figure out how to actually use it: Tejon Street isn't becoming one thing. It's running two different versions of itself, back to back, sometimes on the same day, and knowing which one you're walking into changes what the evening looks like.
The bar count just hit six
Stoney's didn't open into empty space. Downtown already had Benny's Restaurant & Lounge, the Brit Pub, Tony's, and Trainwreck pulling in the game-day crowd, and back in June, another Denver import, the Sportsbook Bar & Grill, opened on the first floor of the Springhill Suites at 402 S. Tejon. Stoney's makes six sports-focused bars inside a walkable stretch of downtown, which is a different density than downtown had even a year ago.
It's also not a pop-up. Stoney's signed a 10-year lease and is occupying 15,000 square feet of the DeGraff building, a serious footprint for a first Colorado Springs location from a chain that started in Denver in 2010 and has since added a Cantina location and a spot in Winter Park. Owner Stoney Jesseph told the Gazette he's excited to bring "the tried-and-true Stoney's experience to Downtown Colorado Springs," and the bar's early plans go past opening weekend. It's positioning itself as a watch-party home for select college and NFL fan groups, with a pumpkin-carving party already on the books for fall.
Downtown Partnership CEO Chelsea Gondeck framed the timing plainly when the opening was announced:
"Tejon Street is at its best when people are here to meet up, catch a game."
That's a fair read of what six sports bars in three blocks does to a Saturday. It's not a fair read of the whole street, though, because Tejon Street has spent the entire summer building a completely different rhythm at the same time.
The economy that was already there
Long before Stoney's signed its lease, downtown had a walkable, daytime-and-early-evening calendar running on its own schedule. The Sunday Market in Acacia Park runs every Sunday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. through October 25, a few blocks from the DeGraff building. The Downtown Summer Music Series has filled Acacia Park on Thursday nights from 6 to 8 p.m. since June, free and open to anyone with a lawn chair, with its final three dates landing on September 10, 17, and 24. First Friday itself runs year-round, 5 to 9 p.m. on the first Friday of every month, and September's edition brought back the Popsicle Promenade, a progressive dessert tasting through more than a dozen participating galleries and restaurants.
None of that changed because a sixth sports bar opened. What changed is that for the first time, both calendars are running at full volume in the same month, and a resident heading downtown on a given night now has to ask which crowd they're walking into before they park.
Here's what September actually looks like on Tejon Street, laid out by date:
| Date (Sept. 2026) | What's happening | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Tue, Sept. 1 | Stoney's Bar & Grill opens at 118 N. Tejon | 11 a.m. |
| Fri, Sept. 4 | Stoney's ribbon-cutting, then First Friday's Popsicle Promenade | 10 a.m. / 5-8 p.m. |
| Sun, Sept. 6, 13, 20, 27 | Sunday Market, Acacia Park (runs through Oct. 25) | 9 a.m.-2 p.m. |
| Thu, Sept. 10, 17, 24 | Downtown Summer Music Series, Acacia Park (final three dates) | 6-8 p.m. |
| Fri, Sept. 11 | Cocktails & Canapés Walking Tour | 4-6:30 p.m. |
Read that table as two overlapping clocks. One runs on football Saturdays and NFL Sundays, filling booths at Benny's, Trainwreck, the Sportsbook, and now Stoney's. The other runs on First Fridays, Sunday mornings, and Thursday evenings, filling the sidewalks around Acacia Park with produce stands, live music, and gallery hoppers. Both belong to the same three blocks. They just don't belong to the same hour.
A word on Fiestas Patrias, because the calendar gets this one wrong
If you're used to seeing Fiestas Patrias described as a downtown festival, that's worth a correction before you plan around it. The event's own recurring event copy has said for years that it's "in the heart of downtown Colorado Springs," and that language is still floating around on several event calendars. But the actual listing for this year's celebration, the fifth annual, on Saturday, September 12, places it at the Colorado Springs Flea Market on East Platte Avenue, several miles east of Tejon Street, not downtown at all. In 2026, the event is also expanding for the first time to a second city, adding a Denver-area date at the Mile High Flea Market the following day. Last year's festival, the fourth annual, drew an estimated 30,000 people, which gives you a sense of scale even if the venue isn't where the generic listings say it is.
So if Hispanic Heritage Month programming is what brought you to this post, plan for Platte Avenue, not Tejon Street. It's a genuinely separate piece of Colorado Springs' September calendar, running at the same time as the Tejon Street split but in a different part of town entirely.
Why the timing on Tejon Street actually matters
None of this is really about whether six sports bars is too many or too few. It's about what happens to a three-block stretch of downtown when two different economies with two different customers both hit their busiest season in the same month. Football season brings the kind of foot traffic that fills a bar's booths by early afternoon on a Saturday. First Friday brings a slower, browsing crowd that lingers over dessert samples and gallery openings until closer to 9 p.m. Those two crowds parking in the same three or four blocks, on the same weekends, is a newer problem for downtown than it was even last September, back before Stoney's had signed its lease or the Sportsbook had opened its doors.
If you're planning an evening downtown this month, the practical move is simple: treat First Friday as an early-evening plan and treat the sports bars as a late-afternoon-into-evening plan, and you can hit both without either crowd canceling the other out. Get to the Popsicle Promenade galleries by 6 p.m., before the tables thin out, and if there's a game on, the bar seats are still open when the art walk winds down around 9.
Downtown Colorado Springs isn't choosing between being a game-day destination and a walkable arts district. This September, for the first time, it's fully both, at the same time, on the same three blocks. That's worth knowing if you already live here and just want your Friday night to go the way you planned it.
If you've been in Colorado Springs long enough to remember when Tejon Street had half this many bars, or you're newer to the neighborhood and still figuring out which nights belong to which crowd, The All Star Team keeps an eye on this market the same way we keep an eye on the calendar. When you're ready to see what your corner of Colorado Springs is actually worth, get your free home valuation and local market plan.
