If you have eaten at more than two spots inside Ivywild School this year, there is a good chance the same company cooked all of it. Decent Pizza Co., Gold Star Bakery, Ivywild Kitchen, and Principal's Office are four of the marketplace's core stalls, and all four belong to the Blue Star Group, the same operator that has spent the last several years quietly rebuilding the restaurant that gave this stretch of Colorado Springs its identity before the old schoolhouse ever became a food hall.
That restaurant, The Blue Star, closed in 2017. It is coming back this quarter, a short walk from the school building, at 1645 S. Tejon St., the same address it has occupied since 1998. The Pikes Peak Regional Building Department confirmed remodel permits in March, and the group's own website says plainly that it is reopening in 2026. For a neighborhood that has spent years treating Ivywild School as a loose collection of independent tenants, that is worth sitting with for a minute. The scene is not as scattered as it looks.
The Marketplace Under One Roof
Ivywild School's own site describes its current lineup as settling into "the next era," which is a tidy way of saying the roster has been consolidated. The food side of the building today runs through Decent Pizza Co., known for its Detroit-style, sourdough-crust pies, Gold Star Bakery for sweets, Ivywild Kitchen for burgers, Spark BBQ, and Salad or Bust. Drinks come from Bristol Brewing Co. and Principal's Office, with Axe & the Oak Whiskey House pouring craft cocktails downstairs.
Of that list, the Gazette and other outlets covering the Blue Star Group's restaurant portfolio have confirmed that Decent Pizza Co., Gold Star Bakery, Ivywild Kitchen, and Principal's Office all sit under the same ownership as The Blue Star and the group's other Colorado Springs concept, Stellina Pizza Café over on Willamette. That is four of the building's roughly eight food and drink tenants, meaning a single group controls half the kitchens under that roof. Bristol Brewing Co., part of the building since it opened as a food hall in 2013, runs independently. Axe & the Oak is described on the school's own site as a "locally owned tasting room," a distinction the property makes a point of noting.
None of this makes Ivywild School less interesting. It makes it more legible. What reads on a first visit as an eclectic mash-up of small local operators is, for at least half the food on offer, one kitchen team executing several concepts under different names. If you have noticed that the pizza crust at Decent tastes like it shares a lineage with something else in town, it does. The group has talked publicly about sourcing the same sourdough across its properties.
The Return of the Original
The Blue Star is not a new idea trying to catch a wave. It predates the wave. Owner Joe Coleman opened the first location in Old Colorado City in 1995 and moved it to South Tejon three years later, where it ran as an anchor of approachable, elevated dining until it closed in 2017. The Blue Star Group has since built out Stellina Pizza Café, the Ivywild School cluster, and Gold Star Bakery, but the flagship never came back, until now.
At a preview gathering held during the project's planning phase, the group showed architectural renderings of the rebuilt space: a large bar and lounge just inside the entrance, a dining room to the left separated from the bar by a long, see-through fireplace, and a kitchen running across the back with an open expo line facing the dining floor. Those plans are more than a year old at this point, so expect some evolution between rendering and reality, but they give a sense of what the group is building toward. On its own site, the company puts it simply: it is "very excited to reopen The Blue Star in 2026" after three decades in the business.
For a neighborhood that has spent nearly a decade defined by a food hall built inside a repurposed elementary school, getting the original sit-down anchor back matters more than one more restaurant opening would anywhere else. It closes a loop. The group that now runs a chunk of the casual, order-at-the-counter economy in Ivywild is about to reopen the white-tablecloth restaurant that came first.
The Calendar Right Now
None of this is theoretical for anyone who actually lives nearby, because the building runs on a weekly rhythm that has nothing to do with any of it. Saturdays bring Salsa Night, hosted by Ember & Flow, inside Ivywild School. Sundays mean Brew and Banter at Principal's Office. Tuesdays are drop-in writing sessions hosted by Katherine Anderson. None of that changes whether the Blue Star opens next month or next quarter.
What is new on the calendar is the Colorado Short Circuit Film Festival, marking its 10th year at Ivywild School starting Sept. 11. The neighborhood also keeps up its own summer tradition with the Ivywild Garden Art Toure, a self-guided walk through a handful of artistic backyard gardens tucked behind the historic homes south of downtown, now in its fifth year running.
What Doesn't Fit the Pattern
It would overstate things to say one company owns Ivywild School, let alone the neighborhood. Bristol Brewing Co. and Axe & the Oak Whiskey House, the building's two drink anchors, both operate outside the Blue Star Group, and the school's own site is careful to point that out. The retail side has stayed independent too. Odds & Ends Emporium, described by the school as a Women & LGBTQIA+-owned gift, toy, and local arts hub, occupies its own footprint with no ties to the restaurant group next door.
That split is the more useful way to think about the neighborhood. The consolidation is real, but it is specific to roughly half the food and drink stalls inside one building, plus the restaurant now rebuilding across the street. Everything else under that roof, from the brewery to the whiskey bar to the gift shop, still runs on its own terms.
What It Means to Eat Here This Fall
The practical version of all this is simple. If you have found a dish you like at Ivywild Kitchen, Decent Pizza, or Gold Star Bakery, you already know roughly what to expect at The Blue Star when it reopens, because it is the same team, working from the same playbook, just with a bigger room and higher ambitions. That is not a small thing for a neighborhood that has spent years wondering what would eventually happen to the empty space on Tejon. Watch the permits and the group's own updates for an exact date. Third quarter 2026 is the target, and we are already inside that window.
Ivywild has always been a neighborhood people found by accident, on a walk from the Broadmoor or a detour off Tejon. Understanding who is actually running the kitchens does not change what the food tastes like, but it changes what you are watching for. The next real shift in this pocket of Colorado Springs will not be a new food hall stall. It will be the moment The Blue Star's doors open again.
The Michael Turner team keeps a close eye on how Front Range neighborhoods like this one evolve, one reopening and one new tenant at a time. If you are curious what a shift like this means for property values on nearby streets, or you are simply thinking ahead about your own next move in the Pikes Peak region, book an appointment and let's talk through it.
