"We've been packed every day since the soft opening," Firebrand's general manager Brad Beck said in late May, describing a dining room that had been open for barely a week. Down the hall, the River Room was hosting a retirement party for the mayor. The Taphouse had a wait list.
That kind of night doesn't happen by accident in a town of roughly 8,300 people at 8,465 feet. It happens because a project that broke ground in September 2024 finally finished, in the same month a beloved corner restaurant reopened under new ownership, in the same season the farmers market runs down its final Fridays before the Ute Pass Cultural Center takes over for the Holiday Market. Woodland Park has had good restaurants and full calendars before. It has not had all of this land in the same six weeks.
Two Years Underground, One Season Announced
Tava House sits at 120 S. Center St., and the wait for it was long enough that most of downtown watched it happen in phases. The project drew $6.9 million in joint financing, $3.8 million from Native American Bank and $3.1 million from Park State Bank & Trust, to build out three distinct spaces under one roof: a first-floor Taphouse with a 50-draft beer wall, the River Room banquet hall for weddings and corporate events, and an upstairs steakhouse called Firebrand.
The name traces back further than the building. Chef Victor Matthews ran Black Bear Restaurant in nearby Green Mountain Falls two decades ago, where a Denver Post critic once called him "the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi of Colorado dining" after a string of undercover visits. That review put him on the state's dining map long before he broke ground on a 6.63-acre site in downtown Woodland Park. Firebrand's kitchen is stocked with graduates of his Paragon Culinary School, including chef de cuisine Justin Edgar, and the tasting menu runs five courses for $75 with an optional $35 wine pairing.
The rollout happened in stages this spring. The building got its temporary certificate of occupancy in early May. The Taphouse and River Room opened first, officially welcoming guests in mid-May to a room that pulled in more than 200 diners on a single visit according to a Gazette review. Firebrand, the 60-seat upstairs room with west-facing windows framing the back side of Pikes Peak, followed in late May. By July, a third space called Bar Above the Clouds had opened as well.
What that timeline means for anyone who lives here: this is the first fall Tava House has existed for. Two years of construction fencing and phased openings compress into one season where all three rooms are finally running at once, right as downtown's other fall fixtures come back on the calendar.
The Corner That Changed Hands
A few blocks over, 110 W. Midland Ave. spent years as 110 Reserve, a spot locals kept returning to mostly for its patio, the kind that sits right on the town's main drag and makes people slow down on their way past. That space reopened over Independence Day weekend as The Woodland Social, run by husband and wife Levi and Miranda Kleeb, who also operate The Salty Cow food truck and Red Beard Coffee.
The transition tells you something about what running a restaurant in a mountain town actually requires. Within two weeks of signing the lease, the Kleebs were serving their first customers, opening with burgers, including a pimento bacon cheeseburger, and a four-layer chocolate cake, with salads, starters, and pizza planned once staffing catches up.
"At the coffee shop we post an ad and we get hundreds of applicants within the first day," Miranda Kleeb said. "But here, it's been a little different."
The soft-opening hours ran 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. with only two staff members beyond the owners themselves, and the plan was to extend three hours earlier once six or seven more hires came on. It's a small detail, but it's the kind that separates a mountain-town opening from a city one: the space was ready before the staff was, and a business built around a beloved patio has to grow into its own popularity in real time.
The Market's Last Fridays
Overlapping with both openings is the tail end of a market that predates almost everything else on this list. The Woodland Park Farmers Market has run continuously since 1991 and lands on America's Top 101 Farmers Markets list. Its summer run happens every Friday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., June through September, spread across Memorial Park and onto Henrietta Avenue and Center Street. When the summer season closes out, the market doesn't disappear until winter. It shifts formats entirely.
| Summer Market | Holiday Market | |
|---|---|---|
| Schedule | Fridays, June through September | Saturday before Thanksgiving |
| Hours | 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. | 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. |
| Location | Memorial Park, Henrietta Ave. and Center St. | Ute Pass Cultural Center, 210 E. Midland Ave. |
That means the final outdoor Fridays of the year are running right now, in the same weeks Tava House hit its full three-room stride and The Woodland Social found its footing. Anyone who treats a Friday morning at Memorial Park as a fixed point in their week has a short runway left before that routine moves indoors for the season.
What Else Lands in September
The market's closeout isn't happening in isolation. Woodland Park's Main Street Program and Ute Pass Cultural Center both stack fall programming into the same few weeks, and this year the list is longer than a single Oktoberfest or fall festival:
- Birdies and Bratwurst Scramble Golf Tournament, Sept. 18, at Shining Mountain Golf Course
- Oktoberfest Above the Clouds, Sept. 19, at the Ute Pass Cultural Center
- Fall Window Decorating Contest, entries due Sept. 9, with public voting running Sept. 10 through Oct. 9 and winners announced Oct. 10, judged in categories for Best Overall Display, Best Fall Theme, and Most Creative
- Creek Week cleanup, Oct. 3, at Cavalier Park, part of the largest watershed-wide cleanup effort in the state, run with the Fountain Creek Watershed District
Running alongside all of it is the Shop & Dine Passport Program, where receipts of $15 or more from Main Street businesses can be bundled into a gift card worth up to $100. It's a small mechanism, but it points at the same thing the rest of the calendar does: downtown wants foot traffic to move between the new restaurants, the market's last Fridays, and the storefronts decorating for the contest, not just settle into one destination and stay there.
The One Thing Worth Remembering
None of these things happened because someone planned a themed season. A two-year construction project finished on its own schedule. A restaurant lease turned over because a patio was too good to let sit empty. A market that's operated since 1991 is simply running its usual calendar. What's different is that this year, for the first time, all of it is landing in the same six weeks instead of spread across different seasons the way it usually has.
If you've been waiting to try Firebrand's tasting menu, or to see whether the Kleebs' pimento cheeseburger lives up to the patio it inherited, or to get one more Friday morning at Memorial Park before the market moves indoors, the window isn't long. September is doing a lot of work this year, and it won't stay this stacked once the Holiday Market takes over in November.
If you're thinking about what any of this means for property values or timing a move around the neighborhood's momentum, that's a longer conversation, and it's one Michael Turner and the team are glad to have whenever you're ready.
