Downtown Woodland Park picked up two new places to eat this year, and if you only look at the addresses, they seem like variations on the same story. Both sit within a few blocks of each other on the same stretch of Midland and Center. Both replaced something that had been sitting empty or underused. Both are drawing crowds.
But the timelines behind them could not be more different, and that difference tells you something real about how this town is growing right now, and what to actually expect if you walk in tonight.
The Six-Year Version
Tava House sits on land that had been an empty field of lofty plans for close to two decades. Developer Derek Waggoner first pitched the idea to the Woodland Park Downtown Development Authority back in 2019, walked away, came back in 2022 with a sharper proposal, and bought the 6.6-acre site at the old Woodland Station for $800,000 cash. Getting from that purchase to a shovel in the ground took almost two more years of permitting and the small logistical headache of relocating the Manitou Springs Cog Railway car that had been sitting on the property. The groundbreaking finally happened on September 19, 2024, with a crowd on hand and a Lamb Plumbing and Excavating tractor flying an American flag in front of Pikes Peak.
Getting the money right took its own kind of patience. Native American Bank and Park State Bank & Trust put together $6.9 million in joint financing for the project, with Native American Bank covering $3.8 million and Park State Bank & Trust the remaining $3.1 million. That paid for a building designed to hold three separate concepts under one roof: the Tava Taphouse on the ground floor with a 50-tap self-serve beer wall, the River Room banquet hall for weddings and corporate events, and upstairs, Firebrand Chophouse, a 60-seat fine dining room with floor-to-ceiling windows facing the back side of Pikes Peak.
The kitchen is Victor Matthews' show. He bought the 40-year-old Black Bear Restaurant in Green Mountain Falls back in 2000 and had it earning statewide recognition for Louisiana-style fine dining within his first year of ownership. He still runs Black Bear Distillery and serves as dean of Paragon Culinary School in Colorado Springs, and his chef de cuisine at Firebrand, Justin Edgar, came up through Paragon himself. Matthews calls the whole project "Black Bear 2.0."
The soft opening landed around Mother's Day weekend this spring, and by late May the Gazette's dining critic described a scene where Matthews could not walk across his own dining room without someone stopping him for a handshake. The general manager told the paper the River Room was booked for the outgoing mayor's retirement party the same night the Taphouse had a wait list. Six years of permitting fights and bank meetings, and the town showed up on week one.
The Two-Week Version
A few blocks away at 110 W. Midland Ave, the story ran on a different clock entirely. That address used to be 110 Reserve, a spot locals gathered at for its big outdoor patio right on Main Street. When it closed, Levi and Miranda Kleeb signed a lease on the space and had their first customers within two weeks. The Woodland Social opened over Independence Day weekend with food, drinks, and live music, leaning hard on the same gathering-place feel the building already had a reputation for.
The couple already runs a coffee shop and knows what a fast hiring market looks like there. Woodland Park is a different animal. Miranda told the Gazette that a job posting at the coffee shop pulls hundreds of applicants in a day, but hiring for the restaurant here has gone slower. At the soft opening they were running the place with two staff members beyond themselves, working an 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. schedule while they built up the team.
They have clearly kept moving since. The current posted hours show the restaurant closed Monday and Tuesday, open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, and 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday, which means they've already pushed into the breakfast hours they talked about wanting to add, pouring the same Westcliffe-roasted coffee the Kleebs serve at their Pueblo West location. The menu started with a pimento bacon cheeseburger and a four-layer chocolate cake, with salads, more starters, and possibly pizza still to come.
What This Actually Means for Tonight
Here is the part that matters if you are just deciding where to eat this week. Firebrand has real polish and real rough edges at the same time. A Tripadvisor review posted after the restaurant had been open about six weeks described a full dining room with an empty community table, a chalkboard menu that half the seats cannot actually see, and a mashed potato side that shows up in two different menus with no explanation of which one applies. The food itself got real praise, especially the chophouse cuts, but a new fine-dining concept built from scratch is still working out its own kinks even after a strong debut. If you want the version of Tava House that already runs smoothly, the ground-floor Taphouse is open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily and doesn't require a reservation the way Firebrand does.
Woodland Social, on the other hand, is not yet trying to be a full dinner destination. It's closed Mondays and Tuesdays, and even on the days it's open, hours stop at 6 or 8 p.m., so it's currently built around daytime and early evening, breakfast and lunch more than a late night out. That will likely change as the Kleebs finish hiring, but for now it's the better bet for a weekend morning than a Friday dinner reservation.
The Rest of the Fall Calendar
Downtown's momentum isn't limited to the two new kitchens. A few dates worth knowing if you're planning around what's happening on Midland and Center this month:
- The Woodland Park Main Street Program's Fall Window Decorating Contest has entries due September 9, with public voting running September 10 through October 9 and winners announced October 10.
- Ted Vigil's Tribute to John Denver plays the Dickson Auditorium at Woodland Park High School on September 13.
- Tava House is hosting a Denver Broncos watch party on September 14, one more sign the venue is settling into a role as a default gathering spot beyond just meals.
- Oktoberfest Above the Clouds takes over the Ute Pass Cultural Center on September 19, which happens to land exactly two years to the day after the Tava House groundbreaking ceremony on that same date in 2024.
Mayor Kellie Case told the Gazette one of Woodland Park's defining traits has been a kind of civic rigidity, the instinct to move carefully and slowly on big projects. She's hoping Tava House becomes the thing that breaks that pattern loose, pointing to open parcels in the business corridor that could still accommodate more restaurants, more shops, even a larger retailer. Whether that happens is still an open question. What's already true is that this year, downtown got both kinds of proof that something new can actually land here: the six-year bet backed by two banks, and the two-week bet backed by a couple who liked the patio enough to sign the lease on the spot.
Either way, the town you're already living in just got a little more interesting to walk around in this fall. If you're weighing what a place like this means for your own future here, Gold District Realty has spent years watching towns like Woodland Park change one storefront at a time, and we're always glad to talk through what it looks like from the ground.
