For years, the eastside pitch went something like this: great for errands, fine for dinner, drive west for anything you actually want to do on a Friday night. That story is out of date. Between Cinema Point, Stetson Hills Boulevard, and the open space behind your own subdivision, there is now a full weekend that never crosses Academy. This post is a map of it, built from what has opened, what is running right now, and what is being built next.
Friday, 5 PM, Cinema Point
The center of gravity on Friday evenings is a parking-lot lawn most residents drive past every day. First & Main Town Center is running its 2026 Summer Concert Series every Friday from 5 to 7 PM at 3305 Cinema Point, with seven weeks of local and regional acts. Bring folding chairs. The lineup rotates weekly, so it is worth checking before you commit; the July 17 date featured Sun Jr., and the late-summer weeks carry the same format through the end of the run.
If the concert wraps and the kids are with a sitter, walk the block. Allusion Speakeasy at the Powers location is running its Pirates of the Caribbean theme, which opened July 23, 2026 and is expected to stay up for at least 60 days. The address is 3317 Cinema Point, at Powers and North Carefree, essentially across the parking field from the concert lawn. It is a 21+ room, no exceptions. The kitchen and cocktail menu change with each quarterly theme, which is the whole point; the room you sat in last spring is not the room you will sit in tonight.
Two things worth knowing if you have not been. The theme cycles are short, so what is on the menu in August will not be on the menu in November. And because both the Powers and downtown Allusion locations rotate independently, the theme at Cinema Point is not always the same as the downtown room, and bookings at the wrong location are not their responsibility to fix. Choose deliberately.
Saturday morning has a new anchor
The eastside has always had bagels in the same sense that it has had pizza: available, not destination-worthy. That changed in February. Jeff's Bagel Run opened at 6082 Stetson Hills Boulevard, just east of North Powers, and the store carries some weight beyond its own counter.
"Opening our first shop in Colorado, and our 30th nationwide, is a milestone we're incredibly proud of. We've grown by staying committed to baking everything from scratch and building real connections in every community we join." — Jeff Perera, co-founder
So the first Colorado store for a 30-location chain landed on Stetson Hills Boulevard rather than downtown or on the west side. That is a retail decision, and it says something about how the eastside is being read by out-of-state operators. The menu covers house-made spreads, coffee drinks, and desserts alongside the bagels, which makes it functional as a weekend breakfast stop rather than a grab-and-go.
Pair it with the rest of the Powers food map that has been quietly building for a decade. The VisitCOS Powers area guide points to Salsa Brava, locally owned and operated since 2002, serving Colorado-sourced dishes, along with an eastside Turkish and Greek spot and a cocktail bar with disco balls. None of that is new. What is new is the density: you can now string breakfast, a mid-morning coffee, and a late lunch inside a three-mile radius without repeating a cuisine.
The trail behind your subdivision
Most residents of Stetson Hills, Ridgeview, and Indigo Ranch know there is a creek back there. Fewer know it is a proper trail with a real length and a real endpoint. Sand Creek Trail sits inside Stetson Hills Open Space, covers 4.4 miles, gains 187 feet of elevation, and takes most walkers between an hour and a half and two hours end to end.
A few practical notes from people who actually use it:
- You can park at Stetson Park, walk to the back, cross the footbridge, and pick up the trail, which adds about half a mile round trip if you do the whole thing.
- There is also ample parking near the trailhead off Barnes Road if you want the flatter, paved southern stretch.
- The northern end starts at the gas station on Woodmen Drive, runs south behind the neighborhoods, passes under Woodmen and again under Dublin Road, and stays dirt until Stetson Hills Boulevard.
- After Stetson Hills, it is paved to Barnes Road, which is the section to pick for strollers or road bikes.
There is a caveat worth knowing before you show up in flip-flops. The trail has limited shade and can be muddy or icy depending on the season. August afternoons are the wrong slot. Early morning, after the bagel stop, is the right one.
One structural detail matters for anyone using both ends of the trail. The northern section connects to Stetson Park and Stetson Hills Open Space, and the plan has long been to connect the northern and southern segments on the east side of Powers via a grade-separated underpass. That underpass has not happened yet. For now, the northern and southern segments function as two separate trails that share a name, which is worth knowing before you plan an ambitious point-to-point.
What's being built at Palmer Park and Powers
The corner most residents pass on the way to King Soopers is about to change. Chick-fil-A has submitted plans for a 2,714-square-foot, drive-thru-only restaurant inside the Powers Center at the southeast corner of Palmer Park and Powers boulevards. The site will include a 40-seat patio, two drive-thru lanes, two exterior canopies, and 40 parking stalls, tucked between the existing 7-Eleven and Pizza Hut facing Powers.
Two things are worth flagging. First, format: the chain opened its first drive-thru-only restaurant in 1993, and these concepts have no dining rooms or dine-in service. This would appear to be the first drive-thru-only Chick-fil-A in Colorado Springs. Second, context: the Woodmen Road corridor a few miles north is already dense with recent openings, including McDonald's, Taco Bell, Starbucks, Jersey Mike's, Bad Ass Coffee, Big O Tires, AutoZone, and a Quick Quack car wash at Woodmen and Marksheffel. The eastside food-and-service layer is thickening in a way that is easy to miss if you only track it one intersection at a time.
If you live inside Stetson Hills proper, the near-term practical effect is that your ten-minute-drive radius keeps expanding. If you live in Ridgeview or Springs Ranch, the same is true a mile in the other direction.
Reading the map differently
Put the four pieces together and the eastside stops looking like a commuter shelf and starts looking like a self-contained weekend.
Friday at five, walk to a free concert at First & Main. Around seven, cross to Allusion for a themed drink in a room that will be gutted and re-themed by winter. Saturday morning, breakfast at a bagel shop that chose this corner for its first Colorado location. Late morning, drop into Sand Creek Trail from Stetson Park and walk until the pavement runs out. That is a weekend, and none of it required a drive to Old Colorado City or a table booked six weeks out on Tejon.
The retail signals underneath that map are the part worth watching. A national bagel chain choosing 80923 for its Colorado debut, a quarterly-rotating cocktail concept anchoring itself to Cinema Point, and a new drive-thru concept being tested at Palmer Park and Powers are three different companies, in three different categories, making the same read on where the eastside is heading. Residents have been early on that read for years. The rest of the market is catching up.
When you're ready to talk about the house, too
The Lauber Group covers this side of Colorado Springs closely, and the same eye we bring to what's changing around Cinema Point and Stetson Hills Boulevard is the one we bring to pricing, prep, and negotiation when it is time to move. If you have been in your Powers-area home long enough that the neighborhood around it has shifted, it is worth knowing what that shift is doing to your number. Reach out to The Lauber Group for a current home value, and we will send back something specific to your street, not a citywide average.
