Report: Downtown recovery from pandemic is complete

The City of Colorado Springs recently issued its State of Downtown Report, a comprehensive benchmarking of economic, visitation and mobility trends in the city center.

The report shows ways in which Downtown Colorado Springs is leading the pack in post-pandemic recovery, while also tracking new businesses, residential and hospitality growth, and more.

Among the findings in this year’s report: 

  • Downtown essentially has fully recaptured the total number of workers, residents and visitors to the district compared with pre-pandemic figures. Q4 2023 visitation recovery rates top best-performing cities nationally such as Nashville, San Diego, San Antonio and more. 
  • Downtown saw 12.5 million visits in 2023, up about 5 percent from 2022. 
  • Downtown also leads in return-to-office rates, with 87 percent of the annual Downtown workforce physically back in their places of employment. 
  • Downtown opened a record 431 residential units over three projects in 2023, and nearly 2,000 new units are slated to come on line in the next year and a half. 
  • Downtown’s 2023 hotel occupancy rate of 65.6 percent was 4.6 percentage points below the pre-pandemic 2019 rate – however, since 2019 Downtown has more than doubled its number of hotel rooms. Now with 1,108 rooms, this means Downtown actually set a record in 2023 for total occupied room nights.