Monument's Growth Boom Is Happening at the Interstate, Not on Jefferson Street
August 13, 2026
August 13, 2026
If you've lived in Monument for more than a year, you've probably had two very different conversations about the town's future in the same week. One is about the Target coming in off I-25. The other is about whatever band is playing Concerts in the Park at Limbach Park on Wednesday night. Both conversations are happening in the same town, at the same time, but they're not really about the same Monument.
That's the thing nobody quite says out loud: Monument isn't growing evenly. It's growing in one specific place, along one specific corridor, while the rest of the town goes on largely undisturbed. Understanding where that line falls tells you more about daily life here than any single headline does.
The retail news that's dominated group chats since spring is Legacy at Jackson Landing, a shopping center planned for roughly 30 acres off I-25 near Baptist Road, just south of the Home Depot. According to KKTV's April 2026 reporting, the center will run more than 225,000 square feet and has confirmed commitments from Target, Marshalls, HomeGoods, Chick-fil-A and Firehouse Subs, with the developer, Legacy Development Partners, still working to fill remaining space. No opening date has been announced yet.
Mayor Mitch LaKind framed the project as a way to keep local spending local. "Hopefully, people will come north and start shopping instead of having to head South," he told KKTV. That's a real dynamic here. Monument residents who want a Target run currently drive to Colorado Springs or Castle Rock, and every one of those trips is sales tax revenue leaving town.
Not everyone is celebrating. Kirsten Merrick, who works near the construction site at Tri-Lakes Printing, told KKTV she's ready for the convenience: "We are definitely Target girls living in a Walmart world up here." But Terese Bohler, who has lived in the area for 52 years, sees something else arriving along with the anchor stores.
"We didn't want the Walmart. We didn't want any of it." She added, half joking, that she's tempted to "just want to move to Palmer Lake."
That tension is worth sitting with, because it assumes the growth is happening to the whole town. It isn't.
Jackson Landing isn't an isolated project. It's the newest entry in a run of announcements that have all landed in the same few square miles along I-25, mostly clustered around the Falcon Commerce Center at I-25 and Baptist Road.
A rough timeline of what's stacked up there:
ACCO chose Monument over a competing site in Peoria, Arizona, and the town put together its first-ever local economic incentive package to win the deal. The state kicked in a Strategic Fund Job Growth Incentive worth up to $453,000 over five years, and county officials estimate ACCO could qualify for close to $586,000 in additional tax credits and exemptions.
None of this is happening quietly, either. When the Terrazzo-Baja business park came before the council in January, the debate got pointed. Councilwoman Sana Abbott raised concerns about the plan's trash storage, and Councilman Steve King argued the "mixed use" label was obscuring what was really an industrial project. At one point Mayor LaKind told the developer's representative directly, "Why does everyone come to this town and screw with our code." The project passed unanimously, but only after the council attached stipulations on trash, outside storage and the buildings' stone veneer.
That friction matters. It tells you the town isn't rubber-stamping growth along the interstate. It's negotiating every inch of it, which is a different posture than simply letting the corridor sprawl.
Meanwhile, walk or drive through the older part of town, around Jefferson Street and Limbach Park, and nothing in this story shows up. The Monument Hill Farmers' Market still runs Saturday mornings. Concerts in the Park still fills Limbach Park on summer Wednesdays with a rotating lineup of local and regional bands. The Tri-Lakes Chamber still runs its ladies' night downtown shopping crawl, capped at 200 tickets a year because that's what the storefronts can hold. The Fourth of July parade and Street Fair still ends at the Limbach Park beer garden. None of it has expanded to accommodate growth, because none of it needed to.
The clearest evidence of that is Lolley's Ice Cream. Shelley and Dustin Sapp moved to Monument in 2017 and opened the shop somewhat by accident, after Shelley couldn't find a cinnamon flavor she remembered from Indianapolis and started experimenting with a small Cuisinart. The shop became a genuine local fixture. This spring, the Gazette reported that Lolley's is opening a second location, but not in Monument. It's opening at 216 N. Tejon St. in downtown Colorado Springs, with a soft opening planned for March 2026 and a grand opening penciled in for May 2026, offering 15 to 16 signature flavors, slightly more than the original shop carries.
If downtown Monument were bursting at the seams the way the interstate corridor is, you'd expect Lolley's to expand at home first. Instead, the growth is going outward, into Colorado Springs, which suggests the original Monument location isn't constrained by space or demand. It's just steady.
Here's the shape of it laid out plainly:
| The I-25 Corridor | Downtown Monument | |
|---|---|---|
| What's new | Jackson Landing retail, ACCO's 135-job expansion, the Terrazzo-Baja business park | Nothing structural, same events and storefronts |
| Who it's built for | Commuters, drive-up shoppers, industrial employers | Residents who already live within walking or short driving distance |
| Pace of change | Multiple major announcements in a single year | Businesses like Lolley's expanding elsewhere, not at home |
| How decisions get made | Contested council votes, incentive packages, code fights | Chamber-run traditions with decades of continuity |
The practical takeaway for anyone living here is less about which side wins and more about knowing which Monument you're dealing with on any given day. If you're headed to the Baptist Road interchange for a Target run once it opens, expect construction traffic, new signage and storefronts that are different every time you drive past. If you're headed downtown for the farmers market or a summer concert, expect it to look almost exactly like it did last August.
Triview Metropolitan District's own numbers back up how long this pattern is likely to hold. The district, which covers roughly 2,587 acres along I-25, currently has more than half its land developed or under construction, with plans for over 3,000 single-family homes and 1,556 multi-family units still to come, alongside growth from 80 to an expected 125 commercial businesses at full build-out. Residential development is projected to wrap in about five years; commercial buildout is expected to take a decade, according to Triview's own economic development page. That's a decade of corridor growth still ahead, running on its own separate clock from whatever's happening on Jefferson Street.
Terese Bohler's instinct to retreat toward Palmer Lake makes sense if you assume Monument is one town moving in one direction. But the more accurate read is that Monument is running two towns at once, and the version she grew up in isn't the one being rebuilt.
If you're trying to make sense of how these two sides of Monument affect property values, commute patterns or which part of town fits your life best, that's exactly the kind of local read Pulse Real Estate Group spends its time on. Reach out anytime, or start with a free home valuation to see what the current market looks like from where you sit.
Stay up to date on the latest real estate trends.
Serving communities from Colorado Springs through Pueblo and Denver, west into the mountains or east to the plains, our team is here to help with all your real estate needs across Colorado’s Front Range.