If you have ordered lunch at Ivywild School anytime in the last decade, you know the drill. You get in line at Ivywild Kitchen for a burger, walk to a different counter for a Bristol beer, maybe swing by Salad or Bust for a side, and end up holding three separate receipts and doing math in your head to figure out who gets which tip. It has always worked, in the way that a system built by neighbors who trust each other tends to work. It has also never been simple.
That is changing this month, and the reason has nothing to do with the food.
Bristol Brewing Co. and Blue Star, the restaurant that used to anchor Ivywild School before it closed in 2017, have spent almost 30 years as co-owned neighbors. Mike Bristol and Blue Star owner Joe Coleman ran adjoining operations near South Tejon Street and East Ramona Avenue long before either name was attached to the old elementary school building. When that building went up for sale at 1604 South Cascade Avenue, the two of them bought it together with a local architect, and in 2013 it reopened as the 20,000-plus-square-foot artisan marketplace regulars know today, anchored by Bristol's brewery and pub. For over a decade, Bristol and Blue Star have effectively run Ivywild as a single, tangled operation, even after Blue Star itself went dark.
That arrangement is now coming apart, on purpose, and the changes are landing on your table this fall.
One Tab, Not Four
The most immediate shift is how you pay. Bristol described the goal directly: guests will be able to order from any of the marketplace's vendors and settle up with a single, central tab instead of running a separate transaction at every counter.
It sounds like a small operational tweak. For anyone who has stood at Ivywild juggling a pizza order from Decent Pizza Co., a plate from Spark BBQ, and a beer from the Bristol counter, it is the difference between one bill and three receipts you will lose in your jacket pocket. Bristol put it plainly when he described the reasoning: the goal is to make the whole visit feel like one experience instead of four separate ones stitched together by habit.
That single-tab system is the clearest sign that this is a genuine operational split rather than a cosmetic rebrand. Untangling shared point-of-sale systems is exactly the kind of work two businesses do when they are formally separating how they run day to day, even while staying in the same building.
The Principal's Office Is Getting Its Mornings Back
The second change is about hours, and it says something about what Ivywild used to be before it became known mostly as a lunch and happy-hour destination.
Starting September 21, 2026, The Principal's Office rolls out a new cocktail menu and starts serving coffee all day. But the more telling change is what happens at the other end of the clock. Opening hours are moving earlier, pulling back from the current 11 a.m. start to make room for the kind of morning crowd the space served before the pandemic. Bristol was direct about the history: in the years before COVID, The Principal's Office was where people came for coffee, pastries, and breakfast, not just a pre-cocktail-hour pour.
Bringing that back means a real partnership, not just a menu tweak. Bristol is working with Loyal Coffee to rebuild an actual coffee program inside the space, and a new Bristol concept called Bluebird Breakfast is set to join the marketplace next month to handle the early eats that The Principal's Office used to cover on its own.
If you have only ever known Ivywild as a place you go after 11 a.m., that is a version of the school that is about to expand backward into the morning.
What Changes and What Stays the Same
Not everything at Ivywild is being reworked. Here is what regulars should actually expect this fall:
- One central tab across marketplace vendors instead of separate transactions at each counter
- The Principal's Office serving coffee all day and running a new cocktail menu starting September 21, 2026
- Earlier opening hours at The Principal's Office to accommodate a returning morning crowd
- A new Loyal Coffee partnership rebuilding the space's coffee program
- Bluebird Breakfast, a new Bristol concept, arriving next month for breakfast service
- Decent Pizza Co., Gold Star Bakery, Ivywild Kitchen, Spark BBQ, Salad or Bust, and Axe & the Oak Whiskey House continuing to operate as they have
The school building itself is not being renovated or repurposed. This is a business untangling, not a construction project inside the marketplace.
Across the Street, Nine Years in the Making
The construction project is happening, just not where most visitors are looking. Directly across South Tejon Street from Ivywild School, a new building has been rising for months, and it is nearly finished. That building is Blue Star's actual comeback, separate from the marketplace it used to share a roof with.
Coleman closed the original Blue Star in 2017. Nobody expected the gap to stretch this long. Lindsey Hafemeister, a marketing consultant working on the relaunch, explained the delay without pretending it was part of some grand plan: Coleman never intended it to take this long, but COVID and years of economic disruption kept pushing the timeline back.
There is still no announced reopening date. After years of waiting, though, a building nearing completion right across South Tejon Street gives longtime Blue Star fans something they can see for themselves, and the team behind the relaunch is clearly taking the time to bring the restaurant back well.
Why the Split Makes Sense Now
None of this is really about menus. It is about two businesses that have operated as one for almost three decades finally drawing a clean line between them, right as one half of that partnership is about to become a fully separate, physical, standalone restaurant again.
Running a shared tab system across five or six vendors made sense when Bristol and Blue Star were both under one operational umbrella inside the same building. It makes a lot less sense once Blue Star has its own address, its own kitchen, and its own name on a door across the street. Simplifying how the marketplace charges guests now, before Blue Star's grand opening lands with its own systems, is the kind of housekeeping that happens right before two long-tied businesses formally go their separate ways.
That is the actual story under the surface-level menu changes. Ivywild School is not shrinking or changing identity. It is finishing a decade-long process of becoming two distinct businesses instead of one blended one, and the fall changes, from the central tab to the returning morning hours, are what that separation looks like in practice for anyone standing in line with a burger order.
If you have been going to Ivywild for years, the building will still feel familiar. The tab in your hand, and eventually the restaurant across the street, will not.
Ivywild School's evolution is one small example of how much a single block in Colorado Springs can shift in a season, whether that means a business splitting its operations or a home changing hands. If you are curious what is happening on your own street, or what a market shift like this means for property nearby, The Daniels Team is always glad to talk through it.
