My family and I arrived in the Colorado Springs area in the summer of 1990, shortly after my retirement from the Air Force. We initially rented an apartment near Quail Lake in the southwest potion of the city and eventually bought a home not too far away from the apartment. As our children grew up over the intervening years, so did Colorado Springs.
We observed that the business and residential growth moved north and east with the developments such as Flying Horse, the extension of Powers Boulevard, Interquest Parkway and the subsequent retail, entertainment, dining, and medical support growth in that area. We remained in the southwest portion of the city and saw little change, except for the addition of The Broadmoor World arena and commercial development near I-25 and Lake Avenue. Then Fountain annexed land across from Pikes Peak (then) Community College and Walmart and Sam’s Club built large new outlets and subsequently spurred some adjacent retail development.
The bottom line is that in the past 30 plus years, the majority of the growth for Colorado Springs and El Paso County has been to the north and west of Colorado Springs. When our children finished school and moved on with their lives (in the military and out of state), we downsized and ended up moving into a new development in Fountain, noting as we made that move that we were now about 10 miles from our former home in southwest Colorado Springs, and that home was about 4 miles from “downtown” Colorado Springs.