Brown’s Shoe Fit is trading downtown for northern Colorado Springs, with plans to move this year | Business

Brown’s Shoe Fit, which for 40 years has called downtown Colorado Springs home, is moving out.

The store at 119 N. Tejon St. will relocate to northern Colorado Springs, inside the Centerpointe Plaza just southeast of the intersection of Vickers Drive and North Academy Boulevard, its managing partner and part owner Ryan Prickett confirmed.

He expects the store selling top-name men’s, women’s and children’s brand shoes, boots, sandals, slippers, socks and other items will fully relocate and reopen in late summer or the fall. The new space is 1,600 feet larger and will allow the shoe store to expand its offerings, he said.

Prickett said the downtown location will operate as normal until the space in the Centerpointe Plaza is ready. He anticipates the store will only have to close for a few days to make the move.

“It’s tough. We loved being (downtown), but things have changed,” Prickett said from his Tejon Street storefront on a recent afternoon.

Among chief reasons for the move are ongoing challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, which Prickett has said have been exacerbated by downtown issues like metered parking and the homeless population that is most concentrated in the city’s central retail district. Prickett has been candid about these challenges, revealing in a March 2 Gazette report they were the reason he wanted to finalize a lease in another part of town.

“I feel like issues downtown have kind of been the issues they’ve always been, but they just seem to be worse than they used to be,” Prickett previously told the newspaper.

Some homeless individuals camp in front of his store and he has had to clean up feces they have left both in front of and behind his business, he has said. Prickett also believes metered parking deters more people from shopping and eating downtown; they don’t have to pay to park at other large shopping centers around the city, he said.

After hearing these shared concerns from other business owners in the fall, city officials and the advocacy group the Downtown Partnership introduced a multipronged pilot initiative aimed at enhancing the downtown Colorado Springs experience.

Among its changes were shortened metered parking hours, free parking opportunities on Sundays, street outreach to members of the homeless community, cleanup efforts and city-to-business outreach. These initiatives are planned to continue throughout 2025 in some form, officials recently said.

Nevertheless, parking and homelessness issues have compounded the COVID-19-related challenges Prickett says his business has faced in recent years. He hopes moving out of downtown will help the store, part of an Iowa-based chain though it is independently operated, return to pre-COVID numbers.

The new larger storefront will allow him to sell more athletic shoes — a popular market for footwear retailers. Prickett said at times he has had difficulty securing athletic footwear offerings to sell at his downtown location because of its proximity to the Runners Roost, which sells running shoes, apparel and gear next door.

“It’s time to move on and see if we can continue in a new location,” he said.