"The kids can come run around outside on the patio and enjoy pizza and ice cream while the parents get a dozen oysters and share a bottle of wine while hanging out there."
That is chef Collin Kelley describing the market he is building at the corner of U.S. 40 and Curve Court. Kelley already owns two of Steamboat's better-known restaurants, Primrose and Cypress. He did not need a third project, and he certainly did not need to put it on a residential corner on the west side of town instead of somewhere with existing foot traffic. He picked the corner anyway. So did the coffee shop that moved there in a week. So did the gym that opened a second location there specifically because west-side residents asked for one. That pattern, repeated three separate times by three separate operators who each had an easier option, is the real story of what is happening on Steamboat's west side this year.
A newspaper building becomes a neighborhood
The block did not start out as a gathering place. It used to house the Steamboat Pilot & Today's headquarters, at the crossroads of Lincoln Avenue and Elk River Road. Developer Kevin Riegler, working through what is now called MR Homes, reimagined the site as Steamboat Basecamp, a mixed-use community meant to pair modern rental housing with neighborhood-serving retail. The first phase, the Lofts at Steamboat Basecamp, opened with 73 studio, one-bedroom, and three-bedroom units and a small retail row underneath. Basecamp Row added townhomes next door.
For a while, that retail row held the kind of businesses that show up wherever new housing goes in: a bike shop, a golf simulator, a gym. Useful, but not exactly a reason to organize your afternoon around the corner. That changed once existing west-side businesses started choosing to relocate there on purpose.
Big Iron didn't need to move. It moved anyway.
Big Iron Coffee has been roasting beans in Steamboat since 2017, run by Bowen and Nina Rodkey. The company already ran a location on the west side, next to West End Liquor, before it ever set foot inside Basecamp. In August 2024, the Rodkeys closed that original spot and reopened less than a quarter mile away inside the northwest corner of the Basecamp building, at 1901 Curve Plaza. Bowen Rodkey told the Steamboat Pilot & Today it was "actually kind of miraculous" that they closed on a Monday and were serving coffee out of the new location a week later.
A coffee shop that already had west-side customers did not need to move to keep them. Moving to Basecamp specifically, rather than staying put or expanding downtown where the tourist traffic is heavier, only makes sense if the operator believed the corner itself was becoming the center of gravity for the neighborhood. Big Iron kept its original downtown location at 635 Lincoln Avenue open too, which means the company now runs two shops: one built for visitors passing through the core, and one built for the people who live a few blocks from it.
Steamboat Fit's second location was a response to a request, not a marketing plan
The same logic shows up with Steamboat Fit. Owner Drew Williams already ran a full gym at Sundance, the retail center near Fish Creek. In early 2024, she opened a second, 4,600-square-foot location inside Basecamp, and she was direct about why.
"Our expansion into a second location is in response to the overwhelming success and demand for our fitness services," Williams said at the time, adding that the goal was to serve "community members living on the west side of town." A Basecamp partner echoed the same point when the location opened, calling the new gym "a much needed fitness amenity for west Steamboat." Nobody was chasing ski-season visitors with a Pilates reformer room. They were responding to the fact that people who already live on the west side wanted a gym close enough to walk to.
Then the corner's biggest name arrived
By December 2025, Chef Collin Kelley had confirmed he was building his newest concept at Basecamp too. At that point the project did not even have a name. Kelley, whose Primrose and Cypress restaurants already draw diners from across town, described a European-style market hall with a pizza kitchen, a deli counter, a seafood case stocked with the same product his restaurants serve, and an ice cream counter for after school. By April 2026, the concept had a name: Forty West Mercantile. Kelley told the Steamboat Pilot & Today he was submitting development plans that week and aiming to break ground by the end of summer, with completion targeted for spring 2027.
What Kelley described was not a special-occasion restaurant. It was a description of an ordinary west-side day: coffee and a croissant in the morning, a smoothie after a workout, ice cream when the kids get out of school, a glass of wine after work. That is a business built around a neighborhood's actual schedule, not a tourist's itinerary.
The timeline has already slipped once. Today is the deadline that's left.
Here is where residents watching the corner deserve a straight answer instead of a press release. The original construction timeline, laid out in Basecamp's December 2025 announcement, put groundbreaking in June 2026 with completion by December and an opening planned for the following spring. By April 2026, Kelley's own public timeline had moved: groundbreaking pushed back to the end of summer, completion pushed to spring 2027. In just four months, the start date slid by roughly a season, which is worth knowing before anyone plans around a specific opening date.
Today is the last day of meteorological summer. If Kelley's April timeline holds, this is the window when site work should be starting. Given that the schedule already moved once, it would not be surprising if it moves again, and there is no confirmed groundbreaking date to point to as of this writing.
One number puts the stakes of that corner in perspective. In March 2026, the Lofts building itself, 73 occupied rental units plus the existing retail tenants, sold for $41.6 million. In a separate transaction that same month, the still-vacant lot across the street at U.S. 40 and Curve Court, the exact parcel where the mercantile is planned, sold for $2 million. That gap between a built, tenanted block and an empty one is a reminder of how much is riding on construction actually happening on schedule, and how much of Basecamp's current value is tied up in the businesses that are already open rather than the ones still on paper.
| At the corner right now | Status | What it offers |
|---|---|---|
| Big Iron Coffee, Basecamp location | Open since August 2024 | Coffee, breakfast burritos, bagel sandwiches |
| Orange Peel Bikes | Open | Bike sales and service |
| M3 Golf Lab | Open | Golf simulator and instruction |
| Steamboat Fit, west location | Open since early 2024 | Gym, open floor, reformer Pilates room |
| Forty West Mercantile | Development packet filed April 2026, groundbreaking targeted end of summer 2026 | Market hall, bakery, deli, seafood case, patio dining |
What's already worth the walk
None of this requires waiting for the mercantile to open. The Walton Creek Trail, a paved spur off the Yampa River Core Trail, is already the connective tissue for the neighborhood. It ducks under U.S. 40, follows Walton Creek past the private Indian Meadows lake, and hands off to residential sidewalks that carry walkers the rest of the way toward Whistler Park's soccer fields and picnic tables. It is flat, dog-friendly, and short enough to fold into a normal afternoon. The Green Line bus stops right at Walton Creek Road, which means the corner, the trail, and the park all connect without needing a car.
West Lincoln Park, on the west end of downtown, does its own version of this work on a bigger scale. This July, the park hosted Art in the Park, one of Steamboat's longest-running summer festivals, drawing roughly 150 artist vendors along with live music and food vendors over a full weekend. That kind of turnout does not happen in a neighborhood that people only pass through. It happens in one where people already show up.
The pattern is the point
Big Iron already had west-side customers and moved anyway. Steamboat Fit already had a location a few miles away and built a second one because people asked. Kelley already had two successful restaurants and chose a residential corner for his next one, describing it in terms of croissants and school pickup rather than tasting menus. Each of those decisions was optional. None of them were forced by a lack of alternatives. That repetition, three operators independently reaching the same conclusion about the same block, is what makes this corner different from the retail that simply follows new housing wherever it goes.
Whatever the mercantile's actual opening date turns out to be, the west side has already answered the more interesting question. It did not wait for one big project to decide it was a neighborhood worth building in. The businesses that were already serving it just kept choosing to stay close.
If you are curious about what else is changing across Steamboat's neighborhoods, or you simply want a second set of eyes on how a specific block or building is trending, Mitch Shannon tracks these shifts as part of daily work in Routt County and is happy to talk through what he's seeing on the west side or anywhere else in town.
