"More front porches, more stoops, more trails." That's how District 5 Councilmember Nancy Henjum described the plan Colorado Springs City Council approved on September 8 for the fields east of Banning Lewis Parkway, the stretch most residents have driven past for years without much reason to think about. It's flat, mostly grass, bordered by Dublin Boulevard on one side and Stetson Hills Boulevard on the other. It has sat there, undeveloped, since 1988, when the original 24,000-acre Banning Lewis Ranch annexation put the whole area on the books. Almost nothing happened on that acreage until the city amended the annexation agreement in 2018. Now the council has rewritten what goes there, and the surprising part isn't that homes are coming. It's how many fewer homes are coming than the paperwork used to call for.
What the Council Actually Approved
The vote covers two adjacent parcels totaling roughly 1,170 acres, both part of what the city calls Villages B2 and C. Village B2 sits on 511 acres north of Dublin Boulevard, running east from Banning Lewis Parkway. Village C covers 658 acres on the south side, reaching far enough east to touch U.S. 24 at its southeast corner, along a stretch currently known as Tamlin Road that will eventually be absorbed into an extended Dublin Boulevard.
Combined, the two phases are approved for around 5,000 new homes, mostly single-family, with denser pockets of townhomes and duplexes. Oakwood Homes, the master-plan developer since 2012, projects market prices in the $250,000 to $340,000 range, aimed in part at what Vice President Tyler Jones described as helping people who can currently afford an apartment put down roots here in Banning Lewis Ranch and build that wealth through homeownership.
Each phase also carries its own set of public infrastructure. Village B2 sets aside 25 acres for a school site, two neighborhood parks, and a 9.3-acre commercial corner at the corner of Banning Lewis Parkway and Dublin Boulevard. Village C is bigger and greener on paper: a 35-acre community park, four additional neighborhood parks, two separate school sites, a streamside buffer left undeveloped along the eastern edge, land reserved for a future fire station along Stetson Hills Boulevard, and an improved segment of the Rock Island Trail Corridor.
| Earlier proposal | Approved September 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Village B2 (north of Dublin) | ~4,000 homes under the original 1988 master plan | ~2,500 homes, 25 acres for a school, two neighborhood parks |
| Village C (south of Dublin) | ~3,800 homes under an earlier concept plan | ~2,500 homes, 35-acre community park, four neighborhood parks, two school sites, streamside buffer |
The Plan Residents Already Fought Once
This isn't the area's first pass through city review. Back in November 2023, Oakwood requested a major modification to the Village B2 master plan alone, and the version on the table then looked different. Park space was set to drop from about 34 acres to 15. The two planned school sites were consolidated into one 12-acre parcel. A resident petition on Change.org gathered more than 1,050 signatures opposing the changes, with residents specifically citing concerns about increased density and the loss of park and school acreage they said they'd bought their homes expecting.
That hearing got postponed. What came back through the Planning Commission in July 2026 and City Council in September looks closer to what the petition asked for than what the 2023 draft proposed. The 25 acres for a school in the approved B2 plan is more than double the 12 acres in the version residents objected to. The park math moved back in the other direction too, even if the final combined acreage across both parks isn't spelled out to the acre in the public record.
None of this means the petition single-handedly rewrote the plan. LAI Design Group's principal designer, Don Ryan, told the council the density reduction was partly a response to traffic concerns and partly a need to comply with updated environmental and open space requirements in the city's code. Both explanations point in the same direction as what residents asked for in 2023, whatever combination of code compliance and public pressure actually produced it.
Why the Road Question Already Has an Answer
Traffic is the question that comes up whenever 5,000 homes get added to one corner of a city, and Colorado Springs' traffic engineering division manager, Todd Frisbie, addressed it directly during the Planning Commission review. The roads originally approved for Banning Lewis Ranch in the 1980s, combined with recent widening on Marksheffel Road and Dublin Boulevard, should handle the added volume at full build-out, according to Frisbie's assessment.
Some of that road work is already visible and already open. The new intersection connecting Banning Lewis Ranch Parkway to Woodmen Road, a developer-built connection, had its full opening this past spring after signal testing in late May, giving the neighborhood a second ingress and egress point that didn't exist before. It's a small thing to notice on a daily commute, but it's also the kind of infrastructure that tends to matter more once a few thousand more households start using the same roads.
Parks Before Rooftops
One detail in Jones' comments to the Planning Commission is easy to miss in the acreage totals: construction on the new sections could start as early as next summer, and the first work would go toward establishing parkland, not framing houses. Whether that holds exactly to schedule is the kind of thing that shifts with permitting and weather, but the stated sequencing puts the 35-acre community park and the Rock Island Trail Corridor improvement ahead of the first foundations, at least on paper.
That trail corridor detail connects to something residents in the established sections of Banning Lewis Ranch already use. The Rock Island Trail isn't a new name invented for this development. Extending an improved segment of it into Village C means the new neighborhood links into an existing regional trail system rather than building an isolated loop that dead-ends at a fence line.
Why the Retail Corner Is Small
Anyone who's wondered when this stretch of the city gets a grocery store or a strip of restaurants will find the answer less satisfying than hoped. The commercial zoning approved for B2 covers just 9.3 acres at Dublin and Banning Lewis Parkway, and Village C's commercial component along U.S. 24 is similarly modest for now.
Part of the reason is a state constraint rather than a developer choice. Ryan told commissioners the state won't allow direct access from U.S. 24 into the new development, which forced a reconfiguration of the internal road network and left open questions about the parcels originally slated for bigger retail. His read on those parcels was that they're being kept flexible for future development, since the build-out is proceeding from west to east and this stretch will be among the last developed. Anyone picturing a fast timeline for a shopping center out here should probably plan around a longer one.
A Different Kind of Governance for the New Sections
One more detail worth knowing if you live in an older section of Banning Lewis Ranch: the new development won't set up a traditional homeowners association. It will operate under a metro district structure instead, similar in concept to the Banning Lewis Ranch Metropolitan Districts already managing infrastructure and amenities for existing neighborhoods, though as a separate entity covering the new parcels. That distinction matters for anyone fielding questions from friends or family about how the newer streets will be maintained and funded once people move in.
The fields are still empty right now. The zoning approved on September 8 doesn't move dirt by itself, and the plans still need city sign-off on land use before any of this breaks ground. But for a piece of land that sat on a nearly 40-year-old master plan with no real activity for three decades, having an approved, reduced-density, park-first plan on file is the most concrete thing that's happened to it in years.
If you're curious what this kind of change means for property values on your side of Banning Lewis Ranch, or you're weighing whether now is the right time to sell before the new sections start filling in, the Behr and Behr Team can walk through what's happening with your specific street and give you a straight answer. Request a Free Home Valuation and we'll factor in exactly what's approved next door, not just what's listed on a portal.
