Buena Vista's New City Market Broke Ground. The Subsidy Fight That Defined 2025 Never Made The Deal.

Construction crews started moving dirt on September 14 at the northwest corner of Highway 24 North and Crossman Avenue, on a six-acre site that will hold a 60,000-square-foot City Market. That's more than double the footprint of the store currently operating a short distance south on Highway 24, which runs about 23,000 square feet. The project is expected to be substantially complete by the end of summer 2027.

For most of 2025, the story around this project wasn't the size of the building. It was the size of the ask. Kroger, City Market's parent company, wanted the town to share incremental sales tax revenue on a 75-25 split favoring the grocer, capped after ten years. That request consumed public meetings, drew a formal objection from the Buena Vista Chamber of Commerce, and pushed at least one trustee into a recusal because of a competing business interest. It's worth being precise about what actually happened next, because the record shows something different from what the fight implied: the Public Improvement Agreement trustees approved this spring doesn't contain a tax-sharing arrangement at all. It's a construction and enforcement document, not a subsidy deal.

What's Actually Going Up at Highway 24 and Crossman

The site plan calls for a full-service grocery store with amenities the current location doesn't have: a retail fueling station, a drive-through pharmacy, and online grocery pickup lanes. Parking expands to more than 200 vehicle spaces, with dedicated ADA-accessible and EV spots plus bicycle parking. The project also brings public infrastructure changes along the corridor, including a new traffic signal at Highway 24 and Farwell Street and new sidewalks along Highway 24.

The current store isn't closing during construction. It will keep operating at its existing Highway 24 location while the new site goes up about a mile north, which means the disruption for daily errands over the next year is mostly about a construction site on the drive north, not a gap in grocery access.

The Sales-Tax Fight That Ate Most of 2025

The tax-sharing request became public in early October 2025, disclosed as part of the Planning and Zoning review process. By October 14, it dominated a Board of Trustees meeting. Public comment split sharply. Supporters argued the town should negotiate a narrow agreement to help fund public improvements like the new signal and turn lanes, framing the store as a $30 million-plus private investment worth accommodating. Opponents, including the Chamber of Commerce, argued that a corporation with a market capitalization in the tens of billions shouldn't receive a subsidy that local independent businesses never get. Trustees moved the discussion into executive session to work out a negotiating position, and one trustee recused himself from that portion of the meeting because he works for a direct competitor.

Through the fall, the site plan itself kept moving forward on a separate track. Planning and Zoning conditionally approved it in October. The tax-sharing question remained unresolved into December, when the planning department said it was still finalizing technical corrections and expected to send a third round of comments to the applicant in early December.

What Got Written Into the Deal Instead

On April 28, 2026, trustees approved a Public Improvement Agreement with the development entity behind the project, tied to the property now platted as the Crossman's Addition Filing No. 2 Subdivision. The agreement lays out how public infrastructure like the new signal and sidewalks gets built, inspected, and eventually handed over to the town. It includes enforcement tools that give the town real leverage: if the developer doesn't perform, the town can withhold the certificate of occupancy on the store itself, and can draw on a performance guarantee to finish the work using secured funds. There's also a two-year warranty period after the town accepts the improvements, during which the developer stays responsible for any defects.

None of that is a sales-tax-sharing arrangement. The agreement governs how the road and sidewalk work gets done and what happens if it doesn't, not how future tax revenue gets divided. Whatever became of Kroger's original 75-25 ask, it isn't the mechanism that got this project moving. The enforcement structure the town settled on instead relies on withholding occupancy of the building itself, which is a more direct form of leverage than a revenue-sharing formula would have provided anyway.

The Quieter Asks That Actually Shaped the Site Plan

While the subsidy question absorbed most of the public attention, a handful of smaller, less contested requests appear to have made it into the plan as filed. Planning director Marika Kopp noted during the April meeting that a separate applicant would be building a sidewalk to close part of the gap along the corridor, coordinating directly with City Market on the connection. One stretch will remain unfinished for now, in front of the Latinos restaurant on the corner of Highway 24 and Crossman, until that adjacent lot gets developed or redeveloped. Trustee Andrew Rice pushed during that meeting for the town to treat full corridor connectivity as a priority even if City Market isn't obligated to pay for the missing piece.

Residents raised other concerns through the town's public comment channels well before construction started, including a request for downward-facing, motion-sensor lighting to limit light pollution, referencing nearby Browns Canyon National Monument's recent Dark Sky certification and ongoing efforts in Salida and Leadville toward the same designation. Bike parking and a covered bus stop for future shuttle service also came up in that feedback. The official amenities list for the approved project includes bicycle parking and EV charging infrastructure, both of which track with what residents had asked for, even if no single comment can be credited with the outcome.

What Changes Over the Next Year

For anyone driving Highway 24 through town, the visible changes will start with construction activity on the north end near Crossman Avenue, followed by work on the new signal at Farwell Street as that intersection gets built out. The existing store keeps running in its current spot throughout, so there's no gap in grocery access during the build. The town has said residents can follow project updates directly through My-BV.com, which has hosted site plans, renderings, and a running comment thread since the proposal was first floated.

The completion target is the end of summer 2027, just under a year out. Whether that holds will depend on how the next several months of site work go, but as of this fall, dirt is moving and the infrastructure agreement that governs how it gets built is already signed.

The next milestone worth watching isn't another vote on subsidies. It's whether that sidewalk gap in front of Latinos restaurant closes on schedule, and whether the Farwell Street signal goes in before or after the store opens its doors.

If you're watching how this corner of town is changing and want a straight read on what it means for property near the Highway 24 corridor, The Kersting Team at 8z Real Estate keeps track of projects like this one as they move from paperwork to pavement. Work With Julie if you'd like that context the next time you're weighing a move in Buena Vista.