On a recent Friday evening, the patio at The Groove filled in the way these things happen slowly and then all at once. A DJ set up near the mural. Kids ran the perimeter of the fire pits. By 6 p.m. the crowd had cleared a hundred people, all drawn by a free concert series that didn't exist two months ago. If you'd told a Lone Tree resident five years ago that a Friday night worth showing up for would happen on the east side of I-25, they'd have asked what was supposed to be built there.
That's the part worth sitting with. RidgeGate has been growing for close to two decades, but almost everything anyone points to when they say the name, Sky Ridge, Charles Schwab, the Arts Center, sits on one side of the highway. The other side has been a master plan with a highway exit attached to it. This summer, for the first time, that changed. Not because the east side finished anything. Because one café opened, and it turned out to be enough.
A Highway With Two Different Decades
RidgeGate covers about 3,500 acres split roughly in half by the interstate, and the two halves are not at the same point in their story. The west side, about 1,500 acres, is close to fully built. It's home to HCA HealthONE Sky Ridge, Charles Schwab, Kiewit, the Lone Tree Arts Center, the Lone Tree Recreation Center, the Lone Tree branch of Douglas County Libraries, and Bluffs Regional Park. Only around 250 acres of vacant land remain there, zoned for rural residential use, according to the city's own RidgeGate planning documents.
The east side is a different animal. About 2,000 acres, and most of it is still raw ground: the RidgeGate Parkway and Lone Tree City Center transit stations, Schweiger Ranch, the Happy Canyon Creek and Badger Gulch natural corridors, and a long list of planned neighborhoods that mostly exist on paper so far.
Here's the number that puts it in perspective. RidgeGate is currently home to roughly 5,000 residents. At full buildout, the city expects 30,000 residents and 50,000 jobs. That means the district is only about one-sixth of the way to its final population, and nearly all of that sixth has settled on the side of the highway that's been open the longest. The east side isn't behind schedule. It's just now getting its first residents, its first café, and its first sense of what daily life there will actually feel like.
| Already built (west of I-25) | Still arriving (east of I-25) |
|---|---|
| Sky Ridge Medical Center, Charles Schwab, Kiewit | Lyric at RidgeGate, roughly 350 of a planned 1,900 homes sold |
| Lone Tree Arts Center, Rec Center, library branch | The Groove café and amenity hub, open now |
| Bluffs Regional Park | High Note Regional Park, targeting a 2027 opening |
| Only ~250 acres of vacant land left | Lone Tree Village and King Soopers Marketplace, targeting 2027 |
| New elementary school near Adage Road, targeting the 2027-28 school year |
The Café That Finally Proves the East Side Is Real
The Groove sits at 10930 Lyric Street, inside Lyric at RidgeGate, the Shea Homes community that holds the distinction of being the first large-scale residential development built east of I-25. The grand opening on June 6 pulled in a crowd of around 200, mostly Lyric residents, for a morning of live music, model home tours, and giveaways. Since then it's become something more useful than a one-day event: a Friday Night Live series that runs 5 to 8 p.m. every week, free, with a rotating lineup of local musicians and crowds that regularly clear a hundred people.
The café and full bar are open to the public even though the pool and fitness amenities behind them are reserved for residents, which matters if you live nearby but not inside Lyric's gates. Coffee runs during the day, the bar takes over by evening, and the centerpiece is a 60-foot mural by Magik Studios, done in more than 40 colors, that carries the same rhythm-and-movement theme from the outdoor plaza into the dining room. BlueStar Resort & Golf, the firm Shea Homes brought in to run the community's amenities, manages the space day to day.
Lyric itself is part of a larger plan the city calls the Southwest Village, which is expected to include more than 1,800 homes, over 200 acres of open space and trails, a new elementary school, and what will be Lone Tree's first regional park. Three neighborhood parks inside Lyric are already named: Lyric, Bebop, and Poet. The city eased its wildfire restrictions from Stage 2 back to Stage 1 on August 25, so the creekside trails through Happy Canyon and Badger Gulch are open again for anyone walking off dinner from The Groove.
What's Still Just a Sign on a Fence
Everything else on the east side is closer to a promise than a place. That's not a criticism. It's just useful to know which parts of RidgeGate's east side you can walk into this month and which ones you'll be waiting on.
- High Note Regional Park. An 80-acre park that broke ground in April 2026, planned with two lit athletic fields, a playground, a dog park, a food-truck area, and a 200-seat beer garden. The target opening is 2027.
- Lone Tree Village and King Soopers Marketplace. A $42 million, 158,000-square-foot shopping center at RidgeGate Parkway and Rhapsody Road, anchored by a 123,000-square-foot King Soopers Marketplace with a Starbucks, Murray's Cheese, and sushi counter built in. Regency Centers broke ground in April 2026, and the company's own announcement puts store openings in 2027, so treat any earlier date you hear as optimistic rather than confirmed.
- A new elementary school. Groundbreaking happened in February 2026 near Adage Road and Lyric Street, with a target of opening for the 2027-28 school year.
- The Central Village Couplet District. Sandwiched between the eastbound and westbound lanes of RidgeGate Parkway, this stretch is planned for market-rate apartments, income-restricted senior housing, and a neighborhood park, all currently under construction.
Elsewhere on the east side, the Forte affordable senior community has already opened, which is one more sign that people are living there now, not just building there. A new Justice Center is on the drawing board as well, though it's early enough that there's not much to report beyond the fact that it's planned.
King Soopers president Chris Albi framed the grocery project as investing in the future of this community when the company broke ground this spring. That's the right way to read most of what's listed above. None of it changes daily life yet. All of it changes what daily life on this side of the highway looks like in two years.
The West Side Isn't Finished Either
It would be easy to treat the west side of RidgeGate as the finished half and the east side as the story, but the Lone Tree Arts Center just proved that's not quite right. The venue opens its 15th anniversary season on Sunday, September 12, with Georgia on My Mind: Celebrating the Music of Ray Charles, featuring Take 6, Nnenna Freelon, Clint Holmes, and Tom Scott. An extended run of Always... Patsy Cline follows starting October 8, with Amadeus scheduled for April.
"A celebration of everything Lone Tree Arts Center has become," is how executive director Leigh Chandler described the new season.
The point isn't that the west side has nothing left to build. It's that growth there now shows up in programming rather than cranes, because there's only about 250 acres of vacant land left to build on. The east side is still pouring foundations. The west side is fifteen years past that stage and is spending its energy on what to put inside the buildings that are already standing.
What This Means If You Live Here
If you live west of the highway, September gives you a reason to book Lone Tree Arts Center tickets before the good seats go. If you live east of it, or you're weighing whether to, the honest read is that one part of RidgeGate's next chapter is already open for business and the rest of it is dated somewhere between now and the 2027-28 school year. That gap between what's proven and what's promised is worth tracking closely if you're thinking about how this stretch of Lone Tree will look in two years rather than just this Friday.
Whichever side of I-25 you call home, understanding which projects have concrete poured and which are still signs on a fence is useful information, whether you're planning a Friday night out or thinking ahead about how RidgeGate's build-out might shape property values down the road. If you'd like a local, no-pressure read on what any of this could mean for your own home or your next move in Lone Tree, Dave Todd is happy to help. Request a Free Valuation & Consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
