Berthoud Fall Events Downtown: Your October 2026 Guide

The fast food and fuel cluster on Grand Market Avenue was built for errands on the way to I-25, and three of its regular stops have been closed since mid-August. In the same weeks, Berthoud Main Street put together an October built around walking Mountain Avenue, Massachusetts Avenue and Third Street. For about the next six weeks, downtown is the part of Berthoud that is set up for a quick bite.

That covers October. The months after it fit the same pattern. The next new restaurant space in town sits in a building from 1901. The new commercial lots on the edges of town are years away, and they depend on decisions from the Colorado Department of Transportation.

What the town has said about Grand Market Avenue

The Loveland Reporter-Herald reported that fire and building officials ordered the Taco Bell and Maverik in the Heron Lakes development evacuated in August. Officials found structural problems and signs of soil and foundation movement at both properties, and the McDonald's next door had already closed on its own for similar problems.

Berthoud Fire Marshal Sarah Winter told the paper that both buildings had emergency exits that no longer worked properly. "People have to be able to get out when they are supposed to get out," she said. The same article said the cause of the movement was still unclear. A town spokesperson said finding the cause would require information from the businesses and their engineers.

The newest official status we could find is the Town Administrator's September 14, 2026 leadership memo to the Board of Trustees. It says town staff, SAFEBuilt and the Berthoud Fire Protection District are still monitoring the properties at Grand Market Avenue and North Berthoud Parkway.

We found no public update newer than that memo. As of mid-September, the town had not reported that Taco Bell or Maverik had reopened. Of the three, only Maverik had a stated goal of reopening. The memo also said the town had sent a letter to Starbucks. It did not say the Starbucks was closed.

The same memo had a smaller note for anyone who waits at the light on the way out of town. CDOT told town staff it is installing a new detection system at the Mountain Avenue and Berthoud Parkway intersection, which should shorten vehicle wait times.

The scarecrow map works as a downtown walking route

Berthoud Main Street's Scarecrow Contest runs October 17 through 31. Starting the 17th, a printed and online Scarecrow Map shows the participating locations around town. Public voting for the 2026 People's Choice winner runs October 17 to 30, and the winner is announced October 31. Entry was free and open to downtown businesses and organizations that signed up by October 1. That rule is why the map stays almost entirely in the historic core.

If you think of the map as a route, it pairs places to stop and eat with places to browse. The official map lists these food and drink stops:

• Osito's, 405 5th St.
• RISE Artisan Bread, 403 5th St.
• Mary's Mountain Cookies, 330 Mountain Ave.
• B sweet cupcakes, 357 B Mountain Ave.
• City Star Brewing, 321 Mountain Ave.
• Brick Oven Pizza, 269 Mountain Ave.

Osito's and RISE sit next to each other on Fifth Street. RISE Artisan Bread Bakery & Café has been in Berthoud since 2016 and offers dine-in, takeout and delivery, according to a May 2026 Berthoud Weekly Surveyor profile. Most of the other food stops sit along about three blocks of Mountain Avenue.

The browsing stops spread across the same grid:

1. Mountain Avenue: Marley & Moose at 520, SIX Barbershop at 428, Wishful Living at 321, House of Rossi Boutique at 311, and I know a guy comics at 265.
2. Massachusetts Avenue: Cobblestone Corner at 349, Arcana House at 347, Berthoud Dance Company at 345, and Wildfire Community Arts Center at 425.
3. Third Street: Berthoud Vintage at 600, The Rancher's Wife Co. at 604, Mat + Motion at 435, and the Berthoud post office at 425.
4. A few blocks out: Berthoud Drug & Boutique at 1241 Lake Ave., Berthoud Pet Supply at 115 Turner Ave., Gemma's K9 Training at 239 Welch Ave., and Berthoud Veterinary Health Care at 406 10th St.

One entry on the map isn't a storefront. Berthoud Local has a scarecrow at the Community Garden in Pioneer Park. The map lists the participants and where they are. It doesn't list business hours, so check before you plan a stop around a particular shop.

Trick or Treat Street brings the rest of town downtown

The same route turns into a single event on Saturday, October 24. Berthoud Main Street's Trick or Treat Street runs downtown from 3 to 5 p.m. Businesses outside downtown can take part too. Main Street invites them to set up in Fickel Park, so for those two hours businesses from the rest of town have a place downtown as well.

Main Street's page invites businesses to join but doesn't publish a list of participants. The scarecrow map is the closest guide to which storefronts are taking part in fall events this year. Voting is still open on the 24th, so if you pick up candy downtown that afternoon, you can cast a scarecrow vote along the way.

If you came for Oktoberfest at Town Park, that was October 3. The scarecrow weeks and Trick or Treat Street are what's left on the fall calendar.

The next downtown restaurant will be in a building from 1901

The most closely watched empty space downtown is the ground floor of 335 Mountain Ave., which used to be Bradford's Grub and Grog. The Berthoud Weekly Surveyor reported in August that Asher Architects + Engineers, a Berthoud firm founded in 2020, bought the building in May 2026. The firm moved its headquarters to the second floor in June and is looking for a restaurant tenant for the first floor.

The building is the historic Odd Fellows building. It went up in 1901 as a one-story brick commercial building, and by November of that year a second floor had been added as a meeting place for the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. The front was extended in 1917 to line up with its neighbors. Founder David Stranathan told the Surveyor the firm saw "an opportunity not only to establish our office there, but also to help preserve and revitalize a building that has played a significant role in the community for well over a century."

Asher Architects is taking restaurant proposals through the end of the year and plans to choose a tenant in early 2027, the Surveyor reported. So 335 Mountain Ave. will likely stay empty through this holiday season, and the new restaurant will come to a downtown that already has its fall events running.

Changes at the edges of town will take years

Downtown can change one storefront at a time. The newer parts of Berthoud depend on highway decisions and long development timelines.

Take Legacy Park, the roughly 320-acre development once known as the Ludlow project. Trustees unanimously approved its development agreement on September 8, the Surveyor reported. The project allows up to 1,800 homes built in phases. The first final plat creates 453 residential lots and roughly 10 commercial mixed-use lots. The developer asked for 15 years of vested rights. Its attorney told trustees that the market can't absorb all the homes at once, so the project has to be built in phases.

Those commercial lots depend on the road. Legacy Park is expected to get a connection from Spartan Avenue to U.S. Highway 287, but CDOT has to give final approval. Town Administrator Chris Kirk explained the problem to trustees. CDOT is less likely to allow a signal in an area that isn't urbanized, and the area is unlikely to urbanize without a signal. He recommended a limited intersection for now and said the town would keep pushing for a signal as the area grows.

Two downtown-adjacent projects have their own dates:

• Mountain Avenue and Ninth Street crossing. CDOT traffic engineer Katrina Kloberdanz presented plans for bulb-outs, two-foot-wide crossbars, yield lines and flashing lights. Pedestrians would cross one lane of traffic instead of two. The plan is to advertise the project in March, with construction starting in summer 2027, though she said timelines could shift so the work happens while school is out.
• Loveland–Berthoud regional trail. Trustees supported a proposed four-mile trail running from Loveland's trail system near the Big Thompson River, through Eagle Vista Natural Area and the Duncan Conservation Easement, to County Road 14. Loveland open lands and trails manager Marilyn Hilgenberg said it would link Berthoud to more than 100 miles of regional trails. Final design is expected in 2027 and construction in 2028 to 2029. Loveland asked Berthoud for roughly $250,000, which would be set aside in the 2027 budget.

Mayor pro tem Soricelli-Albrecht told the board she had recently heard from a resident who bikes from Berthoud to Loveland for work and has no safe route. "Closing that gap is a priority," she said.

On the calendar, that leaves this order. The scarecrow map goes up October 17, Trick or Treat Street is October 24, and the winner is named October 31. A restaurant tenant for the Odd Fellows building could be chosen in early 2027, and work on the Ninth Street crossing could start in summer 2027.

At Rachel Vesta, we follow Berthoud's board memos and storefront changes the same way we follow the market, because both affect daily life here. If you're wondering how changes like Legacy Park or the next downtown tenant might shape your own plans, book a consultation and we'll go through it with you.