The Well, a downtown Colorado Springs food hall that was built with the mission of helping up-and-coming restaurateurs establish a foothold in the local food scene, is closing its doors.

Eatery officials made the announcement on social media platforms Tuesday.

“It is with a heavy heart that we want to let you know that this will be our final week open,” the food hall stated. “The Well will be officially closing its doors and having our last days of service at the end of the week.”

The food hall shared its building with The Philanthropy Collective, a group of funders and investors that includes the Bloom Foundation, the Sachs Foundation and Gazette Charities. The vision, shared by the investors and restaurateurs, was to have a “collaborative workspace” on one side of the building and a “community engagement hub” on the other, said Susan Pattee of the Bloom Foundation.

“It’s a great concept, and we believe in it,” she said. “It just wasn’t working out financially.”

Officials believe that The Well, at 315 E. Pikes Peak Ave., on the corner of Weber Street, was a couple of years ahead of its time.

“We’re located a little far away from the main drag of downtown Colorado Springs,” Pattee said. “We think this is going to be a really vibrant part of downtown. We were just a little early.”

Formosa Bites, Gift Horse Bar and Cafe, La’au’s Taco Shop, Giddy Up and Go and Weber Street Kitchen are among the small-business food vendors supported by the collective.

The food hall’s vision — to cultivate a “vibrant and diverse local food ecosystem” by supporting emerging business owners — is a solid one, and the long-term hope is that The Well will return in some form down the road, officials said.

“There’s nothing saying this can’t come back in a different version,” said consulting partner Justin Anderson. “The Well, or the iteration of it that it is now, might be going away, but we’re hoping it’s not a permanent thing.”

“We’re hoping that this is more of a pause while we try to work some things out,” Pattee said. “We’re looking at all kinds of possibilities. Ideally, we’d like a restaurant group to come in with the same passion we have for the original concept.”

Breakfast and lunch at the cafe, with hours of 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, appeared to be busy Tuesday, just hours after the announcement, and morale among the staff was “actually pretty upbeat,” Anderson said.

“This was a hard decision, and it was not taken lightly by our investment group,” Anderson said. “We realize now that this was not the easiest location. But I think we’ve done the best we possibly could.”

As messages of sympathy poured in on social media, Munchies 719, an eatery on Tejon Street downtown, chimed in.

“Lots of restaurants downtown are not busy enough,” the restaurant posted Tuesday on Facebook.

The Well is not the only food hall to suffer from a lack of customer volume in recent years. The Tejon Eatery & Bar closed its doors in October 2022, just over a year after its July 2021 opening. The two-story food court reopened, under the name Avenue 19, last September.

Anderson said he has “zero regrets” about investing in The Well.

“We really tried hard to elevate what service should be,” he said. “I feel very secure and happy in what we’ve done from a hospitality direction.”

The eatery’s official closing date will be Friday, but Anderson hopes he they can get vendors to agree to a Saturday send-off.

“I know that every staff member here is going to miss the place,” he said. “It’s ending earlier than we would have liked, but I think this has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.”