Target Opens at Firestone City Centre: Barefoot Lakes' New Front-Door Retail
The new Firestone Target opened its doors this weekend, and for anyone living at Barefoot Lakes or Barefoot Village, the everyday errand run just got a lot shorter.
By Laura Owen
The wait is over. The new Target at Firestone City Centre opened on Saturday, July 26, and if you live at Barefoot Lakes or Barefoot Village, this is one of those quality-of-life changes you feel almost immediately. A full-size Target with groceries, a pharmacy, and a coffee counter is now a few minutes from your driveway instead of a trip down I-25.
I've lived and worked in Carbon Valley long enough to remember when a Target run meant driving to Longmont or Thornton. For families choosing Barefoot right now, the shift matters. So here's a plain look at what actually opened, what's around it, and what it means for daily life close to home.
What opened at 4358 City Centre Road
The new store is about 128,000 square feet, which puts it in Target's larger format. That size is what lets it carry a real grocery section alongside the usual general merchandise, so this is a place you can do a genuine weekly shop, not just grab a household item or two.
Inside, you can expect the features Target has been building into its newer stores:
A food-forward grocery area with fresh produce, meat, and dairy
A CVS Pharmacy for prescriptions and everyday health items
A Starbucks café near the front
Drive Up and Order Pickup for online orders you'd rather not walk in for
The store keeps standard Target hours, opening early and staying open into the evening. If you're planning a first visit during opening week, it's worth checking the Target app for the exact schedule, since a brand-new location sometimes adjusts hours in its first few weeks.
The opening also brought roughly 200 jobs to Firestone, which is part of why the town pursued this project in the first place. A store this size is a local employer, not just a place to shop.
How close is it to Barefoot, really
Close. Barefoot sits off I-25 at Exit 240, and Firestone City Centre is right in the same stretch of town. For most Barefoot Lakes and Barefoot Village residents, you're looking at a short drive, not a highway commitment. That's the part that changes behavior. When a store is genuinely on the way home, you stop planning around it. You just go.
For the families I talk with who are weighing a move to Barefoot, this is exactly the kind of detail that's hard to picture from a listing photo but shapes daily life. New construction communities often open before the retail catches up. Barefoot is now on the other side of that curve.
Target is the anchor, not the whole story
Firestone City Centre is a 140-acre mixed-use development, and Target is the newest anchor rather than the last piece. The larger center already carries more than 600,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space, with a mix that includes The Home Depot, American Furniture Warehouse, Chick-fil-A, Panda Express, Anytime Fitness, and Chuck & Don's, among others.
Put that together and you get a practical picture: hardware and home projects, a few quick-meal options, a gym, and now a grocery-carrying Target, all clustered in one place minutes from Barefoot. There's also a residential piece to the development, Firestone Junction, a roughly 300-unit multifamily community, which tells you the town is planning City Centre as a real hub and not just a strip of stores.
What this means for everyday errands close to home
Most of the value here is quiet and cumulative. A forgotten birthday gift, a prescription refill, a Sunday grocery run, a last-minute school supply list in August. Those small trips are where a nearby Target actually earns its place in your week. For Barefoot households juggling work, kids, and the drive patterns of Carbon Valley, cutting fifteen or twenty minutes off each of those runs adds up fast.
It's also a reasonable signal about where Firestone is headed. Retail follows rooftops, and the fact that a national anchor chose this location says the area's growth is being taken seriously by more than just homebuilders. I'd stop short of reading it as anything about home values, that's not a claim I make, but as a lifestyle convenience for people already living here or considering it, it's an easy win.
If you're new to the area or still deciding whether Barefoot fits your life, the honest advice is to go drive it yourself. Time the trip from the model homes to City Centre during a weekday. See how it feels. That kind of real-world test tells you more than any map.
A grocery-carrying Target a few minutes from home won't show up in a brochure, but it's the sort of everyday convenience that makes a growing community feel settled.
A local's take
I've watched Firestone grow for years, and openings like this are a good reminder of why people are choosing Carbon Valley in the first place: room to breathe, newer homes, and services steadily catching up to the population. If you're weighing a move to Barefoot Lakes or Barefoot Village and want an honest read on what daily life here actually looks like, from commute times to what's still being built, I'm always happy to talk it through. No pressure, just straight answers from someone who lives here.
Laura Owen, The Owen Group at RE/MAX Momentum. Licensed in Colorado.