Who cares that the feds just spent $4.6 million on a pair of new rest stops flanking Interstate 25 north of Pueblo?
Christ-Eve Calzadillaz, 56, cares, and so do her grandchildren Diego Chacon, 7, and Tricia Chacon, 14, and her cousin Geri Griego, 50.
“We were crossing our legs,” Griego said, leaning into a bench at the South Piñon Rest Stop. They’d pulled in on their way home to Pueblo from an appointment at Children’s Hospital in Denver.
“It didn’t help that we stopped at Sonic in Colorado Springs and drank a bucket of tea,” she said.
Even a few miles can be the longest ride in the world when you really have to go.
But the gleaming configuration of steel and stacked sandstone-clad angles that replaced a couple of beat-up, circa-1960s, two-stall cinderblock washrooms is more than a place to stop and do your business.
Designers added picnic structures and barbecue grills, and doubled the parking. They carved out places for kids to blow off some pent-up energy. They fought for more grass and more toilets, and used energy-efficient architecture and interior finishes more at home in an urban loft than a public bathroom.
The idea, says Colorado Department of Transportation spokesman Bob Wilson, was to make the desertlike outpost an appealing place to pull off the highway – because a tired driver is a dangerous driver.
“The ultimate goal is to enhance safety,” he said. “If someone is too tired from sitting in the car too long, a rest stop is a good place to stretch their legs, maybe have a little picnic or rest a little.”
Since 1996, the U.S. Department of Transportation steadily has been chipping away at Colorado’s aging rest-stop system. By the time the Poudre pull-off at the edge of Fort Collins is
rebuilt next year, about $36.1 million will have been poured into 15 Colorado pull-offs, most of which were constructed when the interstate highway system punched through the state in the 1960s.
The work has corrected conflicts between autos and long-haul trucks, fixed failing septic systems, improved handicap accessibility and spiffed up the surroundings to make necessary stops more pleasant.
Wilson & Co. architect Tim Rugg said he chose angular shapes for the mirror-image North and South Piñon Rest Stops to remind travelers of the mountains as they drive through the foothills between Pueblo and Colorado Springs.
Their metal-and-stone skin draws from a palette set by the eclectic architecture of the area.
“When you drive through that part of the country, you see a variety of materials and styles, but no overriding thing,” Rugg said. “We kind of took all the different materials you could see in the area and combined them.”
Visitors enter both rest-stop buildings through curvy, north-
facing glass vestibules. North, because that keeps the building without air conditioning from getting too hot in the summer. Curvy, because it’s a welcoming shape. “It’s meant to collect people and invite them in,” Rugg said.
Behind the high wall of glass are a drinking fountain and smooth, colored-concrete floors that lead into family, men’s and women’s restrooms. The washrooms are brightened by high windows that collect light and bounce it off the angled bright white ceiling and down into the stalls.
The rest-stop rebuild also boosted the number of toilets to six from two per gender.
They were needed. The Piñon rest stops are among the most highly used in the state, especially during the summer tourist season and the Colorado State Fair in late August, Rugg said.
A parched patch of grass has been replaced with a long arc of sod separating the parking from the picnicking.
Planners at first resisted the idea of tripling the amount of grass, but Rugg persisted.
He’d seen the tiny patches of grass at other rest stops filled with motorcyclists sprawled out shoulder-to-shoulder. “It was like the beach.”
Once the grass filled up, weary bikers would move onto the picnic tables. “We thought it just made sense to add more turf than have them clog up the picnic structures,” he said.
The grass is anchored by small climbing boulders surrounded by a sea of pea gravel. Beyond a row of trees protecting the picnic structures, a strip recently was reseeded to create an area for dog walking. “That’s one of those things people insist upon,” Wilson says.
Maps and historical markers soon will be put back up. Pop machines are coming, too. In the end, it all will add up to most everything a tired traveler might need.
While young Diego fooled around in the grass, Griego and Calzadillaz settled onto their bench and looked out over the plains rolling east.
“The other one was old and outdated. We missed it when it was closed, but now it makes you want to stop and rest,”
Griego said, rubbing an arm made sore by a long game of Slug Bug.
“I’m the driver. I got hit a lot.”
Staff writer Dana Coffield can be reached at 303-820-1954 or dcoffield@denverpost.com
