Evergreen – Liz Cohen is a long-distance runner, but when she takes her three young children to Buchanan Park Recreation Center, she drives them less than one-quarter mile to get there.
She recalled trying to herd her children – ages 8, 6 and 4 – across bustling Bergen Parkway recently. The youngest child threw a tantrum as cars whizzed past the family huddled on the narrow shoulder.
“It was a horrifying experience,” said Cohen, an organizer in a community effort to raise $900,000 for a 2-mile concrete trail in this unincorporated but growing community.
As the area has grown, developers scrimped on trails, and road builders provided little in the way of shoulders.
In October, Bergen Meadow Elementary School principal Peggy Miller sent a letter to parents forbidding them to let their children walk home from school along the busy roads. More than 100 cars crowd the school’s parking lot each afternoon, Miller said.
This month, after a student was hit by a car and slightly hurt near the school, she sent a letter “pleading” that they be more careful.
“My first thought after the accident was maybe the trail will go in a little faster,” Miller said.
Miller’s concerns for the safety of the community’s 1,402 students at three schools near the highway led to the formation of North Evergreen Activity Trails, or NEAT, in 2002.
The group is trying to provide what the community’s developers have not over the past two decades: smart growth that allows residents in about 1,100 homes to walk to schools, shopping and recreation.
“It’s after the fact,” said NEAT treasurer Don Bennett. “If developers tried to build this community today, they would have to carve out trails in a master plan. They didn’t do that here.”
Glenn Slanec, NEAT’s president, said that when crews begin pouring concrete this summer, the community will have proved it can pull together.
“Nobody thought this would ever happen,” he said, noting the high cost and layers of bureaucracy. “It was too unique; it was setting a precedent.”
The plan took hold when the Jefferson County Commission put up the first $100,000 and offered to take ownership of the trail when it was completed.
“After that, the conversations changed from reasons why we couldn’t do this, to ‘Why can’t we?’ to ‘How we can’ to ‘How we will,”‘ Bennett said.
Grants, donations and individual fundraisers will bring in the rest of the cash needed for the project. Landowners along the route are donating rights of way.
NEAT has stitched together a coalition of county government, firefighters and law enforcement, the school district, the recreation center, art society, garden club, retirees, working families and homeowners associations.
In the process, NEAT also has pulled together a community spirit.
“This is really an example of how local residents and government can work together,” Slanec said. “And by doing it for our schools and our children, it gives us a great future.”
Staff writer Joey Bunch can be reached at 303-820-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com.
