Last week, local officials celebrated the grand opening of a walking bridge connecting parts of the where it passes through the Dove Valley area of Arapahoe County.
The $287,000 bridge project is part of a larger spearheaded by the , aimed at improving pedestrian and cycling access to and throughout Dove Valley Regional Park and surrounding areas east of Centennial Airport.
The more than 70-foot long, prefabricated bridge was trucked in from Minnesota in June. It spans a drainage way that previous bisected the Happy Canyon Trail south of Jordan Road and north of Chambers Road. With it in place, trails now run continuously between Cherry Creek Reservoir in the north and the Cherokee Trail south of E-470.
“Unlike bridges that sometimes get built to nowhere this bridge does go somewhere. It connects neighborhoods and connecting neighborhoods is part of what the Dove Valley Metro District, Arapahoe County, the and the City of Centennial are all about,” Greg Armstrong, president of Dove Valley metro district, said at last week’s ribbon cutting event, thanking the districtap trails initiative partners.
A substantial portion of the funding for the bridge was provided through the grant program. Shannon Carter, the county’s open spaces and intergovernmental relations director, was on hand to help Armstrong wield the giant scissors that cut the ribbon on the bridge. Carter said the county had previously identified the Dove Valley area as one in which there were significant gaps in the county’s very popular trails network.
“We were very pleased to receive an application for this bridge,” Carter said at the event. “The result is not only of the bridge but also 1,000 feet of additional trail. We were certainly pleased to see that happen.”
As part of this year’s work on the local trails network, crews also built a connecting trail along Broncos Parkway east to South Jordan Road. The segments runs along the north side of a property the county has identified for the future expansion of Dove Valley Regional Park.
Kevin Crehan, a landscape architect with Solara Designs who is leading the trails initiative on behalf of the metro district, said a grant application has already been submitted for future trail segments and further work could take place in 2017.