During a recent weekday lunch rush at The Chalet restaurant in Wheat Ridge, there was little that resembled a rush.
Around high noon on that day in early December, three or four tables were occupied, seating fewer than a dozen people total. A waitress was more engaged with sweeping the floor than bringing out plates of chicken-fried chicken or turkey melts to customers.
Just around the corner on Wadsworth Boulevard, a parade of orange barrels marked a work zone that had just — with rearranged traffic patterns and business access cut-offs as crews laid new lanes and engineered burly intersections designed to shorten drivers’ time spent making turns.
“It’s really messed up our business. It’s jacked us up,” said Tracy Freeland, a server at the venerable greasy spoon near the intersection of Wadsworth and West 38th Avenue, where she said volume was down by half compared to before construction. Her largely older clientele has been regularly bewildered by the ever-changing detours.
“All of these people have been coming for years — when is it going to end?”
The easing of the notorious chokepoint on metro Denver’s west side is finally arriving, Wheat Ridge officials say.
“For drivers and commuters, they’re going to see construction cones gone in January,” said Amanda Harrison, a city spokeswoman, before the holidays. “These improvements are going to help traffic tremendously.”
The 1.5-mile stretch of Wadsworth — from West 35th Avenue to Interstate 70 — that has gotten the jackhammer treatment for the past four years carries an average daily traffic volume of 40,000 to 44,000 vehicles, according to .
The work has added one new lane to Wadsworth in each direction (for a total of six across the roadway) and installed at 38th and 44th avenues.
The setup is designed to ease left turns and keep traffic from stacking up and spilling over into through lanes. The movements are unusual, with left-turning drivers directed ahead of the major intersection into a cross-over lane that takes them into a separated curb lane on the far left side of the road. Once they reach the intersection, the left-turn drivers queued off to the side can turn while through traffic travels through the main intersection.
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The intersections, which the says can decrease delays by 50% to 80% over conventional turns, opened in December. Metro drivers got a peek at how the relatively new traffic designs work when several opened on Sante Fe Boulevard in Douglas County earlier this year.
But the pain waiting for the project’s completion has been excruciating for businesses along this stretch of Wadsworth, where lanes were often closed and access to shops and restaurants on the opposite side of the highway was often limited or altogether rerouted.
Construction on the $85 million project began in November 2021.
“This business has suffered majorly,” said Lori Conrad, the manager at Hickory Baked Hams, which has been selling high-end smoked meats, like ham and turkey, at 3925 Wadsworth Blvd. since 1975. “If you didn’t have the holidays, it would be unbearable.”
City’s largest-ever infrastructure project
While Wadsworth is a state highway, Wheat Ridge took the lead on overhauling the arterial.
Voters nearly 10 years ago approved a half-cent sales tax measure to pay for four infrastructure projects in Wheat Ridge, including the Wadsworth improvements. Project planning, however, with the adoption of a corridor plan in 2009 and environmental studies completed a few years later.
Money also came from the Federal Highway Administration, CDOT and the Denver Regional Council of Governments.
“It’s the largest infrastructure project the city has ever undertaken,” Harrison said. “We really need investment in this stretch — it hasn’t been worked on since the 1950s.”
Much of the work that has been completed since 2021 includes elements the public will never see, like the laying of telecommunication lines, utilities and sewer systems that largely exist underground. Above ground, the project will feature more than three miles of sidewalks and trails and the planting of 30,000 new trees and shrubs.
More than 30,000 tons of asphalt from the old roadbed were recycled to build the new one, the city says.
The city actually intended to finish the overhaul a couple of years ago, but in 2023, Wheat Ridge came into more money that enabled it to expand the scope. The additional $16 million — most from its own budget and $4 million from the federal government — covered the cost of work at the southern end of the project, including construction of the continuous-flow intersection at 38th Avenue.
That made the debut of 3rd Shot Pickleball in January 2024 a tricky move for Max Ireland, a co-owner of the indoor pickleball chain that opened at the southwest corner of Wadsworth and 38th. The business moved into a building abandoned by Lucky’s Market, a short-lived grocery store.
“The No. 1 small talk at 3rd Shot was ‘What’s the weather doing?’ The No. 2 small talk was ‘What’s going on with Wadsworth?’ ” Ireland said. “We were not anticipating it could be the nightmare it became.”
For a period, only drivers in southbound traffic could easily pull into his parking lot, he said. Traffic going the other way had to follow a convoluted detour before doubling back to his business.
Harrison said the city knew businesses were suffering and made efforts to provide support. , the city’s urban renewal authority, put up $100,000 in grants for restaurants and shops in the corridor to tap. The Wadsworth Business Recovery Grant Program will soon get off the ground, pledging $75,000 to help impacted businesses market themselves, improve their storefronts and add exterior signage.
And the city called “What’s Up Wheat Ridge” to post updates on progress.
“We tried our best to stay in constant communication with them,” Harrison added.
While a couple of businesses closed, Harrison pointed out that 10 have opened during construction — including a Starbucks, a Dutch Bros Coffee, Taco Rico and a Jet’s Pizza location.
“We still have 45,000 vehicles traveling up and down this road every day — these businesses see the future on this investment,” she said.
‘We’re just excited for it to be done’
Harrison said crews ran into some unanticipated problems with utility work, but the city insists that the Wadsworth project overall stayed on schedule, even when including the second phase of funding for the southern portion.
CDOT spokesman Matt Inzeo referred timeline questions to Wheat Ridge but said “this was a relatively large, complex job on a high-traffic corridor.” Four-year durations on road construction projects, he said, “happen regularly.”
Ireland, 3rd Shot Pickleball’s owner, said he was frustrated during the last couple years. He noticed days when there seemed to be no work being done outside his window, yet lanes were closed.
“If you don’t have people out there on the job, it’s not going to get done,” he said.
But now that the end was truly in sight, Ireland was excited about the business potential for the revamped corridor.
“Once it’s done, we should see the return of all the traffic,” he said. “We’re just excited for it to be done.”
Back at The Chalet, Sharon Rudden never let all the construction keep her from making her regular visits to the restaurant. While recently devouring a Reuben sandwich for lunch, the north Denver resident said she was nevertheless elated that the sinuous struggle to get to her “stomping ground” was finally straightening out.
“I have PTSD from it,” she said.
