Estes Park Mayor Gary Hall took credit for ordering up a pitch perfect fall day for the ribbon cutting ceremony to mark the completion of the Downtown Estes Loop Project.
The temperature was about 72 degrees, the sky was brilliant blue, and a backdrop of golden aspen trees shimmered in the breeze.
Construction workers in yellow vests and hard hats, town dignitaries, invited community partners, and residents of the Estes Valley gathered along the Big Thompson River just south of the Rockwell bridge for speeches that recounted the many stages of the project and thanked the hundreds of people who were involved over an 11-year period in what was both a visionary and controversial infrastructure endeavor.
After the mayor welcomed everyone, Greg Muhonen, public works director for the Town of Estes Park, read prepared remarks that included litanies of names of people who had served as mayors, trustees, town administrators, engineers, contractors, project managers, along with individuals from the Town’s public works departments, state and federal highway departments, environmental consultants, and Rocky Mountain National Park.
“This has been a very long, arduous, complex, expensive journey, and monumental project. My goal this afternoon is to help all of us understand the magnitude of a Herculean effort expended by many to bring us to this point of substantial completion,” said Muhonen who likened the decade long effort of building the loop to “the grueling demands of a 4×400 or 4×800 relay race.”
Muhonen said, “Consider these parallels in track and specifically in a relay. No individual can win a relay race by themselves. Success is not achieved unless every team member fulfills their assignment. Personal perseverance through pain and hardship, along with trust and collaboration with your teammates are crucial.”
In 2014, Muhonen was hired by Town Trustee Frank Lancaster, who at the time was the town’s administrator. Before Muhonen came on board, the Town had engaged in at least six different studies between 2003 to 2013 in an effort to find solutions to two challenges that plagued Estes Park, Muhonen said, a shortage of parking and severe traffic congestion that caused delays in downtown Estes Park.
By 2012, the Town’s 17-member Transportation Visioning Committee prepared a document called the “Roadmap to the Future,” Muhonen said. This document presented ideas and reviewed concepts aimed to enhance the efficiency of the Town’s transportation infrastructure over the next two decades.
In 2013, RMNP conducted a study, “Integrated Approach to Transportation and Visitor Use Management at RMNP,” to improve the way visitors use transportation to get into and around the park, including RMNP’s shuttle bus system, in order to protect the park’s resources and the quality of visitors’ experiences.
In September 2013, the Town was inundated by a catastrophic flood which exposed significant problems in downtown arteries and drainage, and factored into infrastructure planning for both transportation and flood control.
That year the Town also applied for Federal Lands Access Program funds to explore a one-way couplet along Elkhorn Avenue, Moraine Avenue, and Riverside Drive.
Muhonen explained how the project involved extensive environmental impact studies, followed by a lengthy design phase. Properties had to be acquired, right of way acquisitions and easements had to be secured, and nearly 500 pages of construction drawings were produced.
Throughout the planning process, Muhonen said quarterly reviews of the project were held with the Town Board during study sessions. “After eight years of preparatory effort, the project baton was finally ready to be passed to the anchor leg of this relay, which was the construction team,” said Muhonen.
Flatiron Construction was hired to begin construction in January 2023 with a target completion date of January 2025.
The crowd cheered and clapped when Muhonen gave kudos to Flatiron and the “hundreds of support employees and subcontractors for getting a new bridge, new pipes, inlets, intersections, roadways, and sidewalks functionally reopened with the public by September of 2024 during this absolutely intensely impactful 21 month.”
In concluding his remarks, Muhonen, said that after 21 months of disruptive construction and seven separate town boards over 10 years, the Loop was “done,” all but for a few finishing details, such as reclamation landscaping.
The tab for the project was $42 million. Estes Park taxpayers contributed $1.5 million alongside $5.78 million from CDOT and $34.7 million from the Federal Highway Administration.
Muhonen thanked the community “who endured the disruption of this project construction. I am humbled and grateful for the thousands of day, night and weekend hours invested by hundreds of individuals who made thousands of decisions to deliver these transportation and utility infrastructure improvements to Estes Park.”
Additional speakers
Travis Machalek, administrator for the Town of Estes Park, thanked Lancaster for his vision and leadership and Muhonen for his commitment to detail and dedication in leading the project for ten years.
“Greg Mahonen is everything you could ever want in a public works director. I live in fear of the day that Greg comes to me and tells me that he’s ready to spend more time with his wife and his family, because it will be a huge loss for the town of Estes Park,” said Machalek.
Others who spoke before the ribbon cutting included Curtis Scott, chief of engineering for the Federal Highway Administration, Curtis Usher, program engineer for CDOT Region 4 North, and Grant Johns, vice president of Flatiron Construction.
Johns praised the construction workers employed by Flatiron, “These guys worked tirelessly day in day out to get this job done under some really, really tough conditions. One of them right here behind us, we went into this river. We stayed within compliance. We had some of the toughest environmental restrictions that you can have.”
Johns told the crowd that Flatiron has offices located across the country and his boss, who lives in California, told him, “what you guys accomplished here in Colorado, from an environmental regulation standpoint, what you were able to build is tougher than we have here in California.”
Critics of the project have cited the disruption to downtown businesses which reduced the number of customers who patronized local shops and restaurants over the past 21 months.
In an effort to mitigate the impact of the disruption caused by the construction, the town Trustees voted in June to approve the allocation of $200,000 for direct aid to impacted businesses on a pro-rated basis and $200,000 for a 75% marketing-match reimbursement program up to $2,500 for business located in the Visit Estes Park marketing district on a first come, first served basis. The funding was administered by the Estes Chamber of Commerce.
Looking ahead to the community’s transportation needs in 2045
A community’s transportation infrastructure needs are always evolving and even as the Town is putting the finishing touches on the Loop project, planners are looking ahead to the next 20 years with the Town of Estes Park 2045 Transportation Plan. The website includes a survey where community members can weigh in on what the future may look like in terms of the community’s transit needs for public transportation, pedestrians, people with mobility issues, bicycles, and automobiles. Community members are invited to take both a mapping survey, and a transit survey, and to get ready for the next big ribbon cutting 20 years from now.
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