Boulder’s Civic Center being Revamped

It’s Memorial Day weekend and there’s a good chance you’re headed to the annual Boulder Creek Festival. But if you’re going, be aware of the major civic area construction project underway that will be make navigating a little more complicated this year – especially for bicyclists. KGNU’s Roz Brown says voters approved a sales tax increase in 2014 to revamp the area.

“What you’re seeing now in phase one is a substantial amount of earth-moving and earth-moving equipment on the north side of Boulder Creek between the Municipal Building and the Boulder Public Library,” said Jim Winchester, a spokesman with the city of Boulder’s communication department.

“They are currently finishing up the multi-modal transportation path and restoring the creek back to its natural state. There’s going to be different access points to the creek now that they’ve removed non-native vegetation.”

Winchester says the biggest accomplishment so far is removal of the older bridge that was across the creek, and installation of the new 11th Street Spine Bridge that crosses the creek just west of the original bridge.

“That bridge was designed with help from school kids who submitted designs and what we heard from the kids who submitted drawings was that they wanted to be able to see the creek below the bridge and we incorporated that. And eventually you will see a nature walkway pedestrian path that will go under the span of the bridge.”

Winchester says work has just begun on a new playground area that is an interactive nature play area near the library.

“There will be interactive kid-tested rock areas and also traditional play ground equipment and splash pools but there are several months to go before that will be finished. We are hoping to open up these areas piece-by-piece but we’re not expecting it to be complete before November of this year.”

Winchester says those attending the 2017 Creek Festival will need to navigate the construction area this year.

“This will be one of those years when things are little modified. Creek organizers will have a set-up in the main library parking lot south of the Creek but there will be a continuous line of activities that go into Central Park. The annual duck race will not occur this year but the hope is that it will come back at some point down the road and I believe when everything is done on the civic area improvement we’re going to be very proud of this project.”