Font Size

Colorado & Denver News

E-mail

Close Window E-mail This Page

Lone Tree Has High Hopes For New Interchange

Required fields are marked with an asterisk(*)

Recipient E-mail:*
- Your Name:*
- Your E-mail:*
Add a Message:
Send me a copy of this e-mail.

Type the characters in this picture:*

Click here to refresh with new letters

The information you provide will be used only to send the requested e-mail and will not be used to send any other e-mail communications. Read more in our Privacy Policy

Send E-mail

Print Share +

May 20, 2009 8:10 pm US/Mountain

Lone Tree Has High Hopes For New Interchange

Reporting
Terry Jessup

LONE TREE, Colo. (CBS4) ―

Click to enlarge 1 of 1: The new I-25 interchange with its modern rock trim will relieve congestion on the existing Lincoln Avenue exits and ease connections to E-470, Parker Road and Castle Pines Parkway.
CBS

Close

numSlides of totalImages

Build it and they will come. That's the hope in Lone Tree. A new interchange opened Wednesday morning south of Lincoln Avenue in Douglas County. It's the Ridgegate Parkway exit off Interstate 25.

Private developers pitched in cash to build the public road and the hope is it will spur development.

Planners say it will help relieve traffic congestion and provide for regional connections that are expected to double the population of Lone Tree.

The new I-25 interchange with its modern rock trim will relieve congestion on the existing Lincoln Avenue exits and ease connections to E-470, Parker Road and Castle Pines Parkway.

"It gives us the opportunity to look forward to the future to another east-west connector that will parallel Lincoln and take some of the trips that we currently have on Lincoln off," said James Gunning, Lone Tree Mayor. "We have 62,000 trips a day."

The new exchange also lays the foundation for the FasTracks end-of-line station for the southeast light rail line.

"This would be the point where the light rail would cross over I-25 to the east of us here and this would be kind of a hub where people could leave their personal vehicles and hop on the light rail," said Anthony DeVito, Colorado Department of Transportation Region One Director.

The interchange and new frontage roads will provide direct access to the Sky Ridge Medical Center and the adjacent Ridgegate development that will eventually include 12,000 new homes and about 23 million square feet of office, retail and open space.

"We're trying to create a balanced community with all different categories of land uses, like a real city," said Keith Simon, Ridgegate Community Development Director. "So we've got the hospital, some other medical uses; we've got a recreation center, 400 homes; we've got some shopping and dining choices, and there will just be more of that to come in the future."

It's a future on land that was once owned by the developer of the Denver Tech Center, who ran into financial trouble back in the 70s and lost it.

The new Ridgegate development figures to double Lone Tree's current 10,000 population, which is just fine with Lone Tree's mayor.

"I mean, we would love to be competition for the Denver Tech Center," Gunning said.

The project was almost 10 years in the making. It was paid for with $18 million from community developers and about $7 million from the CDOT.

Curious & Controversial News

You need the latest Flash player to view video content.
Click here to download.

Click here to bypass this detection if you already have the latest Flash Player.