We hope you’ll bear with us this summer with a project that will result in some dust, noice and truck traffic on neighborhood streets. Construction caution fencing is already going up around our parking lot as a projected 87-day construction project begins today.
As the photos show, the Colorado Center for the Blind’s parking lot has deteriorated badly in recent years. Rather than simply repave, we decided to use the opportunity to do more than just lay new asphalt. The total project will put utilities underground, upgrade parking lot lighting, provide more walkways and landscaping around the parking area, build a concrete dumpster pad to withstand heavy trucks, and reconfigure the front of the building and the sidewalk approaches to it. Time to complete the planning and permitting processes for this project are the reason we let it go so long.
Beginning on July 5, the parking lot surface will be removed as much as 8 inches, followed by weeks of new compacting of gravel before concrete work on the walks are completed and the new paving can begin.
This means heavy equipment in the area and dump trucks coming and going in the neighborhood as they first haul away the old material and then begin bringing in new material. It also means that we’ll be replacing the sidewalk, curb and gutter in front of our property all along the north side of West Shepperd Avenue, requiring barricades for that purpose at different times. The heaviest of the truck traffic on neighborhood streets should be done by early August, though there will still be cement trucks and asphalt trucks till September.
Following the parking lot repaving, we’ll close off the main entrance of the Center to deal with utilities and a reconfiguring of the sidewalk approaches from both Shepperd Avenue and our new parking lot. The walks wwill also feature new lighting.
By the time it all wraps up in late September, we hope our neighbors will agree that it was worth the disruption with a new and more attractive look out front that we can all enjoy!
