Evergreen Lake North Trail project on schedule; detour will be over soon

BY DEB HURLEY BROBST DBROBST@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Less than a month.

at is how long until the detour on Evergreen Parkway along Evergreen Lake will be over.

ESCO Construction, which is creating a concrete walkway along Evergreen Parkway and a soft-surface walkway along the lakeshore, is on schedule, o cials said at a walkthrough of the site on July 31.

“ is project has truly taken a village,” Liz Cohen, the Evergreen Park & Recreation District’s grants and strategy manager, said. “It will be a gigantic improvement when it’s nished.”

While the Evergreen Lake North Trail detour will be over soon, Evergreen is in for tra c delays as Je erson County continues work on Highway 73 near downtown. at work is expected to be completed in 2025.

Creation of the new trail system is more than ve years in the making.

ESCO is working within the detour area along Evergreen Lake, and after e company began pouring concrete last week for both the walkway and for the curb and gutter that will separate the walkway from Evergreen Parkway, using more than 120 truckloads of concrete, Zink said. A decorative fence will be erected between the trail and Evergreen Parkway similar to the one originally installed there.

Labor Day, it will nish the remainder of the work, Joe Zink, the project coordinator for ESCO, told downtown business owners and sta and board members from the Evergreen Park & Recreation District, which spearheaded the project and found grant dollars to pay for it.

ESCO drove sheet piles — steel sheets with interlocking edges that retain soil — at least 12 feet into the ground to stop erosion, Zink said.

ESCO has built about 1,300 feet of trail along Evergreen Parkway, and the soft-surface trail at the lakeshore will be about 300 feet long with areas for shers to stand. Zink expected the soft-surface trail would be done in October.

He estimated that ESCO has installed 14,000 square feet of concrete blocks that look like Legos to create a retaining wall to shore up the walkway. e blocks each weigh between 1,600 and 2,800 pounds. Zink said