Green Streets and Open Channels

“One step at a time,” is how Westerly Creek’s greenway corridor is growing.

That is true, but somewhere there had to be a starting point, a first step that invited second and third steps. For the portion of the Westerly Creek corridor closest to Park Hill, there were two enormous starting points: open space at Stapleton and open space at Lowry.

When they were dedicated, those two long (and wide) tracts of greenway corridor immediately became magnets for pedestrians, cyclists and lovers of places to depart hustle and bustle. They practically said, “You need to connect us to each other.” They also sold a lot of real estate.

So it has been financially worthwhile for those risk-averse folks in the world of big-time development to invest in re-creating a stream (with a functioning floodplain to accompany the channel). They started with something that had been squeezed into a pipe under the runways at Stapleton Airport, and literally reshaped to serve as a runway at Lowry Air Base, and created a living component of an ecosystem – albeit an urban ecosystem.

So, where might one start on a similar Montclair Creek greenway?

Here are three possibilities:

1) The parkway on Monaco Parkway between 10th Avenue and 11th Avenue Monaco Parkway is already public open space and the southbound lanes convey northbound floodwater from 10th Avenue to 11th Avenue during storms. Monaco also is already designated as a bicycle route.

2) 12th Avenue from Monaco to Krameria
12th Avenue is already designated as a bicycle route, and as a Green Street in Denver’s Game Plan, a Parks Department master planning study for the city. Floodwaters already flow along 12th from Locust Street toward Leyden Street and Krameria Street during storms. Green Streets provide, “sidewalks and other pedestrian connections among Denver neighborhoods for people of all age and abilities, using a range of transportation options.  They would be different from other city streets in three ways:

• The width and continuity of tree lawns, as well as the tree species that are planted

• The width and continuity of sidewalks

• The spacing of street trees and possibly tree species.

3) City Park from the vicinity of 17th Avenue between Jackson Street and Garfield Street to the inlet at the southeast end of Ferril Lake in City Park.

In City Park, from the block of 17th Avenue between Jackson Street and Garfield Street to the southeast inlet to Ferril Lake, there are enormous underground pipes conveying floodwaters into Ferril Lake. The lake bottom was dredged and the seat wall on the north and west sides of the lake was constructed specifically for flood protection for neighborhoods northwest of City Park in the drainage path of Montclair Creek. It is a flood facility. An open channel could be constructed upstream of Ferril Lake, and later, downstream through the Denver Zoo and City Park Golf Course. Again, during large storms there is surface water throughout that bottomlands portion of the park and of the golf course.

In the map above, you can see the pattern of the flooding on July 7, 2011; the floodwater flowed from #1 to #2 then through Mayfair, along Colfax, through southwest Park Hill and on to #3.

Finally, I am sharing some inspiration with you. My landscape architect friend, Dave Duclos, came up with the graphic below. It’s a concept for a potential Mayfair Town Center. Enjoy looking at it now. We’ll discuss it next month.

Brian Hyde is an expert in floodplain management and stream restoration. He wants your feedback at westerly_connect_brian@comcast.net or 720-939-6039.