West Colfax's First Fall Without the Cones: Walking the Finished Street From Irving to Sheridan

When crews cut out the center of West Colfax Avenue to set the new medians, they found streetcar tracks under the asphalt. The rails were part of Denver's old tramway system. The city's West Colfax project page has a 1949 photo of a streetcar running on them at Utica Street. The tramway was abandoned in the 1950s and the tracks were paved over so cars and buses could have the road.

For about seventy years after that, this stretch of Colfax was mostly built for driving through. That changed this summer. The new design makes it a street you can cross on foot, and this November is the first full fall season to use it that way. Construction started in February 2024, and on July 22, 2026, ColoradoBiz reported that the work between Irving Street and Sheridan Boulevard was done.

What Irving to Sheridan looks like now

The city's list of finished work is short. Each item changes how you get from one side of Colfax to the other.

• Eight landscaped median refuge islands. You stand in the middle of the street and cross one direction of traffic at a time.
• 37 curb extensions at 19 intersections. These shorten crossings and slow turning cars.
• New ADA-compliant pedestrian ramps. Some old sidewalk obstacles were also moved.
• Two transit bulb-outs. These give bus riders more room to wait and board.

The refuge islands matter most if you walk. Before, crossing Colfax meant getting across two travel lanes each way plus a center turn lane in one go. CBS Colorado reported that the medians now let you cross one direction of traffic at a time. The station also talked to the director of a nearby summer camp that buses children around all week. He said the crossings used to look "messy" and now look "more structured."

The project took a long time. Voters approved the Elevate Denver bond money in 2017. Open houses were held in 2019, design was final by 2023, and construction ran from February 2024 to this summer. Reports of the cost don't agree. ColoradoBiz put the total at $12.6 million, including $970,000 from the bond. CBS Colorado reported $15.5 million.

The planted medians are there because neighbors asked for them. ColoradoBiz reported that Councilmember Jamie Torres credited residents, the West Colfax Association of Neighbors and her office with pushing to keep the landscaping and other green infrastructure in the project.

The trade the medians made

The medians help walkers, and drivers give something up in return. The city's project Q&A says left turns are now restricted at intersections without a signal, so people driving "may need to drive one or two additional blocks to reach their destination." Fewer left turns mean fewer places where a turning car and a person crossing can meet. That's the whole reason for the design.

Parking moved too. The city's preferred design projected a net gain in on-street parking on West Colfax. The bulb-outs and the removal of the center turn lane in some spots made room for it. The city also said parking might switch between the north and south sides of the street. If you used to park in the same spot every time, it may now be across the street.

The bus changes are aimed at the more than 6,000 RTD riders the city counts on the corridor each weekday. Plans for the transit side included fewer, consolidated stops and signal changes that give buses priority.

Twenty addresses cover the day from 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Two businesses near the east end of the project show how the corridor works on foot now. Brew Culture Coffee at 3620 W. Colfax Ave. opens at 6:30 a.m. on weekdays. Seedstock Brewing Co. at 3600 W. Colfax Ave. opens its taproom at 3 p.m. on weekdays. They're twenty street numbers apart, and between them that block covers a full day.

Brew Culture closes at 6 p.m. on weekdays, three hours after Seedstock opens. That overlap makes it easy to turn an afternoon coffee into an early pint without moving the car. Seedstock stays open until 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

Farther west, Odell's brewhouse on Perry Street serves scratch pizza with 16 Odell beers on tap and has a rooftop patio. Perry Street is also where the city's block-by-block plans divide the corridor into segments, from Raleigh to Perry and from Perry to Newton. The Patio at Sloan's, on West 17th Avenue, is built around outdoor dining and live music.

The West Colfax Business Improvement District still runs its directory under the heading "support local during construction." It lists more than two dozen food and drink businesses along the corridor, including Seedstock, Brew Culture, Odell and Moonflower Coffee, which it marks as seasonal. The BID put that list together so people would keep shopping on the corridor while the work went on.

The theater at 4255 carries the holiday calendar

Alamo Drafthouse Sloan's Lake has its theater bar, BarFly, at 4255 W. Colfax. Its upcoming listings run through the holidays. As of late October, the theater's schedule showed:

1. Wild Horse Nine on Nov. 5
2. Littermates on Nov. 6
3. Club Kid and The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping on Nov. 19
4. The Polar Express Movie Party on Nov. 30
5. Avengers: Doomsday on Dec. 17

Showtimes can change, so check Alamo's Sloan's Lake page before you go. The Polar Express party on the Monday after Thanksgiving is the one family event on the list. Dinner on Colfax followed by a short walk across to the theater is now an easier evening than it was a year ago, when the center of the street was a work zone.

Across Sheridan, the same idea is one phase behind

At Sheridan Boulevard, Colfax leaves Denver and enters Lakewood. Lakewood is running its own West Colfax Safety Project from Sheridan to Teller Street. Its July 2026 update said the medians, the median landscaping and the restripe to two traffic lanes were done. The contractor and Xcel Energy would spend the coming months installing power for the median lights and for later work.

Lakewood's Phase 2 goes further than anything on the Denver side. It turns the outside traffic lane into pedestrian space and adds continuous sidewalks on both sides, signalized mid-block crossings, bus pullouts, pedestrian lighting, wayfinding monuments and public art. The city page says construction starts in early 2027. The project's own site, westcolfaxsafety.com, says late 2026 or early 2027. Lakewood has said at least two lanes will stay open during that work, with short drops to one lane when crews need room.

For now, the two cities' stretches meet at Sheridan in the same state. Both have medians done, and neither has major work going on right now. On Friday, the 40 West Arts District is holding its free First Friday Día de los Muertos Colfax Art Crawl on Nov. 6 from 6 to 9 p.m., based at 6501 W. Colfax Ave. in Lakewood. According to the event listing, marigold petals will line the walkways. The galleries and studios will show Catrina-inspired work and pieces honoring Latina/o/x/e and Indigenous storytelling traditions. A community ofrenda will be built "one photo at a time," and visitors are invited to bring a photo or small keepsake of someone they've lost.

The 40 West blocks are the next stretch of Colfax to get the full Phase 2 rebuild, sidewalks and signalized crossings included. Under either posted schedule, that work could be underway by next fall.

I serve on the board of the Sloan's Lake Park Foundation, and I spend a lot of time on the blocks between the lake and Colfax. If you've ever wondered how changes like these medians, crossings and parking shifts affect the value of a home a few blocks off the corridor, I'd be glad to go through it with you. Start with an instant home valuation from Caitlin Clough, and I'll take it from there.