To Build a Park - the Central 70 Project

I have become a little too attached to strange men. Well, construction workers. Well, highwaymen. highway-persons. I don’t know their pronouns, we’ve never met.

In the center of Denver Colorado, during the early 1960s, The state of Colorado decided to split a deeply rooted multicultural neighborhood right down the middle. This was done for two reasons. The area is getting too uppity in asking for rights, meaning the black and Hispanic culture of the time was gaining and claiming cultural significance. The second reason was they could not be bothered running a new interstate highway going from East to West just several miles north as this would mean bothering industry and a fledgling industrial area. So out came the bulldozers and in came a massive highway through churches and low-income homes. 

Flash-forward fifty years. The outdated and unsafe elevated highway had to go. With this project came words like “healing the wounds of a neighborhood” and “reunite the two halves”  This meant removing the unhealthy highway and helping rebuild a suppressed community.  Reroute the highway to the north where it should have been laid. Or, tunnel the highway under the residential portions. Orrrrrrrr. Just widen the highway and take more land and homes. The same homes that barely survived the 60’s bulldozers. The irony is that the city could not move the highway north as it proved too expensive to buy out the industry area that was just starting in this first highway game.

To paint a coat of understanding on the widening project, the highway is sunken below grade, with many, many cement crossings, and next to a school they are building a two-block park for the minority children to play during recess. Over the highway. Yep, if your family and culture are rooted in the community, your kids will soon get to take a recess on a grass field over I-70. Unlike you, who had to take recess next to an elevated interstate route. Oh, progress. But really it is the best answer to modernizing the area. 

The project of capping the highway is what I have been following. And by following, I mean obsessed. The “Central 70” project has a webcam which I have open on my work computer at all times. I’ve watched in real time the removal of elevated I-70 and building all the new bridges. I have watched the construction crews come and go and lay tons upon tons of concrete. I started naming the people about a year ago. I mean the “Construction Cam”  is far away so it’s tough to make most of them out. I usually identify them by the cars they drive and park on the already completed part of the covered highway. Some folks show up at the same time every day. They don’t work weekends, so the project is clearly not in a rush. And lunch is exactly from Noon to 1 PM. As they work in the art of rebar, I give them conversations. Mostly where they are going on vacation with the partners;  How KeyWest has lost its charm. How to improve the draining cycle of their dishwashers, and if they would ever climb one of the 14ers. They each live deep, spiritual lives. How could you not, after being crouched down twisting metal strap all day. 

Soon the construction will be over, and the re-development of the area will be done. And civil and city planners will pat themselves on the back and give each other awards for planning and implementing such a healthy and healing project. And then the low-income kids will take a recess on a grass-covered field over a highway, and breathe toxic fumes from the interstate.  

Central 70 Project