6 westword.com WESTWORD DECEMBER 25-31, 2025 | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | BY PATRICIA CALHOUN In a way, the Colorado 150 Pedestrian Walk- way succeeded in its mission: It united Coloradans across the state…in their near- universal hatred of the proposal. This wasn’t the connection that Governor Jared Polis originally intended, of course. When he unveiled the offi cial design for the $18.5 million project, he championed it as offer- ing a way for the disabled to reach the Capitol, a place for schoolkids to eat lunch, a gallery for artists, a safety measure for traffi c on Lincoln Street…and a present to the public as Colorado celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2026, the same year the United States marks its 250th. But criticism of the plan came fast and furious (with the price tag rising just as quickly, until it hovered around $30 mil- lion). Finally, Polis launched a survey to see what residents of the Centennial State really thought about the giant slip-and-slide from the Capitol down to Lincoln Park, and about Colorado’s birthday in general. “I’m glad to see the interest,” the governor said. “I take it as, wow, Coloradans are really interested. Where do we want to go with it?” Where 95 percent of those who took the survey wanted the walkway to go was straight to hell...and it did, even as Polis took a weird victory lap. “I was inspired that over 80,000 people participated in just fi ve days,” he exulted as he announced that he would make sure the bridge was never built. “This amazing level of engagement shows that Coloradans care deeply about our upcoming birthday and the Capitol plaza.” Polis began planning for the state’s big birth- day years ago; he’d started his January 2023 State of the State speech before the Colorado Legislature with a reminder of the upcom- ing event. “In Colorado, we lead by example, enshrining these values in all that we say and do. By the time America is 250, we hope for a country that also respects freedom and the per- sonal health decisions of women, transgender Americans, and all Americans,” he pronounced. Given the current state of Washington, D.C. — which no one could have imagined three years ago — that might be a bridge too far. But we can still look for answers to Polis’s follow-up question: “So, when Colorado is 150 years old, what do we want to be?” Before you answer that, though, join us for a look back at other Colorado falls from grace in 2025. A Capital Idea Polis’s walkway wasn’t the only proposal involving Denver’s Civic Center Park, that vestige of the City Beautiful movement that was added to the National Register of His- toric Places in 1974, two years before the country’s Bicentennial. Despite that historic status — and the fact that Denver Parks & Recreation offi cials had been prescient enough to refuse to let the 150 Pedestrian Walkway land in Civic Center Park before it was killed altogether — Denver launched a $50 million renovation (and that’s just phase one) of Civic Center this fall, right after the Day of the Dead celebration. Which means that the park will largely be dead to any other big celebrations (a Broncos Super Bowl victory rally? or just a salute to changes in the Colorado Rockies’ front offi ce?) for the next year, sending other events to the Auraria Campus and points unknown, while the Greek Amphitheatre is reversed, the gardens ripped up, and the city generally acts as a major 150th anniversary party pooper. Civic Center Park is just one of the con- struction quagmires that bogged down Den- ver residents this year. Every street seemed to be ripped up, whether to accommodate more bike bollards or to take out bike bollards or to add those hellacious roundabouts in neighborhoods that felt they were getting the runaround. And then there’s the Bus Rapid Transit construction along East Colfax Boulevard, which turned what was once (maybe) billed by Playboy as “the longest, wickedest street in America” into what could be the city’s longest-running obstacle course. But to qualify for that title, it will have to beat the almost-endless renovation of 16th Street, which finally concluded this fall when it reopened on its 43rd anniversary in October at the cost of $175 million and the elimination of one part of its name: mall.
