Look around Denver's less accessible areas and you'll find a lot of them severed by freeways, train tracks and, in the case of River North's Taxi campus, a river. A bridge across the South Platte River should help when it's constructed a little over a year from now.
Taxi is a development with 90 homes and 100 offices a stone's skip from the heart of River North and the 38th and Blake RTD station. Problem is, there's no direct way to walk or bike there. That's why Zeppelin Development, with some help from the city government, has been working on a pedestrian bridge at 35th Street between Ringsby and Arkins courts for a while now.
People can expect to cross the river without going for a swim (or, OK, more realistically, going for a 25-minute walk) more than a year from now, said Chris Woldum with Zeppelin Development. The design is pretty much done, but it took a while because the bridge is in the 100-year floodplain, meaning it needed some special attention to engineering.
"That provided its own unique set of challenges," Woldum said.
Construction can't start until late next summer, when the river is at its lowest. After that it will take about four months.
The city contributed some resources, but the bulk of the funding for this $3.5 million project will come from Zeppelin Development, the RiNo General Improvement District, the Gates Family Foundation and fundraising through Bridges to Prosperity, a nonprofit.
The bridge is a private structure being built on public property, so it will be open to the public despite being funded with private money, Woldum said.
An earlier version of this article erroneously stated the private structure will be built on private property.
