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Cimarron/I-25 contractor to host open house May 26 at City Auditorium

The current Cimarron/I-25 interchange is seen in a past view looking east from Cimarron Street (Highway 24). Work has started to replace it, and plans will be on view at an open house May 26.
Westside Pioneer file photo
       With the $116.1 million Cimarron/I-25 interchange project getting started in April, the contractor team of Kraemer/TSH has scheduled an open house and presentation Tuesday, May 26 to explain how the work is being handled.
       The session will be from 5 to 7 p.m. at the City Auditorium downtown. Before and after a formal presentation starting at 5:30, there should be “ample opportunity for the public to visit various information stations [and] meet and ask questions of the project team,” according to Kraemer/TSH spokesperson Jimmy Luthye.
       Scheduled for completion in December 2017, the project will build a new interchange and ramps, along with a westward freeway realignment starting about a quarter-mile to the south. The contractor was hired by the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT).
       A recent addition to the project plan, suggested by Kraemer/TSH, is to build a new road connection through CDOT-owned land southeast of Eighth and Cimarron, which is intended to relieve traffic at that intersection. The link at Eighth is to line up with a stoplight at the currently difficult Colorado Place shopping center exit, while the Cimarron connection will be west of the freeway.
       One of the open-house information stations will provide more details, Luthye said.
       “There have been a few other requested elements that we will discuss in detail at the meeting as well,” he elaborated, “but I would say that this creative connection, or 'quadrant intersection,' is the most significant addition to the plans presented last June [in a public meeting hosted by CDOT, also at City Auditorium].”
       Luthye clarified that although public comments, questions and concerns are welcomed, “the time for input on any design or project-specific elements has passed. That input was incorporated into the project RFP [request for proposals] and has been addressed in the Kraemer proposal.”
       Edward Kraemer & Sons, Inc., (Kraemer) is a century-old highway construction company from Wisconsin.
       Tsiouvaras Simmons Holderness (TSH) is a Colorado engineering design firm.
       Early work on the project has included removing trees and other large vegetation west of I-25 and south of Cimarron, clearing the area into which that part of the interstate will be realigned.

Westside Pioneer article
(Posted 5/18/15; Transportation Cimarron/I-25)

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