What is the big holiday week project happening in SW Colorado Springs? Here’s what we’ve learned
Scott Harrison
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) — Even neighbors who live near it didn’t know what was happening, and it took KRDO 13’s The Road Warrior parts of four days to find out, too.
Many passing drivers also wondered why a block of Cheyenne Road, north of Lake Avenue, had been closed on Friday, with a huge crane in place, a large excavation into the street, and crews working there under nighttime lights.
It wasn’t until late Monday morning that Colorado Springs Utilities (CSU) confirmed that it was in charge of the project to expand a transmission vault.
Think of it as the electrical version of a water vault — similar to the underground structure to regulate water pressure that CSU built this summer at the Academy/Meadowland Boulevard intersection.
In the case of the transmission vault, CSU is expanding an existing vault containing a variety of electrical equipment.
The expansion will allow crews to perform maintenance work in one area while keeping a second area energized to continue supplying power to customers.
“This project was a part of our general maintenance fund,” said Cassie Melvin, a CSU spokesperson. “So, it just is part of our base rates that customers currently pay. It was identified as a project that needed to be completed in 2025.”
The crane that lowered the vault parts into place is no longer at the scene.
CSU did not issue a press release in advance of the project, as it typically does for other projects — with the holiday week possibly a factor — but Melvin emphasized that the utility had notified neighbors ahead of time.
“We did notify people within a half-mile radius around the project that it was happening,” she explained. “We sent out text messages, phone calls, and emails to people in the area.”
Melvin said that the project should be finished and the street reopened on Saturday.
This has been an eventful year along the east end of Cheyenne Road, with extensive concrete infrastructure and drainage work.