Colorado Springs to gradually connect three existing streets east to Banning Lewis Parkway
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) — While work continues on the three-year, $55 million widening of Marksheffel Road on the city’s eastern border, another project has begun to extend three existing streets a mile east to the growing Banning Lewis Ranch subdivision.
Several developers are financing the extensions of Stetson Hills Boulevard, Barnes Road, and North Carefree Circle to connect between Marksheffel Road and the new Banning Lewis Parkway, which opened last year as the major north-south route through that community.
The city said that North Carefree will stop just short of the parkway but connect to side streets from the parkway.
Dublin Boulevard already connects to the parkway, and city officials said that it will eventually connect to US 24 between the Woodmen Road and Constitution Avenue interchanges.
All four streets form the length of the Marksheffel widening, which began in late summer of 2023 and is on schedule for completion by the end of the year.
Gayle Sturdivant, the city’s deputy public works director, said that the city will assume maintenance responsibility for the street extensions two years after completion.
But it will be a gradual process.
“We’re talking about a 15- to 30-year buildout,” Sturdivant explained. “As the rooftops or the traffic move to the east, the developers associated with that development are going to be building the roads. The responsible development should be paying for itself. And that’s what they do.”
Construction geared up this summer on the Stetson Hills and Barnes extensions, with construction activity visible on the east side of Marksheffel at those intersections and moving east.
As of yet, no construction appears to be happening for the North Carefree extension, but work has geared up on Stetson Hills and Barnes.
Sturdivant said that the existing Huber Road, east of the Marksheffel/Stetson Hills intersection, will become part of the Stetson Hills extension.
Some segments of that extension have already been built at what is currently the southeast end of the ranch.
A common criticism from ranch residents is that the Marksheffel widening should have happened a decade before the housing boom began there.
City officials have learned from that, and hope to be better prepared for future growth and traffic with the street extensions.
It makes one wonder, though: With all of the growth so far and more to come, will four lanes on Marksheffel be enough?
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