Alameda Avenue repurposing arrives after years of debate

Jaime Livaditis knew Alameda Avenue was too close for comfort almost as soon as her family moved into their Washington Park home. In 2011, Livaditis moved into a new Washington Park house with her husband and 1-year-old. As soon as they moved in, they knew something needed to change.

The Livaditis family set aside plans for home and backyard renovations to build a wall separating their home from Alameda Avenue. Three years later, their concerns were validated when a car drove into their wall.

“If we didn’t build this wall, cars would be landing inside my house,” Livaditis said.

The stretch of Alameda between Franklin and Lincoln streets is part of Denver’s High Injury Network and recorded 200 crashes over five years. In August, the city narrowed the four-lane road to one through lane in each direction with a center turn lane, a configuration intended to slow traffic and reduce crashes.

The change came after eight years of neighborhood organizing, public meetings and controversy over how — and whether — the city should redesign the corridor. Denver’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure began developing the lane-repurposing project in 2018 after identifying safety problems along Alameda, which the city says experiences more crashes than comparable Denver streets.

For Livaditis, the risks were never theoretical. Three years ago, Livaditis’ 13-year-old daughter was hit on her way home from school.

“It really was a miracle that she didn’t hit her head and that other cars didn’t run her over, because there were four lanes of traffic,” she said.

More crashes ensued, including one on Halloween night in 2017. Livaditis recounted a crash that sent a car flying into her neighbor’s home.

“The mom was with her daughter, brushing their teeth after trick-or-treating…and then there’s a car 10 feet away inside their home,” Livaditis said. Luckily, everyone was okay, “but it was such a close call.”

Denver has spent years searching for a plan to make the road safer for drivers, pedestrians and people living in homes off Alameda. After a series of public meetings on the project from 2020 to 2025, the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI) sent notices to homes in the area that it would narrow the road. 

The project was set for the summer of 2025. But right before it was about to start, DOTI delayed it, initially saying another nearby construction project caused the hold-up. 

Amy Kenreich had attended public meetings about the Alameda project since 2020. When she heard that the project had been delayed, she filed a request for DOTI emails under the Colorado Open Records Act. 

“It just exposed lie after lie after lie,” she said.

Although DOTI declined to respond to Bucket List’s request for comment, records obtained through Kenreich’s CORA request showed that Act for Alameda, a group opposed to the full redesign whose organizers included nearby resident Jill Anschutz, hired former DOTI official Jason Gallardo as a lobbyist and met with city officials. The group raised concerns about congestion, traffic shifting onto neighborhood streets and impacts on nearby businesses.

Kenreich believes that lobbying effort helped derail the original plan.

“She created a petition and worked with a lobbyist to stall and abort the project,” Kenreich said.

An Aug. 14 email from DOTI engineering supervisor Brett Boncore said the agency had been working with leadership to address “high-level community and leadership concerns” and had received direction to move forward with a partial lane reduction. Later in 2025, DOTI proposed a scaled-back version of the project that would have retained more vehicle capacity along part of the corridor.

“It didn’t work,” Kenreich said of the new plan. “We didn’t want a partial project, and so the neighborhood association and all the neighbors fought with the city.”

The revised plan generated additional pushback from supporters of the original lane reduction, who argued that the city was backing away from its safety goals.

David Mintzer said he is tired of the city telling taxpayers they don’t have enough money to make their roads safer. Mintzer, a longtime bicycle and pedestrian advocate, lives in Capitol Hill and drives his daughter to band practice via Alameda.

“It feels representative of how the city functions. If you’re wealthy, you can hire a lobbyist, and they’ll listen to you,” Mintzer said. “If you’re trying to bike to school, good luck.”

Mintzer argued that the additional money spent redesigning and re-studying the project could have been used on other high-speed, high-injury roads in Denver.

DOTI ultimately moved forward with a version much closer to the original proposal, describing it as a temporary demonstration project rather than a permanent redesign.

The current configuration creates one through lane in each direction with dedicated left-turn pockets. Temporary elements include the lane configuration, pedestrian buffers, flex-post refuge islands and some on-street parking changes. Permanent improvements include new and refreshed crosswalks, updated school-zone markings, signal changes and a speed-limit reduction from 30 mph to 25 mph between Broadway and University Boulevard.

“Any street project that goes in is technically a pilot,” Kenreich said. “I mean, obviously if it doesn’t work, they adjust. So they’re just doing that to calm the waters after they were being caught being influenced by lobbyists.”

The city’s website about the project says it will monitor speeds, traffic volumes, crashes and neighborhood impacts before deciding whether the temporary lane configuration should become permanent. DOTI estimates no more than 5% of vehicles will shift to nearby streets, and it says its analysis indicates the center turn lane could reduce crashes in the project area by as much as 25%. 

Livaditis expressed dismay at all of the back-and-forth. She said that safety should take priority over speed, especially in a dense residential neighborhood with bus stops and kids walking to school.

“This project is 100% safety over convenience…because this is a family neighborhood,” Livaditis said.

However, she is not sure that the city will maintain the changes.

“I’m prepared for the worst,” Livaditis said.