Sheridan Boulevard's Quiet Spell Was Planned, and the Bigger Rebuild Is Next

The overnight cones and steel plates that sat on Sheridan Boulevard for most of 2026 are gone. Denver Water's last scheduled work was street restoration between West 13th and West 17th avenues from Aug. 30 through Sept. 2, after the main pipe replacement wrapped up earlier in the summer. This quiet stretch between 17th and 26th is not the end of the work on Sheridan. The pipe project was scheduled to clear the way for something larger, and that next project is designed to change how Edgewater's busiest street behaves.

The Pipe Work Came First on Purpose

Denver Water replaced nearly 8,000 linear feet of aging water mains under Sheridan. Most of the work ran at night, Sunday through Thursday, from about 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. The first phase covered 17th to 29th avenues and the second covered 17th down to 13th. Denver Water's project page says the whole project was complete in summer 2026.

That finish beat the original forecast. When the City of Edgewater announced the pipe work in November 2025, it expected phase one to take about nine months starting in January, with work continuing into early 2027. The same announcement explained the sequence. The water project is separate from the city's Sheridan Boulevard Multimodal Corridor Project, "but the timing is intentional so utility work is completed before the multimodal project begins."

So the empty lanes this fall are the gap between two planned jobs. Pipes go in first, so nobody has to tear up a new median later to reach a water main.

What Sheridan Is Supposed to Become

The second project is the Sheridan Boulevard Corridor Safety Improvements project, run by the Colorado Department of Transportation for the stretch between West 17th and West 26th avenues. Edgewater City Council adopted the underlying corridor plan in October 2022 after two years of planning. At the March 3, 2026 council meeting, CDOT Project Manager Everett Bacon and the design team presented where the design stands.

The problem the project is solving will be familiar to anyone who drives Sheridan. Envision Edgewater's March update puts it this way:

"What looks like a four-lane road on Sheridan today is, in practice, operating more like six lanes, drivers regularly use the wide center turn lane and the southbound shoulder as through lanes."

The fix is to take away the extra pavement drivers have turned into lanes. The original plan called for moving the west curb line to narrow the road. During engineering, the team found that this meant relocating storm drainage buried several feet underground and rebuilding road grades across much of the corridor, which would have cost well over the project's budget. The current design gets to the same goal another way:

1. Raised center medians to narrow the effective driving surface and limit unsafe turns.
2. Floating islands that narrow the road while letting stormwater run around them, so the existing drainage inlets stay where they are.
3. Curb extensions, or bulb-outs, that put a physical buffer between people on foot and moving traffic.
4. A HAWK signal for a new mid-block pedestrian crossing between 22nd and 24th avenues. The location was chosen using pedestrian counts, nearness to existing bus stops, and the amount of foot traffic on the north side of Sloan's Lake.
5. A wider east sidewalk near 26th Avenue. It is about three feet wide today, below the four-foot minimum and the five-foot standard, and it will be widened to five feet. The travel lanes will shift slightly to make room.

The design team uses Federal Boulevard as its model for the finished road, with a landscaped center median, clearly marked travel lanes, and a more comfortable place to walk.

Taken together, the five changes mean the southbound shoulder stops being a passing lane and the center turn lane stops being a through lane. Crossing to the lake between 22nd and 24th will get a signal of its own.

When the Cones Come Back Depends on Which Document You Read

The three published schedules give three different start dates.

The March update also said plans and specifications should be done by August 2026, with contractor bidding in September and October 2026. As of late October, the project did not appear on CDOT's future bidding list, which the department updated Oct. 22 with four new advertisements, or in its 2026 bid tab archive. The document list for Edgewater City Council's Oct. 20 meeting packet also had no Sheridan item.

No date has been announced. Before a single median goes in, a contract has to be advertised, bid and awarded. The 2027 estimate looks more realistic than late 2026, but none of the three sources confirms when crews will show up.

Daily life during construction is easier to predict. CDOT plans most of the work for nighttime, roughly 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., with all lanes of Sheridan open during the day for the whole project. Property owners and businesses along the corridor are being told about driveway access changes through a formal permitting process, and right-of-way and easement notices started going out in spring 2026. That overnight schedule matches what Edgewater just lived through with the water mains. The difference this time is that the work changes what the road looks like.

The Corridor This Winter, Before the Rebuild

The stretch that will see the most change is also where much of Edgewater's everyday activity sits. Edgewater Public Market at 5505 W. 20th Ave. is just off the corridor, and the vendor list kept changing through 2026. Westword reported that PoBoys Creole Cafe opened in February, Barbed Wire Reef became BWR Pit & Patty in March with a focus on BBQ and smash burgers, Roll It Up Sushi opened in April, and the former Mugi space reopened in June as Sandomi, serving onigiri, sandos and banh mi. The market's directory also lists longtime anchors such as Black Box Bakery, Konjo Ethiopian Food, Barquentine Brewing Co. and Sloan's Wood Fired Pizza. Shake Shack is at 5507 W. 20th Ave. and Syrup Sloan's Lake is at 5457 W. 20th Ave.

For anyone getting around without a car, RTD Route 51's map shows stops at West 17th, West 20th and West 26th along the Edgewater and Sloan's Lake segment. Bus stops like these are one reason the HAWK crossing was placed between 22nd and 24th.

The corridor's main holiday event is on the city calendar for Wednesday, Dec. 9, from 5 to 8 p.m. Santa Sleighrides at Edgewater Beer Garden, 2508 Gray St., will have horse-drawn carriage rides, visits with Santa, carols and hot cocoa. The event is hosted by Edgewater Beer Garden, Sloan's Bar & Grill, the City of Edgewater and the Edgewater Police Department, and it is free and open to the public. The Beer Garden focuses on Colorado craft beer, has its own park with outdoor seating and a covered pavilion, and serves tacos, salads, sandwiches and brats.

This could be the last holiday season before the medians and bulb-outs arrive. The full design presentation is posted in the documents section of Envision Edgewater's Sheridan page, and the drawings show north to the right, so expect the before-and-after views to look sideways at first.

If you'd like help figuring out how the Sheridan rebuild could affect your block, your daily drive, or a property along the corridor between 17th and 26th, we follow this project closely at Campfire Real Estate and are glad to talk it through over coffee. Let's Connect.