Last year, the city of Salida began a big construction project to improve the street of Poncha Boulevard over the course of over a year. The plans had begun to be laid out in 2009 and were officially revitalized in 2020. Since then, there have been some improvements done on the Monarch Spur Trail, and these improvements end at Creststone Avenue.
The project had been divided into two different phases, each phase representing different sections of Poncha Boulevard. Phase one represented from Grant Street down to Thonoff Park, and phase two represented from Grant Street all the way to Holoman Avenue. There were a lot of changes planned on being made for the project. There have been medians added to the stretch of Poncha Blvd along with sidewalks and new curbs to narrow down the street and hopefully prevent speeding, which is very common along the Poncha Boulevard stretch, while also improving the appearance of the street.
The construction project began in Spring of 2023, and the main objective of this phase of the project was to improve the sewer and water line services. They fully replaced large sections of the waterline service. They had completed this part of the project around the summer of 2023, and that was when the construction project had progressed to creating roadway improvements along Poncha Boulevard, which ranged from Crestone Avenue to Grant Street. The roadway improvements had included replacing the old asphalt with new asphalt, creating new islands around Thonoff Park, building up and decorating the medians that would be placed between the lanes, repainting the entire stretch of Poncha Boulevard, and creating new sidewalks and new curbs. There has been some trouble with the last part since they had accidentally used the incorrect concrete mixture and had to completely redo a large portion of the curbs along the Phase one area and redo some of the sidewalk sections. After they had overcome this delay, the construction crew were finally able to fill in empty patches between the curb and the sidewalk with rocks and plant several trees along the stretch of the sidewalk. They also added rocks and plants in the median to give the street an appealing appearance.
After this portion of the project had been completed, in the fall of 2023, the construction crew moved on to the next part of their project, which had the objective of adding in final landscaping of the islands that had been added in during the roadway improvements near Thonhoff Park. This portion of the project had been completed during the summer of 2023, which had concluded the completion of Phase one of the Poncha Boulevard project.
In Fall 2023, a large portion of the completion of Phase two had been completed and it had been anticipated to either be terminated at Adams Street or at Holman Avenue, but this was dependent on the weather conditions in the area and how the construction progressed. The construction crew added in a new turning lane at the end of Poncha Blvd. that turned into Holman avenue.
The next step for this project is hopefully the official completion of Phase two, which has been scheduled for Summer of 2024. This final step consists of adding in final landscaping, which includes planting more trees and arranging the rocks that are going to be placed in the medians, along with adding in rocks in the spaces that are between the sidewalk and the curbs. This also includes a linear trail along the golf course.
So far, this project has been a big success and has greatly improved the quality of Poncha Boulevard.
