Alpine-Balsam Implementation

View a larger vision of the above timeline

2024

Dec. 17, 2024 — Official Groundbreaking

2025

• Floodway and site infrastructure construction begins. The floodway work is expected to last until Q3 of 2025, with final landscape planting occurring in the spring of 2026.
• Regulatory approvals on Alpine-Balsam development and the Western City Campus.
• Western City Campus Construction begins spring 2025.

View a map of the site overview below. Select a building to learn more.

View a full screen version of the map

Flood Mitigation

The city will begin construction of a floodway mitigation channel to remove the properties on the Alpine-Balsam site from the flood zone in 2025. This work will be more than just a floodway, and will include extensive landscaping, an improved bicycle lane, enhanced pedestrian crossings, a plaza and pedestrian walkway improvements.

The floodway project will provide recreational connections that are safe from Broadway to the North Boulder Park and aesthetic facets of the flood conveyance channel that runs along Balsam. Ensuring newly developed housing is placed out of the floodplain and using carefully selected vegetation to enhance the floodway infrastructure. This will be done through selecting native vegetation to create an urban habitat for pollinators, birds, and other urban wildlife. Providing the community with a sense of connection to a healthy urban waterway by creating gathering spaces.

Watch a digital rendering flythrough of the flood mitigation project.

ZGF Architects were selected in July 2022 as the design team for the Western City Campus and tasked with proceeding on the design of the Pavilion Building renovation, new civic plaza, parking garage, and other site-wide elements. Since ZGF was selected, extensive work has been done to analyze the city’s needs, determine the required environmental and regulatory requirements, and develop funding strategies. Saunders construction was selected in June 2024 as the General Contractor for the Western City Campus. Work will begin in spring 2025.

• Visit the Western City Campus project page for more information

Led by Boulder Housing Partners. More information and updates to come!

Hospital Deconstruction

The city successfully completed the deconstruction of the hospital in fall 2023. Many materials from the hospital were directly reused in other projects or recycled. Overall, 94% of all the building materials from the deconstruction of the hospital were diverted away from the landfill. The steel from the hospital was removed and reused in several city projects, including the new Fire Station 3.

See page 13 of the Winter 2023 Community Newsletter for an article about the sustainable deconstruction of this site.

• Sign-up for the Western City Campus and Site e-newsletter to receive project updates.
• Sign-up for the city’s planning e-newsletter to receive city-wide planning updates.