Lakewood officials have posted a draft plan for William F. Hayden Park that would add a long loop trail and mountain-bike zones around Green Mountain, the 2,400-acre park’s centerpiece peak flanked by West Alameda Parkway, Colorado 470 and surrounding neighborhoods. Conservation is the plan’s stated top goal, and its recommendations are intended to guide management over the next 10 to 20 years—not commit the city to building every proposed feature. The plan, shaped by 18 months of community input, could reach the Lakewood City Council for review as soon as December, according to Amber Thill, operations manager for Lakewood’s Community Resources Department.
A Long-Awaited Blueprint Takes Shape
The city marked the planning project as a 95% plan on Oct. 5, according to lakewoodtogether.org, making the draft available for public review ahead of possible adoption later this year. Thill told the Denver Gazette the effort began about 18 months before publication. The city says thousands of community members, park users, stakeholders and partners took part. The document is meant to guide decisions for the next 10 to 20 years; projects will depend on funding, priorities, resource conditions and further design work.
William F. Hayden Park is already a heavily used slice of open space, drawing mountain bikers, dog walkers and hikers to a network the city currently lists at 36 miles of trails across 2,450 acres. Green Mountain’s trails see 337,000 annual visits, per the Gazette’s reporting, and the park offers singletrack accessible to a large swath of the Denver metro area. The existing shared-use network includes a 6,800-foot summit push up Green Mountain Trail, according to the city’s planning site.
Base Loop and Bike Zones at the Center of the Plan
The plan’s centerpiece is an 11-mile base loop that would circle Green Mountain by connecting existing trails with new routes. Planners envision it as a way to link trailheads and neighborhood streets, with access points and wayfinding signs, while also providing a route toward the mountain. Thill told the Gazette the loop would serve the mountain’s north side, where many of the social trails identified for closure are located.
The draft also maps three prospective mountain-bike zones, but Lakewood staff say the areas need further design and on-the-ground review before any construction. The city plans to work with community partners on the trail layouts. The proposed network totals 41 miles, up from the current 36 miles of city-listed trails; the park also has about 14 miles of unofficial social trails.
Separating Riders and Hikers Has Precedent Elsewhere
The push to carve out dedicated biking terrain echoes efforts already underway across Colorado’s foothills. Gary Moore, executive director of the Colorado Mountain Bike Association who lives near Morrison, told the Gazette that heavy mixed use on popular trails has produced close calls and crashes between uphill hikers and downhill riders, and he said he’s seen similar conflicts play out broadly across Jefferson County Open Space, where, according to the Daily Camera, officials have run an alternating-day access system at Centennial Cone Park for more than a decade and added biker-only trails at Matthews/Winters and White Ranch parks. Moore noted that an average popular trail system draws around 100,000 visits a year — a fraction of Green Mountain’s traffic — and said separated-use management tends to reduce conflict and make trails more comfortable for everyone…