Anyone who runs, walks, or bikes the Cherry Creek Trail through Country Club knows the exact moment the ride changes. The creekside path, wide and shaded and quiet, ends near Downing Street. What follows is roughly a mile of narrow sidewalk squeezed between the Denver Country Club's shrub-lined fence and the traffic lanes of First Avenue, all the way to University Boulevard, before the trail finally slips back down to the water.
Most people who use that stretch have a theory about why it exists. The theory is almost always the same: the country club won't let the trail through its property, so everyone gets routed around it. That story is true as far as it goes. It is also, as of this year, no longer the whole explanation for why the squeeze is still there.
The stretch everyone already knows
First, the scale of the problem. The Cherry Creek Trail along First Avenue carries more than 600,000 users a year, according to a Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure count reported in October 2025. For that entire mile between Downing and University, the trail is eight feet wide, shared by cyclists and pedestrians moving in both directions, with car traffic close enough that DOTI planning manager Sam Piper has called the segment one the department specifically wants to fix as the surrounding area keeps growing.
The safety numbers behind that concern are neighborhood-wide rather than trail-specific: a DOTI study covering 2017 through 2021 counted 31 crashes causing fatal or severe injuries in the Cherry Creek corridor. That data, combined with residents flagging the First Avenue stretch during area mobility planning as one of the narrowest and most hazardous sections of any trail in the system, is what put a redesign on the city's agenda in the first place.
The story locals still tell about the fence
The detour itself dates back to the early 1970s, when Denver was first drawing up its citywide bikeway plan. Fred Wolfe, the planner who drafted it, has said plainly that routing the trail through the country club's grounds was never really on the table. Cutting the club's security fence to let the path through would have created exactly the kind of access problem the club understandably wasn't going to accept, so the trail went around instead, and that arrangement has held for more than fifty years.
It has also become the neighborhood's default explanation for everything about that mile that feels wrong. There's a public petition asking the city to route the trail through the club's land along the creek rather than along the sidewalk, citing icy winter conditions and close calls at the University Boulevard underpass. It's a reasonable ask from people tired of the squeeze. It is also, based on what the city actually studied this past year, not the fix that was ever seriously on the table.
What the city actually voted on this year
In October 2025, DOTI unveiled a specific redesign proposal for First Avenue between Downing and University. It had nothing to do with the country club's property. The plan widened the trail itself from eight feet to twelve, the standard Denver Parks and Recreation sets for a regional trail, by narrowing the center median of First Avenue and adding a tree lawn buffer between the path and traffic. DOTI spokesperson Zacharias confirmed the design was built to keep every existing travel lane in place, partly so the corridor stays flexible if a future bus rapid transit line gets added to First Avenue down the road.
City records show the alternatives that got weighed and dropped before that design was even brought forward: removing a travel lane, which officials judged too disruptive to traffic; shifting the curb north by about a foot and a half, which cost more than the width it would have gained was worth; running the trail along the north side of the street instead; and yes, expanding into Denver Country Club's land, which was dismissed outright over acquisition costs and ecological concerns. The club was never really in the running this time. The median was.
In April 2026, Denver's City Council voted the widening proposal down. The reporting on that vote is specific about why: concerns about removing mature trees from the center median and the broader design impact of narrowing it, not anything to do with the club's fence line. DOTI has said it will keep refining the design and looking for other ways to address the safety concerns, and the project remains part of the larger Denver Moves: Cherry Creek planning effort, which covers walking, biking, transit, and delivery access across the neighborhood.
So the honest version of the story, as of this spring, is this. The fence was the obstacle in 1972. In 2026, the obstacle is a fight over street trees and travel lanes on First Avenue itself, and it just lost a City Council vote. Those are two different problems, decided fifty years apart, and conflating them means aiming frustration at the wrong property line.
No construction date, but no longer frozen either
If you're hoping this means the squeeze gets fixed soon, the current record doesn't support that. DOTI has funding to complete only 30 percent of the design phase and has not finalized schematics or announced a construction start date for the First Avenue redesign. The department has said public feedback is still being collected as the design work continues, which means the shape of any eventual fix, wider trail, different median treatment, or something else entirely, is still being argued out rather than locked in.
That's a different situation than "nothing will ever change here," which is the assumption baked into a lot of neighborhood conversation about this stretch. The club's fence isn't moving. The median, the travel lanes, and the tree lawn are all still live questions inside an active planning process, one that already produced a specific proposal, a public vote, and a stated intention from the city to keep trying.
Something worth knowing about this fall
Doors Open Denver returns September 24 through 27 this year, with this year's citywide theme built around downtown's ongoing transformation as Colorado marks its 150th anniversary. It's a good weekend if you're curious about how Denver's built environment gets shaped and argued over in general. It won't resolve what happens on your sidewalk along First Avenue. That decision is still sitting with DOTI's design team and Denver's City Council, not with anyone leading a walking tour.
The mile between Downing and University will likely feel exactly the same on your next ride as it did on your last one. What's changed is the reason it hasn't changed yet. It's no longer a fifty-year-old fence dispute nobody can touch. It's an active, funded, unfinished design process with a vote already on the books and more decisions still ahead, which means the people who use that stretch every day still have a say in how it eventually turns out.
If you're weighing a move within Country Club or curious how a property here fits into the neighborhood's longer story, from its Cherry Creek boundary to its historic streets, the Nichols & Lee Team knows this ground well enough to walk it with you. Schedule a free consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
