Walk the old fairways off Colorado Boulevard on any weekend morning right now and you'll find dog walkers cutting across what used to be the third hole, joggers following the rough where a cart path once ran, and not much else. No benches. No playground. No sign explaining what you're standing on beyond a fence line that isn't there anymore. The chain link came down in October 2025, and Denver residents who spent years watching this site through a locked gate can finally cross it on foot.
That's a real milestone. It's also easy to mistake for the finish line. The renderings circulating since January, showing trail loops and open lawns across the full 155 acres, describe a park that exists on paper and in a framework plan, not on the ground. What's funded so far is one phase of a project whose total cost the city itself hasn't nailed down, arriving at the same moment Denver is closing a budget gap by trimming the department that will have to build the rest of it.
What's Actually Open Right Now
The public access that began on October 28, 2025 came after Mayor Mike Johnston finalized a land swap involving property near Denver International Airport, a deal that ended the legal fights over the site and moved the full 155 acres into park ownership rather than the mixed private-and-public plan that had been fought over for years before it. That swap is why you can walk there today at all. It is not the same thing as the site being finished, or even started, as a built park. What you're walking on is essentially the golf course's old contours, opened for informal use while the actual design work happens around you.
The Money Behind the Renderings
In November 2025, Denver voters approved $70 million in bond funding for the project as part of a $950 million package called Vibrant Denver, a long-term debt package covering capital projects across the city and paid for through existing property tax rates rather than a new tax. That $70 million is described by the city's own reporting as seed funding for the first phase of construction, not the full build-out. The overall budget for finishing all 155 acres is still unknown and could run into the hundreds of millions once final phases are priced.
That funding question lands at an awkward moment. Denver is facing a roughly $200 million budget deficit in 2026, and the parks department has already absorbed cuts as part of closing that gap. None of this threatens the project outright. The land is secured, the bond is real, and the first phase has money behind it. But the pace of everything beyond that first phase depends on future city budgets and likely future bond measures, not a fixed construction schedule.
Woody Garnsey, an open-space advocate who spent close to a decade pushing to keep this land public, put the moment in perspective after the bond passed:
"It shows that Denver citizens really care about the infrastructure of the city. We're particularly thrilled that there will be $70 million available in bond money to build out the new Park Hill Park that we've been working so hard for for so many years."
Notice the phrasing. Even the person who fought hardest for this outcome is talking about money "to build out" the park, not money that already built it.
A Site With Several Past Lives
Before it was 87 years of fairways, this ground did other work. Here's the compressed version:
| Period | What the Site Was |
|---|---|
| Early 20th century | Dairy farm |
| Mid-20th century | Supported operations at Lowry Airfield |
| 1931–2018 | Park Hill Golf Course, privately operated |
| 2019 | Sold to a private developer |
| Following years | Voters rejected the developer's redevelopment plan at the ballot |
| 2025 | Land swap tied to DIA property finalizes public park ownership of the full 155 acres |
| October 28, 2025 | Site opens for informal public walking access |
| January 2026 | Final framework plan presented |
The version most residents remember is the fight: years of ballot measures, a developer's plan, a rezoning vote, community meetings that ran for months. The 2025 land swap is what actually settled it, and it settled it in favor of a full public park rather than the partial version that had been debated for so long.
What the Framework Plan Actually Promises
The framework released in January was developed by the design and planning firm Sasaki, working with Denver Parks and Recreation through eight rounds of community engagement between August 2025 and January 2026, including open houses, surveys, and workshops. The firm is explicit that what got released is a framework, not construction drawings. It defines spatial organization, major amenity zones, and environmental systems that will guide the design still to come, built around four stated themes: honoring Denver's culture and history, building a park meant to hold up over the long term, balancing quiet spaces with more active ones, and creating a sense of belonging and joy on the site.
At the center of the plan is one long corridor of open space running through the property, built around ecological restoration and low-key, unprogrammed use rather than sports fields or heavy amenities, at least at its core. One planner working on the project told The Colorado Sun the scale gives the design room to serve a wide range of uses: "With 155 acres, there can be a little something for everyone." The same planner noted that real design work starts in 2026, with construction to follow, though no specific date has been attached to that construction start.
The next steps, according to the city's own framework documentation, are detailed design, prioritizing which amenities get built first, and settling a phasing strategy. In plain terms: nobody has decided yet whether the first thing built is a trail loop, a plaza, or a section of restored habitat. That decision comes after the framework, not as part of it.
What This Means If You Live Nearby
If your daily walk already routes past this site, the practical takeaway is patience paired with attention. Expect the current informal access, mowed paths across old fairways, to remain the reality for a while yet. The eight rounds of engagement that shaped the framework suggest the city will keep asking for input as phasing decisions get made, so residents who want a say in what gets built first still have a window to weigh in through future public meetings.
The longer-term picture is significant for the neighborhood in a way that goes beyond this one project. When finished, this will be Denver's fourth-largest park, a scale of open space that doesn't exist anywhere else in this part of the city. That kind of change tends to show up gradually in how a block feels to live on, not all at once. If you're weighing a renovation or a scrape-and-build on a lot near the site, it's worth reading how that conversation plays out elsewhere in the neighborhood, which we cover in our piece on new builds and scrapes in Hilltop and Crestmoor. And if you're still sorting out where Park Hill's boundaries sit relative to Hilltop and Crestmoor, our guide to choosing your fit among the three lays that out.
For now, the honest way to describe this project is a park that's open before it's built. That's not a contradiction so much as the actual order of operations here: land secured, first phase funded, design still underway, full completion still an open question tied to city budgets that haven't caught up to the vision yet.
If you're watching this corner of Park Hill for reasons beyond an afternoon walk, whether that's timing a sale near the new park boundary or understanding how a project like this might shape values on your specific block over the next several years, Helm Weaver Helm tracks these kinds of shifts closely across Denver's established neighborhoods. Book an Appointment with our team when you're ready to talk specifics.
