GRAND JUNCTION — On a sunny late-winter morning, the Las Colonias riverfront development is, surprisingly, bustling.
City workers wrangle loose tumbleweeds along the development’s winding streets. Walkers and their dogs amble and sniff around a pond shaped like a butterfly. Campers in vintage Airstream trailers on the outskirts of the development pump up bike tires to get ready for a chilly spin on the trail along the Colorado River. Vehicles nose into parking spaces outside a pot shop and a hair salon.
This is all that city leaders and business visionaries envisioned two decades ago when they began dreaming up the $30 million business-park makeover of this once-blighted and mostly deserted section of riverfront property south of Grand Junction’s downtown.
Or, nearly all.
The promise of a city replacing 128 acres of radioactive dumping grounds and a historic migrant farmworker neighborhood with outdoor-related development and recreation has not waned. But it has morphed as visions smacked into a pandemic and new economic realities. Build-out at Las Colonias has gone slower than anticipated. The area is not yet approaching dreams of a Western Slope LoDo.
Since the city broke ground on the business part of Las Colonias, development of the area slumped and opened to a wider range of commercial enterprises, not only the recreation-oriented.
“It’s all part of the evolution,” said Sarah Schraeder, who, along with her husband Thaddeus Schraeder, helped to convince the City of Grand Junction its abandoned riverfront should not be wasted.
A view of part of Las Colonias Park from a cliff at Eagle RimPark on the south side of the Colorado River shows the Las Colonias’ boat ramp (lower right), ponds, a portion of the Riverfront Trail and an office building that houses a variety of businesses including zipline builder Bonsai Designs. (Gretel Daugherty, Special to The Colorado Sun)Empty building, unused zipline
Las Colonias officially broke ground on infrastructure in 2018 after the decontaminated land given to the city by the U.S. Department of Energy had sat empty for decades. The next year, RockyMounts, a maker of bike racks, created a stir of optimism when it moved its headquarters to Grand Junction from Boulder.
RockyMounts was heralded as proof that recreation-related enterprises would find the parklike setting a solid draw.
But RockyMounts moved its distribution and warehouse operations to Utah after a year of operation. A lack of container rail shipping to and from Grand Junction proved to be a surprise snag. RockyMounts sold its manufacturing operation to an Australia-based company late in 2024 and left Grand Junction for Aurora. A large “For Sale” sign is now posted outside the empty 20,000-square-foot building.
A “For Sale” sign stands on the lawn outside of the empty RockyMounts building in Las Colonias Park in Grand Junction. RockyMounts, the first business to build in Las Colonias Business Park, was sold to Australia-based Rhino-Rack in December of 2024, and has moved to Aurora. (Gretel Daugherty, Special to The Colorado Sun)Nearby, a much heralded zipline stretches unused over the Colorado River. It was planned to be a eye-catching component of the recreation aspect of Las Colonias. But it closed in 2024 during its first full year of business due to “operational losses” and has now become a sort of Las Colonias albatross because of its high visibility.
When it had opened in the late summer of 2023 after two years of delays, there was no stampede of zipliners. It turned out there wasn’t a big market for a $22 zip from a tower on the north side of the river to a bluff on the south.
The line was built by Bonsai Designs, the Schraeders’ aerial adventure company, which was the first business to plant a survey flag in the newly graded dirt of Las Colonias.
Bonsai is still designing ziplines and aerial courses for worldwide markets from its Las Colonias headquarters, but its closed zipline has generated local grumbling about the wisdom of city handouts.
The city had handed Bonsai a million dollars to boost the $3.2 million Bonsai spent on its flagship building. In exchange for the financial help, Bonsai agreed to fund, build and operate the zipline. The agreement specified the city could take the line over if Bonsai failed to operate it.
“We did way more than we were supposed to do, but we lost $100,000 each year of our two years of operation,” Thaddeus Schraeder said.
The city doesn’t appear to be in a rush to own a municipal zipline. City officials say Bonsai is welcome to use the line for training and research. They say Bonsai has met its other obligations, including job creation and maintaining its headquarters at Las Colonias.
Other businesses are filling extra space
Bonsai was built with extra commercial space that now houses businesses out of the mold of the recreation-related enterprises envisioned in the early days of Las Colonias. An accounting firm, an engineer, a realty company, and a construction business populate glass-walled offices overlooking the butterfly-shaped pond.
The Schraeders say the outdoors-oriented aspect of Las Colonias is still a strong draw to the area, even if some of the businesses moving in are not focused on recreation. She said workers value the option of heading directly out to trails or to the city-built boat launch that has attracted a nearby kiosk renting watercraft.
The recently-completed OakStar Bank building is a new addition to the Las Colonias Business Park in Grand Junction. (Gretel Daugherty/Special to the Colorado Sun)To the west of Bonsai, a “Come See Us, We’re Open” banner flaps outside the shining glass walls of the new 12,000-square-foot OakStar Bank.
A financial institution looming over the trails, a dog park and a river play area was also not what city leaders envisioned in the early days of Las Colonias. But they now say it fits because a third of its space is open for other commercial tenants such as a restaurant, a coffee shop, a yoga studio, or a winery — all wish-list amenities dating to the beginning of Las Colonias.
Trent Prall, the Grand Junction engineering and transportation director who has been instrumental in the development of Las Colonias since the beginning, said the swerve in some of the focus is not concerning. He said the city is simply broadening its horizons as it shapes a vibrant new area in the Western Slope’s largest city.
“We have gotten more engagement with the river,” Prall said. “That is what we planned for.”
Curtis Englehart agrees. Englehart took over as executive director of the Grand Junction Economic Development Partnership in 2022 after Las Colonias had already taken shape and after voters had OK’d the elimination of a stumbling block by extending riverfront land leases to 99 years from 25.
“The Riverfront at Las Colonias is working really well,” Englehart said. “I think we’re definitely moving in the right direction.”
Mike Bennett took over as Grand Junction city manager in 2024, and is also an advocate for where Las Colonias is headed. He said inquiries about the seven shovel-ready building sites at Las Colonias have been picking up this year.
“I don’t know who wouldn’t want to be there,” Bennett said.
City dwellers have demonstrated that has some truth to it.
More than 150 apartment and condo units have sprung up around the development. Hundreds more are planned or already under construction on what used to be a sawmill property, a sugar beet plant, and a trucking company on the north and east sides of Las Colonias.
Gap between Main Street and the river is narrowing
Edgewater Brewery, the first business to take a public-attracting chance on the riverfront in 2000, sold last year. The new owner, WestCo Brewing, has continued as an eating and drinking establishment within hollering distance of the $3.8 million,5,000-seat (in the grass) Las Colonias amphitheater. Known as the Amp, the venue has grown into a steady attraction where Bob Dylan, Snoop Dogg and Ringo Starr have performed for packed crowds.
The late afternoon sun casts a shadow of a line of music from the back of a bench outside of the the enclosure to the amphitheater and stage at Las Colonias Park in Grand Junction. The Amp, as it is known to locals, features musical and stage performances outdoors during the warmer months. (Gretel Daugherty, Special to the Colorado Sun)As city officials had hoped, businesses are also creeping from Grand Junction’s popular, art-displaying Main Street toward the riverfront along 7th Street. A martial arts studio, an old grain silo turned bungee thrill attraction, a new restaurant featuring platter-sized fried pork tenderloins, and a gym have sprung up along what was a gritty commercial and industrial area.
The city plans to revamp the corridor’s infrastructure to accommodate more development, Bennett said. He said it will include better transportation options on streets that have the challenge of crossing railroad tracks.
The concept of a “string of pearls” stretching from Las Colonias west towards Fruita is also taking shape with another city park area and a private development.
The Dos Rios General Development District — 58 acres of mixed-use, residential, commercial and retail use — has a very visible Starbucks. Nearby, the Confluence Center of Colorado opened its doors with office space for nonprofits, land- and water-related agencies, and a day care and preschool.
Dos Rios is located on land that was even more blighted than Las Colonias. The riverside was previously a landfill strewn with 8,500 junked vehicles. A layer of radioactive tailings covered much of the junk. The city sold 15 acres of the cleared land to a Washington, D.C-based private developer, MR Properties. That company has built apartments and is offering land for a brewery, a wine bar, a food hall and event spaces.
The adjacent city land has been used for creative park amenities, including a playground with an eye-catching fish-shaped wooden structure, a bike skills park, a splash pad and a beach.
Children play on a giant wooden-fish play structure at the playground in the Dos Rios General Development District on a sunny afternoon. The mixed-use Dos Rios district is located along the Colorado River west of Las Colonias in Grand Junction. (Gretel Daugherty, Special to the Colorado Sun)Competition popped up in Montrose
Besides revamping its original concept for the riverfront, Grand Junction has had to vie for businesses with the Colorado Outdoors development along the Uncompahgre River in the city of Montrose.
Englehart and Bennett said they would classify it as “complementing rather than competing.” But the kinds of businesses that Las Colonias set its sights on, including Mayfly Outdoors, chose the Montrose riverfront rather than Grand Junction’s.
Colorado Outdoors mixed-use development on the banks of the Uncompahgre River in Montrose includes headquarters for Mayfly Outdoors. (Nina Riggio, Special to The Colorado Sun)The Montrose riverfront has also attracted a string of smaller businesses, including a distillery, a shop for anglers, a bike store, a yurt maker, a sauna workout studio, restaurants, a hot tub purveyor and a hotel.
The promoters of Grand Junction’s riverfront say there is no jealousy directed toward Montrose.
Thaddeus Schraeder said he views the multiple riverside developments in terms of “a rising tide lifting all the boats up.”
“This all shows that this is an up-and-coming part of the world. It lets people know that there is something going on over here,” he said.
Englehart offered, “what’s good for Montrose is good for Montrose. What’s good for Grand Junction is good for Grand Junction. We have a few similarities but quite a few differences.”
He said those differences include Grand Junction’s location along Interstate 70 between Denver and Salt Lake City, a growing Colorado Mesa University, and a labor force of 80,000.
Englehart said he sees strong interest in Las Colonias. Development eyes on the area have picked up after a stall during the COVID pandemic and a stuttering jump in inquiries in recent years. That is changing. He said he is currently talking with five “solid prospects.” He won’t say what they are, but he said they would all complement the new, expanded focus of Las Colonias.
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