Loop down Lake Avenue toward the Zoo entrance this month and the sequence feels unfamiliar in a way that has nothing to do with new construction fencing. The road still bends the same way past the hotel roundabout. What changed is what happens once you're through the gate, and what changed up the canyon at the other end of your usual weekend loop is the same story told twice.
Cheyenne Mountain Zoo and North Cheyenne Cañon Park sit on opposite ends of the informal loop that Broadmoor Hills residents drive, walk, or bike more than any other. The zoo is marking its hundredth year. The canyon just finished its biggest gateway project since 1990. Both rebuilt the first thing you see when you arrive, within weeks of each other. That is not a coincidence anyone planned, but it is the reason this particular summer looks different from the last twenty.
The Zoo's New Front Door Opened In May
Cheyenne Mountain Zoo turns 100 this year, founded by Spencer Penrose in 1926 after his private animal collection outgrew the Broadmoor golf course. The centennial arrived with a rebuilt entrance. On May 28, the zoo's 150-pound African spurred tortoise, Chobe, bit through a ribbon to open a new admissions plaza that separates pedestrian paths from the vehicle road for the first time. Six life-sized bronze giraffe sculptures, a project the zoo calls The 200 Project, now flank the walkway, representing the more than 200 giraffe calves born there since the herd arrived in the 1950s. Past the sculptures sits a new gift shop and the Longneck Café, replacing whatever you remember standing near the old ticket booths.
If you have not walked through since spring, the entry sequence will not match the one in your head. That is the point of the exercise, and it is only the first of two.
The Giraffe Center Nobody Can Book Yet
The bigger change is still coming, and as of early August it does not yet have a date. The $40 million International Center for the Care and Conservation of Giraffe is in its final stretch of construction, replacing an African Rift Valley habitat that has held the herd for more than twenty years. The new barn runs 12,000 square feet, nearly triple the old indoor space, and the outdoor yard grows by 25 percent by shifting the zoo's main road out of the way. Feeding stations jump from three to eleven, spread across a barn topped with an ETFE roof the zoo says will be the largest of its kind covering an animal exhibit in North America.
CEO Dave Ruhl described the outdoor redesign to a local news crew in early August, explaining that guests will get a three-tiered view as giraffes move up switchback paths for the first time in the zoo's history.
"When guests are outside, they will have a three-tiered view of giraffes and what it gives giraffes is plenty of space for straight-line walking so they can walk up to a shade structure and then they take a switchback, they walk up, they go up to the top."
No opening date has been announced. The admissions plaza and café are already open and running, which means the neighborhood is currently living through the in-between: the front door is finished, the main event is not, and nobody outside the zoo's staff knows exactly which week that changes.
The Cañon Did The Same Thing In June
Drive the other direction and North Cheyenne Cañon Park went through its own version of this in June. The Starsmore Visitor and Nature Center, a craftsman-style stone house that was moved to its current spot at the canyon entrance in 1990, got its first major overhaul since that relocation. The city finished construction on a new outdoor plaza and classroom space, renovated the restrooms, and rebuilt the parking and pedestrian routes to meet ADA standards. The ribbon cutting for the new Mary Starsmore Discovery Plaza happened June 17.
The park pulls in roughly 450,000 visitors a year, and the Starsmore center is the gateway almost all of them pass through before they reach Helen Hunt Falls or start up the Columbine Trail. Parks operations administrator Cathy Railton noted the new plaza gives the more than 4,000 schoolchildren who visit annually a place to gather without dodging cars in a parking lot, a detail that tells you how much informal foot traffic that entrance handles even outside peak tourist season.
So the neighborhood's two anchor attractions, one privately funded and marking its hundredth year, one municipally funded and marking its thirty-sixth since the current building arrived, reopened their entrances twenty days apart this summer, the zoo on May 28 and the canyon on June 17. Nobody coordinated that. It just means that if you last walked through either gate before Memorial Day, both experiences will feel new to you in ways that have nothing to do with the animals or the trails themselves.
How To Actually Use The Window
A few practical notes for anyone treating this as a normal weekend rather than a tourist itinerary:
- The zoo's new admissions plaza is open now and worth a slow walk even without a full visit planned, since the giraffe sculptures and café are already in place ahead of the main exhibit.
- Once the Giraffe Center does open, expect crowding at the new feeding stations for at least the first few weekends. Weekday mornings remain the better bet if you're going for the animals rather than the ribbon cutting.
- Starsmore's new plaza sits right at the Columbine Trail's east trailhead, so it works as a starting point for a Helen Hunt Falls walk or a longer push toward the Upper Columbine trailhead near the falls.
- After a hike, Restaurant 1858 inside Seven Falls serves pan-seared trout and a bison burger, and reservations are worth making if you're coming on a weekend evening.
None of this requires planning around anyone else's schedule. That has always been the quiet advantage of a neighborhood built this close to both landmarks. This year it just happens to come with two freshly rebuilt front doors instead of one.
What This Actually Means For The Neighborhood
The zoo's centennial and the city's canyon investment are unrelated projects with unrelated funding and unrelated timelines. What they share is proximity, and that proximity is the entire reason a Broadmoor Hills resident notices both changes in the same season while someone across town might only hear about the giraffe center from a news segment. One gateway went thirty-six years between major overhauls. The other waited more than twenty years since its habitat was last rebuilt. Both finished within the same twenty-day stretch this summer, a pattern this stretch of road has not shown before.
That is worth knowing if you live here, not because it changes anything about your address, but because it explains why the loop feels different this August than it has in a long time.
For neighborhood insight beyond this season's construction, from architecture to market timing to what makes Broadmoor Hills distinct among the Broadmoor-area enclaves, Eric Scott has spent his career working these streets and is always glad to talk through what's changing, whether or not a move is anywhere on your mind.
