Plans for the Jefferson Parkway inch forward

Jacob Smith.

Government officials in Jefferson County are negotiating with a Spanish construction company that is interested in financing, designing, building and operating the controversial Jefferson Parkway, a ten-mile toll road between State Highway 128 in Broomfield and State Highway 93 at West 64th Avenue north of Golden.

The Parkway has been the subject of two Westword stories, "The Jefferson Parkway project hits more roadblocks" from March 8 and "Will the proposed Jefferson Parkway toll road take commuters for a ride?" from 2009.

The Jefferson Parkway Public Highway Authority said Monday that it has entered into a ninety-day period of talks with Madrid-based Isolux Corsán. The Authority is made up of Jefferson County and the cities of Arvada and Broomfield.

The front-runner for the $204 million project had been BRISA Auto-estradas, the Portugese firm that runs the Northwest Parkway, another section of the beltway through the Denver suburbs. That Parkway would connect with the Jefferson Parkway.

And as Westword wrote: "The proposed road...would complete the final segment of the metro-area beltway. If not for a trick of topography that puts Golden directly at the nine o'clock mark on the beltway circle, the project might have been completed years ago. Instead, Golden officials have watched with growing anxiety as construction of the beltway has ticked counterclockwise in various segments: First came C-470 in 1985, then the E-470 tollway in the '90s, and, finally, the Northwest Parkway in Broomfield, which opened in 2003 but was later leased to a private operator."