Nearly 23 years after Denver International Airport sent its first flight skyward, a critical but missing on-ramp at the nearby intersection of Tower Road and Peña Boulevard will finally break ground next week.

The ramp, expected to take a year to complete, will not only provide long-sought access to westbound Peña Boulevard for the thousands who use two sprawling satellite parking lots on Tower Road every day, but it promises to boost economic fortunes in Denver’s northern suburbs and turn what has been a local route into a regional transportation corridor.

“We have waited for our turn — and it’s our turn now,” Commerce City Mayor Sean Ford said. “This ramp won’t just be for access for motorists — it will be an opportunity for business to develop on Tower Road.”

Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan, who helped spearhead construction of E-470 a quarter-century ago and still serves on the public highway authority’s governing board, characterized the Peña/Tower interchange as a “regional interchange.”

“Tower serves as a major north-south thoroughfare on the east side of the metro area,” he said. “The interchange is a regional project, so to have it completed is a plus for the region.”

More immediately, completing the ramp will be a plus for Tower Road drivers, who for years have groused about the poor access to Denver-bound Peña.

Nowhere have those cries been louder than at the USAirport Parking and Canopy Airport Parking less than a mile north of the intersection. After a tiring trip, users of those lots are frustrated when they repeatedly find westbound Peña Boulevard a no-go. Forced to head down Tower Road to East 56th Avenue or Interstate 70 in order to make their way into the city, drivers are left wondering why the interchange has only three on- and off-ramps.

Russ Lyles, longtime general manager of the 7,811-vehicle capacity USAirport Parking, said he has “waited a long time” for that question to be answered.

“We hear from customers who leave the lot and find there’s no ramp, and they call us and vent,” Lyles said. “It couldn’t get here any sooner.”

On Monday, officials will gather to mark the groundbreaking of the $12.1 million project, which includes a widening of Tower Road near the interchange. Construction is expected to start next month.

Impasse over ramp

The road to putting in the missing Tower/Peña ramp is a long one, starting with the creation of Denver’s E-470 beltway in the 1990s and ending this year when the Federal Aviation Administration gave final blessing to the project.

It started with the same challenge that faces all road projects in Colorado — a lack of funding.

Commerce City, which has long sought access to westbound Peña from Tower, made this pitch to the E-470 Public Highway Authority 25 years ago: If you put up money for the ramp, we agree not to improve Tower Road and compete with E-470 while the tollway is in its infancy.

“That’s something you want — we want something we want,” said Hogan, describing what was at the time a classic quid pro quo. “It’s hard to come up with new road dollars.”

But no one expected the endgame to take more than 20 years.

After E-470 officials committed $3.2 million to construction of the ramp, the next battle was with the FAA. The agency’s big concern was ensuring that Peña didn’t get bogged down with non-airport traffic.

The northwest corner of the Tower/Peña interchange is the only one that doesn’t directly serve the airport. An on-ramp from there to Peña would funnel traffic off a non-airport road and away from DIA.

But after numerous meetings with FAA officials — and with Denver’s help during negotiations — Commerce City was able to arrive at a deal that would let the project move forward, Ford said. The city must pay maintenance fees to Denver — about $25,000 a year — to account for the expected wear and tear from non-airport traffic on Peña once the ramp opens.

Commerce City also had to come up with more than $4.3 million for ramp design and construction. The main contractor on the project is Castle Rock Construction.

Monday’s groundbreaking will be a poignant moment for Ford, who as a public-works employee for Commerce City in the 1990s remembers moving roadside barricades out of the way to allow renegade motorists to beat an illicit path onto Peña from Tower Road.

“It does bring me full circle,” he said.

Boon for Commerce City

With the non-compete agreement with E-470 long elapsed, Commerce City is ready for the Tower Road corridor to take off.

Last week, the city completed a $51 million expansion of the road to four lanes between East 80th and East 103rd avenues. Denver has pledged nearly $4.6 million to widening Tower from East 80th to the south side of Peña, which will occur at the same time the ramp is being built.

Ford said an improved Tower Road directly serves a burgeoning Reunion neighborhood, which sits at the northeast end of Commerce City. The city is approaching a population of 60,000, making it the second-fastest growing suburb in the metro area from 2010 to 2015, according to a study based on U.S. Census data.

With the ability to access Peña off of Tower, the mayor said, residents will have a far easier commute into Denver and other points west.

“Most of our growth is in that northeast quadrant,” Ford said. “It’s going to be a huge benefit to a lot of residents.”