Village Greens Park Gets a Pump Track the Same Fall Its Parking Lots Filled Up

On Tuesday, October 27, Village Greens Park has two city events on the calendar. From 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., residents can drop bagged or loose leaves in the North Parking Lot. At 6 p.m., the City of Greenwood Village opens a new pump track at the park and serves free refreshments.

The same lots carry a third load on school days. In August, the Cherry Creek School District moved Cherry Creek High School's junior-class parking off campus and into Village Greens for the 2026-27 school year.

So the park at 9501 E. Union Ave. gets its newest feature in the same season its lots started serving the high school. That overlap shapes how the next few weeks there work.

What Opens on the 27th

The city's event listing calls the pump track "the latest enhancement to the Village Greens Mountain Bike Course." It's a compact loop of rollers and banked berms. Riders keep their speed by pushing down and pulling up with the body, so they don't have to pedal. The city says it's built for riders of all ages and abilities.

The project was paid for in part by a grant from the Arapahoe County Open Space Sales and Use Tax.

The track sits next to a course that already has a clear structure. The city's posted course rules rate routes like a ski hill: green for easy, blue for intermediate, black diamond for expert. The routes mix natural and man-made obstacles.

Those distances explain why the pump track matters. The longest route on the course is 0.9 mile, and the shortest is a tenth of a mile. Until now, the course had no place to practice the same skill over and over, which is what a pump track does. A rider who has outgrown the Beginner Loop but isn't ready for the Hill Loop now has a third option.

In a 2023 post, RTD described Village Greens as a 25.1-acre park with softball fields, the mountain bike skills course and a disc golf course, less than a quarter mile from the Dayton light rail station. This fall, those same 25.1 acres are also absorbing a construction project's parking.

The Lots Now Serve the High School

The Cherry Creek High School rebuild is next door on Union Avenue. In Phase I, the district is replacing two district administrative buildings and the existing West Building with separate academic and athletic buildings. It's also redoing parking and adding a main campus entrance from Union Avenue. The district's September construction update shows a 200-foot crane on site and an elevator shaft rising for the new Academics Building. The district says that building remains on track to be finished for the start of the 2028-29 school year.

Construction has cut on-campus parking, and Village Greens is taking up much of the gap. The district's August 7 update lays out the park's share:

• About 280 spaces in the park's existing north and south lots are assigned to juniors.
• Student spaces are lined in white, and vehicles need an official CCHS decal.
• Spaces for park users are lined in yellow, and signs mark the difference.
• About 200 more junior drivers were to get a new lot on the park's north side. The district said construction would start soon and be finished during first semester.

By September 16, the plan was less settled. The district wrote that it "continue[s] to maintain the possibility of transforming Field 10 in Village Greens Park into a parking lot that could accommodate additional students" and said it was in talks with the city. It added that "future construction phases will have a larger impact on student parking." As of that update, the final shape of the park's parking was still open. Whether that extra capacity ends up as new pavement on the north side or comes out of a ball field affects anyone who plays on those fields.

The district's own schedule puts the long stretch further out. It forecasts the new West Buildings being finished and occupied in summer 2028. After that, the old West Building comes down and north parking and drop-off construction follows in fall 2028. The pump track is opening early in a construction schedule that runs for years.

The City Has Already Limited Leaf Drop-Off

The city's October newsletter limits resident leaf drop-off to three dates, Tuesday, October 27, Thursday, November 5, and Saturday, November 14, each from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the North Parking Lot. It gives the reason directly. Drop-offs aren't offered on any other dates "as parking space is limited in the area due to the ongoing Cherry Creek High School Rebuild Project."

The rules haven't loosened in other ways. Leaf drop-off is still for Greenwood Village residents only, and contractors can't use it. Residents can still bag leaves and set them out with weekly trash collection instead.

The pressure reaches beyond the park. In its August update, the district said parking by students on surrounding neighborhood streets is strictly prohibited, and that the Greenwood Village Police Department and Code Enforcement would enforce the rule. The same update said the city had started an early look at parking districts. That includes a possible new district for the Village on the Lake neighborhood and whether to expand the existing Cherry Creek Village North district to cover the whole neighborhood. No decisions had been made, and residents were told they'd be notified before any formal action. Mayor George Lantz's October message also covers City Council discussions about permit parking districts.

Planning a Visit Around the Overlap

None of this makes the park harder to enjoy if you plan for it. A few practical points, based on what the city and district have published:

1. Park in yellow. Spaces for park users are marked with yellow lines. White-lined spaces are for decaled CCHS students.
2. Use the light rail if it's convenient. The Dayton station is less than a quarter mile from the park, according to RTD.
3. Plan leaves around the three dates. If you miss October 27, the remaining dates are November 5 and November 14.
4. Report off-campus parking problems to the Greenwood Village Police Department's non-emergency line at 303-773-2525, which is the number the district publishes.
5. Contact the city's parks staff at Parks, Trails and Recreation, 303-486-5773 or [email protected], with questions about the pump track or leaf drop-off.

The opening is on a Tuesday evening at 6 p.m. Leaf drop-off ends at 2 p.m., four hours earlier, so the two events don't overlap.

The Rest of the City's Late-October and November Calendar

Several other city events fall within the next three weeks, and none of them are at Village Greens:

• Story Time with the Good Witch, Monday, October 26, 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. at the city Maintenance Facility. Tickets are $5 per child.
• Truck or Treat, Thursday, October 29, 4 to 6 p.m. at the Maintenance Facility, 10001 East Costilla Avenue. Kids can climb aboard real mowers and ATVs, watch traffic light demos and see sweeper and plow trucks up close. Tickets are required, per the city calendar listing.
• Election Day, Tuesday, November 3. City Hall hosts a ballot drop box, and the Community Room operates as a Voter Service and Polling Center from Friday, October 30, through 7 p.m. on Election Day. No City of Greenwood Village questions or candidates are on the ballot this year.
• Two new exhibitions at the Curtis Center for the Arts, opening Saturday, November 7. "Fragments: Work by Julia Rymer, with Guest Artist Deborah Howard" fills the South Gallery, and "Elemental: Artwork from the Seed Sisters Collective" fills the North Gallery. Both are free. Rymer gives an artist talk on Saturday, November 14, at 11 a.m., the same morning as the last leaf drop-off.

At Village Greens, the city's next date after the opening is the leaf drop-off on November 5. The district's schedule runs rebuild construction into fall 2028, and its September update said future phases will have a larger impact on student parking.

If you own a home near Union Avenue and are weighing a sale during the rebuild years, buyers will ask about the crane, the parking districts and the park's lots, and you'll want clear answers ready. WrightToSell prepares sellers to explain exactly what's happening nearby and when it's scheduled to end. Request Your White-Glove Listing Consultation.