By Andy Bosselman
For decades, the cloverleaf interchange at Colfax Avenue and Federal Boulevard has been a hulking monument to mid-century urban planning — designed for the rapid movement of cars, but at an immense cost to the communities it displaced and isolated. This highway-style interchange, which Denver built in the 1960s, displaced more than 240 families and businesses in one of Denver’s most diverse and historically significant neighborhoods.
Before the cloverleaf, walking between the surrounding neighborhoods — West Colfax, Avondale, and a now-vanished area known as the Bottoms — was easy. According to Judy Lucero, who grew up in the Bottoms, the area included small homes, corner stores, synagogues, and family-run businesses that served both the Jewish and Hispanic communities.
On Saturdays, observant Jews walked to synagogues and the Star Bakery. Children crossed Federal to buy groceries or visit friends. “You didn’t need to leave the neighborhood to shop,” she said.
But the cloverleaf changed that. “It isolated the Bottoms,” Lucero said. “It interrupted the access the communities had to each other… When you isolate a community, you destroy human relationships.”
Alfredo Cardenas recalled the loss of his childhood home. “It was so sad for me. I could not drive by that intersection for 10 years,” he told the Cloverleaf Oral Histories Project, an initiative of History Colorado, Sun Valley Kitchen + Community Center, and the Denver Streets Partnership.
Today, the intersection is outdated, unsafe, and a stark example of infrastructure that prioritizes vehicles over people.
But a growing movement, backed by community members, street safety advocates, and city and state leaders, is calling for the removal of the cloverleaf in favor of a vibrant, mixed-use district that could reconnect neighborhoods, improve safety, and help address Denver’s housing crisis.
Cloverleaf Oral Histories Project
Residents of Denver’s Sun Valley neighborhood and the area historically known as The Bottoms share how urban renewal displaced more than 240 homes and businesses in the 1960s to allow for the construction of the highway-style cloverleaf interchange of Colfax Avenue and Federal Boulevard.
Photo: The Star Bakery. Courtesy: Denver Public Library Special Collections
What Was Lost: A Community Erased
Before the cloverleaf, the area around Colfax and Federal was home to a thriving, multicultural community. Hispanic and Jewish families lived in close-knit neighborhoods, where the smells of the Star Bakery wafted through the air, children gazed at televisions through the furniture store’s window, and parents would send their kids to fetch groceries.
Cardenas, who lived in Avondale, fondly recalled growing up there. “I still dream about that neighborhood!” he says.
He described walking and bicycling throughout the neighborhood, including for grocery trips to Hartman’s, a Jewish market that wasn’t always familiar with ingredients used in Mexican cooking.
“Once my mom sent my brother down there for some manteca,” he says, using the Spanish word for lard. “They didn’t know what manteca was.”
In the 1960s, urban renewal projects and highway construction displaced families across the country, a pattern documented by AARP. In Denver, the cloverleaf at Colfax and Federal wasn’t built to serve the people who lived there — it was designed to move cars quickly through what had once been their neighborhood. As families were forced out, the area lost homes, a network of businesses, relationships, and community life.
“We didn’t have any choice,” said Cardenas, whose home was taken in 1960, the year he graduated from high school.
The Westside Memory Project documents how people remember the tight-knit community that once existed. For some, that includes a sense of injustice at how it was destroyed. Much of the story you are reading comes from an offshoot of the initiative known as the Cloverleaf Oral Histories Project, funded with a grant from AARP, which collected interviews from six former residents of the area.
A tree grows out of the neglected cloverleaf intersection on a foggy February morning at Colfax and Federal Boulevards in Denver, Colorado. Photo: Andy Bosselman
The Cloverleaf Today: Dangerous, Outdated, and an Eyesore
The Colfax-Federal cloverleaf no longer serves the city’s needs. Initially built for high-volume vehicle movement, it now creates a mix of congestion and high-speed traffic while failing to accommodate people walking, biking and riding transit safely.
“It is a very dangerous place,” says Dan Shah, Executive Director of the West Colfax Business District.
- It is a pedestrian nightmare: The interchange forces people on foot to navigate a maze of high-speed roads and dangerous crossings. Both Colfax and Federal are part of Denver’s High-Injury Network of streets with disproportionately high rates of traffic deaths and serious injuries. Federal Boulevard is one of the most hazardous roads in Colorado, with 40 fatalities between 2017 and 2024. 28 of which were people walking, according to the Denver Streets Partnership.
- It is a blighted waste of space: Spanning 29 acres — roughly 14 city blocks — the cloverleaf is overgrown with weeds, littered, and underutilized. It takes up more land than Denver’s Union Station redevelopment, including a new neighborhood beyond the station. Much of the cloverleaf land sits underutilized despite being in a prime location adjacent to one of Denver’s busiest transit hubs.
- It isolates neighborhoods: The interchange physically divides West Colfax, Villa Park, Sloan’s Lake, the Stadium District, and the Highlands, cutting residents off from schools, jobs, and public spaces. It also isolates Sun Valley, which is hemmed in by the Colfax viaduct, Interstate 25, and Sixth Avenue.
Judy Lucero, pictured at the cloverleaf in February, grew up in the Bottoms. “It was just scary,” she said of the highway-style interchange. “As a child, of course, I ventured out there, because that’s what children do. And it was just terrifying.” Photo: Andy Bosselman
A Vision for the Future: A Thriving, Inclusive Community
For over 60 years, the Colfax-Federal cloverleaf has divided neighborhoods, severed relationships, and erased walkable connections that once defined life on Denver’s West Side. However, former residents like Lucero carry not only memories of what was lost — but a compelling vision for what could return.
“If that [cloverleaf] is taken out … you can recreate community,” she says.
Lucero remembers a time when the neighborhood was full of small grocery stores, fruit trucks, children on bicycles, and a deeply interconnected community. She imagines a future where that vibrancy is not just remembered — but rebuilt.
“You can create a space that helps people reconnect,” she says.
Since 2012, community leaders have asked residents to imagine what could replace the cloverleaf. The answer has been consistent: People want a neighborhood where they can safely walk, bike, and access transit. They want local businesses that create jobs and serve the community. They want public spaces that bring people together instead of keeping them apart. Above all, they want new housing that offers affordable options in the heart of the city — when working-class families are being pushed farther to the margins by rising rents and displacement.
“I would move back here so fast,” says Lucero.
That vision is already taking shape. Multiple planning efforts, such as the Over the Colfax Clover initiative led by the West Colfax Business Improvement District, have proposed removing the cloverleaf, restoring a traditional street grid and developing a new neighborhood.
In 2018, residents got a glimpse of what’s possible at the Over the Colfax Clover Neighborhood Festival, where volunteers transformed a portion of the interchange. The pop-up event remade part of the interchange into a lively, walkable public space with food vendors, music, and mock intersections that showed how the area could be redesigned.
Key components of the vision include:
- Replacing the cloverleaf with a pedestrian-friendly street grid. This would reconnect the area and make crossing Federal and Colfax safer.
- Building mixed-use housing and business spaces. The land could create a thriving corridor for affordable housing, shops, and restaurants.
- Creating new public spaces. Parks, greenways, and plazas could turn the area into a lively gathering space.
Rendering of a proposed redesign of the Colfax-Federal cloverleaf interchange. Source: West Colfax Business Improvement District
The Time for Change is Now
Denver is at a crossroads. As the city faces a housing crisis, a street safety crisis, and increasing demands for inclusive urban planning, the removal of the Colfax-Federal cloverleaf presents a rare opportunity to address all three.
Tara Cloe, who lived near the cloverleaf for over a decade, called for change. “You got to do something with this,” she told the Denver Post in 2018.
The Colorado Department of Transportation received a $2 million federal grant to plan for the interchange’s removal in 2024, signaling that change is not just an idea but a real possibility. However, the agency has not yet started the planning process, and the grant is at risk of being rescinded by the Trump administration.
For decades, the cloverleaf has been a symbol of failed urban planning — a relic of an era that sacrificed neighborhoods for highways. Now, Denver can undo that mistake and create a space that serves all its residents.
The time for action is now. We must tell our city, state and federal leaders to commit to this vision — and help transform Colfax and Federal into a safer, more inclusive community.