Greenways Park in Springs Ranch Is Still Waiting on a Bridge
October 8, 2026
October 8, 2026
Where did the back nine go? The quick answer is housing. In 2020, Colorado Springs City Council approved Classic Homes' plan to turn Springs Ranch Golf Club into a neighborhood of about 900 homes called Greenways at Sand Creek. That answer leaves out most of what matters to someone who lives nearby. Much of the old course is now public or soon-to-be-public green space. It runs along Sand Creek in three pieces that were planned to connect, and in October 2026 they still don't.
The park on the west bank is built and has hosted events. The open space on the east bank sits across the water from it. The large city park at Tutt and Barnes is still mostly dirt and a plan. Whether this land works as one place or three separate ones depends on a short list of pieces that are still unbuilt, and the first of them is a bridge.
When the Gazette covered the 2020 approval, Classic Homes was buying the privately owned, publicly accessible course near north Carefree Circle and Tutt Boulevard. The company expected to build on much of its 170 acres, with plans for 300 apartments and 600 single-family houses, condominiums and townhomes. Many neighbors opposed losing the open space. Classic Homes CEO Doug Stimple said he redesigned the plan after meeting with them, and Council approved it unanimously.
Two of those concessions explain the land you can walk on today. Classic Homes dropped plans to build east of Sand Creek, which left 25 acres of open space. It also dropped a set of townhomes so a 7.7-acre neighborhood park could sit right next to the creek. In 2021, the city traded away a 23.5-acre sports complex property it owned on Tutt Boulevard. In return, Classic Communities gave the city 23.5 acres of the former course next to Norman "Bulldog" Coleman Community Park, which brought that park site to 70 acres.
That leaves three pieces of former golf course land in public or park hands:
| Piece | What it is | Where it stands |
|---|---|---|
| Greenways Park | Neighborhood park beside Sand Creek, built by Classic Homes | Built, has hosted concerts, was being transferred to the city as of February 2025 |
| East-of-creek open space | Land kept free of development in the 2020 deal | Inside the park-zoned parcel, across the creek from Greenways Park |
| Coleman Park expansion | 23.5 acres of former course that brought the Coleman site at Tutt and Barnes to 70 acres total | No active park construction projects as of the city's Spring 2025 update |
In January 2024, City Council rezoned 45.33 acres southeast of Tutt Boulevard and North Carefree Circle to Public Park. KOAA reported that this parcel covers both the Classic-built neighborhood park and land that would link trails and running paths in the Sand Creek area.
Greenways Park has a pond, an event pavilion, play areas, picnic spots, open fields and a hammock garden. When KOAA covered the 2024 rezoning, a city landscape architect named Connie Schmeisser talked about the playground and about kids getting time outside.
The pavilion has given the park a summer calendar. Classic Homes presented a free concert series there in 2026, one Saturday evening a month from June through September, with live music and local food trucks. The Peak Radar listing for the season showed this lineup:
The last of those dates was two weeks ago, so the series is over for the year. If it returns next summer, the 2026 schedule suggests what to expect: free admission, a Saturday each month, and a rotating set of local trucks.
The park's ownership is still being finalized. In February 2025, Classic Homes described it as "currently being conveyed to the City of Colorado Springs." The Gazette described the transfer the same way in November 2024. No public record we found shows the transfer has been completed since then.
On January 21, 2026, the city's parks department published its list of trail, open space and park projects for the year. One item was the Greenways Park Bridge, "connecting Greenways on the west side of Sand Creek to park property on the East side of Sand Creek." This bridge is what would join the finished park to the 25 acres the 2020 deal kept free of development. Until it's built, the creek separates the two pieces of the old course that were set aside for public use.
The same sentence on the city's list included a second Sand Creek crossing, the Rock Island Trail Bridge. That project is underway. The Gazette reported on August 21 that work had started on a two-mile Rock Island Trail extension from Eastridge Park to Sand Creek, where the city will build a new pedestrian bridge. We haven't found a matching announcement for the Greenways bridge. No start date, contractor or schedule has been published. With roughly three months left in the year, it's still listed as anticipated and hasn't been announced as started.
The city's 2026 parks outlook is the page to check. The parks department also says updates go out through its newsletter and the @CoSpringsParks social accounts.
The trail situation follows a similar pattern. The Trails & Open Space Coalition describes the northern segment of the Sand Creek Trail as running north and south along the creek between Woodmen Road and Barnes Road. It's mostly hardpacked natural surface, with a concrete stretch between Barnes Road and Stetson Hills Boulevard, and it connects to Stetson Park and Stetson Hills Open Space. North of Barnes, the creek corridor already works as a trail.
South of Barnes is Coleman Park. The city envisions it working much like Memorial Park or John Venezia Park, with sports fields and a universally accessible playground, next to UCHealth Park, home of the Rocky Mountain Vibes, and Ragain Field. In its most recent update, marked Spring 2025, the city says there are "no active capital improvement projects scheduled for Coleman Community Park at this time." Stormwater crews were set to grade in a trail alignment so the parks department could later pour a concrete trail from Barnes south to the pond. The parks department plans to set an implementation timeline once funding is identified.
The flood control work next door sets the pace. On the city's Sand Creek Ponds project page, the ponds are shown as mostly complete as of June and October 2025. Design of the Sand Creek channel is on hold until a drainage basin study expected in late 2026. Permits are expected in late 2027 or early 2028, and the target for finishing construction is 2029 to 2030. Those dates matter because the city has tied the location of the Sand Creek Trail and its pedestrian bridge at Coleman to the creek design.
So the old golf course land now has a finished park on the west bank, open space across the water, a city park site to the south, and a creek trail that reaches Barnes from the north. The Greenways bridge is the shortest of the missing links. The trail south of Barnes depends on a creek design schedule that runs to the end of the decade.
The closest date is a short drive away. First & Main Town Center, which Classic Homes cites as one of Greenways' neighbors, holds its free Fifth Annual Fall Fun Fest on Saturday, October 10, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 3305 Cinema Point. The schedule includes pumpkin painting, face painting, inflatables, live entertainment, and costume contests for kids and dogs.
To see a Sand Creek trail and bridge project that's actually underway, the Rock Island Trail work south of Constitution Avenue is the one to visit. City crews are paving the dirt path along the western edge of Eastridge Park in concrete and adding a flashing pedestrian crossing where the trail meets Peterson Road. The parks department expects the work to continue through the end of the year. Even when it's done, the Gazette notes, the trail will still have a gap between Sand Creek and the sections west of Powers Boulevard.
Back at Greenways Park, the pavilion, pond and hammock garden are there as the weather cools, and the east bank is still across the water.
New parks, trails and bridges change how a street fits into the rest of Springs Ranch, and those changes show up in home values before they show up on a map. If you own near Tutt, Carefree Circle or Barnes and want to know what your home is worth as this land fills in, Sheena Crompton can walk you through it with local context. Get Your Instant Home Valuation.
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