The Redlands Roundabout Isn't a City Project. Here's Who's Actually Paying for It.

If you've driven south on Broadway past Redlands Parkway this summer, you've probably asked yourself the same three questions in some order: how long is this going to take, why did they pick this particular intersection, and who decided this was worth the mess.

Here's what most people assume: the city noticed a dangerous intersection and finally got around to fixing it. That's not quite what happened. The roundabout going in at Broadway and 23 Road exists because a private developer's traffic study said it had to, and that same developer is covering three quarters of the bill. The construction cones on your commute are a receipt for a much bigger project happening just south of the highway, one that's going to add more households to this end of the Redlands than any single development has in three or four decades.

Why This Intersection, Specifically

The roundabout is tied directly to Redlands 360, a residential development being built by La Plata Communities on the south side of Highway 340. Before a single home could go vertical, the project had to run a traffic study on how the new households would load onto Broadway. That study looked at three options: a signalized intersection, dedicated turn lanes, or a roundabout. The roundabout won on safety and traffic flow, and the design includes a footprint sized for a future second lane if the area keeps growing the way the city expects it to.

Trent Prall, the city's engineering and transportation director, has described this stretch as the primary entrance to one of the largest residential developments Grand Junction has seen in thirty or forty years. That framing matters, because it explains why this isn't a routine city maintenance project. It's infrastructure being built ahead of demand, not in response to it.

Who's Actually Writing the Check

The total project cost runs around $5 million, and the split isn't even close to fifty-fifty.

The contractor on the job is Suncore Construction, the same firm that built the city's roundabout at Horizon Drive. Grading and early prep work started in the spring, with the main construction phase beginning June 1 and a target completion of December 2026, weather permitting. That means as of late August, the project is roughly in its middle stretch, past the early disruption and still a few months out from being done.

This is worth sitting with for a second. When a developer covers three quarters of a five million dollar intersection, that cost doesn't disappear. It gets built into the economics of the 1,300 homes Redlands 360 is planned to include at full buildout, which is a useful thing to know if you're trying to understand why new construction in this corridor is priced the way it is.

What Changes on Your Drive Between Now and December

Highway 340 stays open to two-way traffic for most of the project, but expect these specifics:

• Intermittent single-lane sections on Broadway with flagging operations, mostly overnight or during active work windows
• Access to 23 Road south of Highway 340 limited to local residents only for the duration
• Temporary closures and shifting traffic patterns on South Broadway near 23 Road
• A second phase of work reconstructing 23 Road itself, adding curb, gutter, and sidewalk south to the development entrance

If you already deal with the existing roundabout at Broadway and Redlands Parkway, know that you're about to have two roundabouts close together on the same stretch of road. That's going to change the rhythm of the drive for a while even after construction wraps, simply because two consecutive yield points move traffic differently than one.

The Trailhead You've Been Parking For Doesn't Exist Yet

Here's the part that doesn't show up in most of the traffic coverage but matters if you hike or ride out of this end of the Redlands. The Redlands 360 property has long been popular with the public for its trail network, and most of those trails are staying open during construction. But the informal trailhead people have used near 23 Road, the one where you'd just pull off onto the shoulder, is closed for now.

That closure is temporary and it's actually the setup for an upgrade. As part of the new Brothers Boulevard, the road being built through the development to connect 23 Road west to Easter Hill, the developer is also building a formal trailhead with designated, landscaped parking in roughly the same spot. Jane Quimby, La Plata Communities' project manager on Redlands 360, has described it plainly: instead of people pulling off the side of the road, there will be an actual parking area built specifically for trail access.

In the meantime, if you're used to parking near 23 Road, your options are the Easter Hill area or the trailhead off Canyon Rim Drive.

What This Means If You Live Here

Put these pieces together and the picture is less "annoying city construction" and more "a private developer is quietly rebuilding the entry point to this whole corner of the Redlands, and residents are living through the middle of it." The roundabout, the rebuilt 23 Road, and the new trailhead are three parts of the same project, funded mostly by the same source, timed to the same December deadline.

None of that makes the flagging operations or the shoulder-only parking any less irritating in the short term. But it does explain why this particular intersection got picked over others in the area, and it's a reasonable preview of what growth on this end of Highway 340 is going to look like for the next several years, not just through the end of this construction season.

Details here reflect city and state project information current as of late August 2026. Weather can shift construction timelines, so if you're planning a drive or a hike around this corridor in the coming months, it's worth checking the city's project page before you go.

If you're weighing what any of this means for property values, resale timing, or where the next phase of Redlands 360 fits into the local market, that's a longer conversation, and it's one I have with clients regularly. Let's connect and talk through what you're seeing on the ground.