Cooley Mesa Road construction slated through the summer as airport traffic keeps booming

If you’ve been down to the Eagle County Regional Airport in Gypsum lately, you know it’s a bit of a rough ride on Cooley Mesa Road.

Crews have been widening Cooley Mesa and adding some lanes between Costco and the Buckhorn Valley subdivision, while also doing some utility work and making it easier to get into the new Siena Lake neighborhood.

The road previously narrowed through that section, and now, according to town officials, it will be widened to improve traffic flow as airport traffic continues to grow throughout the year.

“So we’re just trying to make (Cooley Mesa Road) all consistent because that was starting to bottleneck in that little section. We’re expanding it to match the other two sides — just adding additional lanes,” town of Gypsum Communications and Marketing Coordinator Kyndal Emerick said. “Then we’re also going to be adding some turn lanes into the new Siena Lake neighborhood.”

With Cooley Mesa stripped down to the road base starting in mid-March, travelers flying into EGE were getting the added adventure of a Jeep tour on their way to Costco and toward U.S. Highway 6 into Eagle. Emerick said there have been some weather-related delays but the project is moving along nicely now.

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“We’re kind of in the thick of it right now, but a lot of the milling has already been done,” Emerick said. “(Construction) is going to be going into the summer, so it should be done going into the fall.”

With summer bookings in area hotels ahead of last year’s pace, and airport officials hopeful strong enplanement numbers will continue despite rising jet fuel prices, cooperative weather for road construction and paving crews ahead of peak-season visitation would be nice.

Friday at EGE — a typically dead time of year — the short-term parking lot was full, with travelers looking for spots in outlying lots. Part of that is because of the annual, temporary closure of the Aspen/Pitkin County Airport.

“The last couple of years, they’ve shut down for a month every spring, usually in May, to do some airfield work,” Eagle County Regional Airport Director David Reid said. “Every time they do that, even in May, our parking lot just goes to capacity with all those folks coming up here.”

Reid estimates between 12% and 15% of the people traveling through EGE are headed to or from the Roaring Fork Valley.

“So for next year, they’re saying it’s about an eight to 10 month closure for the year,” Reid said. “They’re doing an airfield reconfiguration down there, accommodating for larger aircraft in the future, which the airlines are all moving towards anyway. So it’s a good move on their part.”

But that means EGE will have even more parking capacity issues next ski season, which is hopefully much more snowy than 2025-26 season and therefore more crowded with a lot more snow riders than this past low-snow ski season.

“We’re trying to get ahead of it and prepare for it,” Reid said. “We’ll definitely be keeping our eye on that process (in Aspen) as well. We do have some areas on property here that haven’t traditionally been used for parking, and we’re looking at maybe repurposing that property into additional parking. We’ve got some ideas.”

Expect to pay more for that parking as rates are going up, but at least by next ski season the road to the airport will be completely redone and significantly wider the whole way.