Client: Colorado Springs Downtown Partnership / AdAmAn Club

Overview

AdAmAn Alley is a creative placemaking initiative that transformed a rundown and underutilized alleyway in the heart of Downtown Colorado Springs. The project celebrates a local mountaineering club’s unique role in the history of the region while exploring the community’s connection to its regional landscape.

Colorado Springs is located at the foot of Pikes Peak (also known by its original Ute name, Tava Kahv, or Sun Mountain). The peak is nicknamed America’s Mountain, but it has held special significance for many diverse groups, from the area’s earliest Indigenous communities to today’s residents, visitors and outdoor adventurers from around the world.

Since 1922, the AdAmAn Club has helped the community further connect with Pikes Peak by presenting a glorious annual fireworks show to ring in the New Year, ignited at the summit and visible throughout the entire region. The mountaineering club exemplifies the community’s spirit of adventure and perseverance in overcoming adversity.

AdAmAn Alley has brought the spirit of the AdAmAn Club and Pikes Peak to the urban environment of Downtown Colorado Springs. The public art installations throughout the alley pay tribute to both the club’s history and the community’s relationship with mountaineering and the natural world.

Goals

In a time of rapid growth for the city, this project served as an opportunity to tell a unique regional story while addressing critical infrastructure needs and making pedestrian enhancements.
Seven murals (painted and vinyl) attract viewers, encouraging them to enter the alley and explore. A parklet in the southern leg of the alley includes sculptures of regional native plants. Additional project elements employ visual language familiar to outdoor enthusiasts: lettering and sign colors that evoke vintage National Park Service trail signs, blue diamond trail blaze markers, and a rendering of the trail going up Pikes Peak in the alley pavement. The trail is oriented with the trailhead on the eastern entrance of the alley, so visitors have a stunning view of the peak to the west as they follow the Club’s journey to the summit.
Of particular note are two light art installations. A two-story LED mesh screen installed at the western alley entrance presents a spectacular animation of fireworks above the placename archway. Further in the alley, one of the murals is illuminated at night by a dazzling projection depicting the region’s vast natural beauty. Lush forest, high prairie, and native flowers grow and bloom, revealing the region’s creatures great and small in all their splendor.

Process

Before the project, the alleyway was a patchwork of crumbling asphalt with drainage problems. Over two dozen dumpsters lined the alley in addition to separate oil and grease containers. The project scope not only included public art enhancements, but also critical infrastructure improvements that ensured the creation of a safe and welcoming public space for the community to enjoy. Waste collection was consolidated into two compactors (one trash, one recycling) and a shared oil recycling container. Utilities infrastructure that was more than 100 years old was upgraded. The alley was repaved in concrete textured to evoke the granite on Pikes Peak. Bollards placed at the east and west entrances greatly reduced vehicular traffic.
In the time since the project was completed, it has become a place to gather for community events and has created opportunities for residents and visitors to learn more about the history of the region.
This project represents a remarkable collaborative effort by civic, private, and non-profit partners. The scope of the project could not have been accomplished without the fundraising efforts, in-kind donations, and pro bono work of multiple community partners.