If you have lived near the Clive Greenbelt Trail since the fall of 2024, you already know the workaround. Cross at Campbell Recreation Area if you're coming from the west. Pick it up again at NW 100th Street if you're coming from the east. Whatever you do, don't expect to ride straight through, because the stretch under the Interstate 80/35 bridge has been closed since October 1, 2024, cut off while crews built a new interchange at the Hickman Road exit overhead.
That closure lasted about 22 months. It ended on July 31, 2026, at 5 p.m., which on its own would be worth a mention in any Clive resident's calendar. But the trail reopening wasn't the only thing that landed that month. In the space of fifteen days, Clive opened a brand-new park at the exact seam that had divided the trail, moved its biggest annual festival there to mark 50 years, and watched a University Avenue storefront come back from a bankruptcy that displaced hundreds of local business owners overnight. None of these things had to happen together. The fact that they did says something about how this city handles disruption: it doesn't just wait out a closure, it builds through it.
What Two Years Of "Closed" Actually Meant
The interstate project didn't just inconvenience cyclists. The blocked segment sat between NW 114th Street and Campbell Recreation Park, east of NW 128th Street, which meant the detour routes on either side kept residents connected to Clive City Hall, the Clive Public Library, and the Clive Aquatic Center, but not to each other without a car. When the city first announced the closure in September 2024, the estimate was "through 2025." By early 2026, the city's own trail page had revised that to "late spring or early summer." The actual reopening slipped well past even that softened timeline. If you've learned to treat Clive's infrastructure estimates as a floor rather than a deadline, this is exhibit A.
City Manager Matt McQuillen framed the reopening as more than a local convenience. He called it the restoration of "a critical link of the Des Moines Metro regional trail system," a reminder that the Greenbelt isn't just Clive's trail. It's the connective tissue between Windsor Heights, Waukee, and everything in between, and the city has previously described it as its most heavily used park amenity, logging tens of thousands of trail visits a year.
The City Didn't Just Reopen The Bridge, It Built A Park At The Break Point
Here's the part that turns a routine construction update into something worth paying attention to. Instead of simply reconnecting the two halves of the trail, Clive used the closure window to finish Greenbelt Landing, a 14.89-acre project on the east side of NW 114th Street, just outside the Clive Aquatic Center. The ribbon cutting happened July 17, 2026, the same day the city kicked off Clive Festival's 50th anniversary on the same grounds. The total project cost ran $10.6 million, with more than $3.5 million of that covered by grants and donor fundraising rather than city budget alone.
What actually showed up on the ground:
- The MidAmerican Energy Stage, a permanent outdoor performance space
- The Polk County Festival Grounds, open lawn built for exactly the kind of gathering the city now uses it for
- The Polk County Wetland Walk, an ADA-accessible boardwalk with fishing piers along Walnut Creek
- The Ashley Okland Star Playground, an inclusive playground donated by Variety, The Children's Charity of Iowa
- A redesigned Creekside Pavilion, the events building that now anchors race-day logistics and festival operations
None of this existed the last time most residents used that stretch of trail before the detour signs went up. The mileage is the same. What's on either side of it is not.
Here's how the fifteen days actually lined up:
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| July 17 | Greenbelt Landing ribbon cutting, kicking off Clive Festival's 50th anniversary the same day |
| July 17 to 18 | Clive Festival held at Greenbelt Landing for the first time |
| July 30 to 31 | Eleven101 Collective holds its soft opening on University Avenue |
| July 31, 5 p.m. | Greenbelt Trail reopens under the I-80/35 bridge after roughly 22 months closed |
The Festival Moved There On Purpose
Clive Festival has been the city's marquee community event for half a century, and this year it didn't just happen to land near the new park. It relocated to Greenbelt Landing specifically, using the space for free live music, Thunder Over Clive fireworks both nights at 9:30, bounce houses, food trucks, a Kids Art Expo, Touch a Truck, and a Cardboard Boat Regatta at the Aquatic Center. Friday's lineup ran Plastic Apartment early and Standing Hampton late. Saturday brought BS & The Liars followed by Decoy.
The Clive Running Festival ran alongside it on July 18, a 5K, a one-mile run, and a Kids Trot, routed partly through the neighborhood and partly down the newly reopened Greenbelt Trail itself. Race-day packet pickup happened at the Creekside Pavilion, the same building Greenbelt Landing just rebuilt. That's not incidental. Race proceeds have historically funded trail improvements like drinking fountains and winter maintenance equipment, which means the event that used the trail this July is also part of what keeps the trail usable the rest of the year.
Two Weeks Later, University Avenue Got Its Own Reopening
The trail wasn't the only thing coming back from a forced pause this summer. In April 2026, Painted Tree Boutiques, a national vendor marketplace chain, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy across all 60 of its locations, and the Clive store at 11101 University Avenue closed with no warning. More than 300 small business owners lost their storefronts overnight, some of whom, like Jenni King of Simply Stella Rose, had booths spread across as many as six Painted Tree locations from Nashville to Bloomington, Illinois.
Knapp Properties, the company that owns the building, initially looked for another national operator to take over the space. Instead, CEO Chris Costa decided the company would run the marketplace itself for the first time, calling it Eleven101 Collective after the building's address. The soft opening ran July 30 and 31, with around 200 vendors signed on by July 28, working toward the roughly 300 who had been displaced. Full daily hours started August 1, with a formal ribbon cutting still ahead this fall.
For vendors like Rose Ann Jordison of Ivy Rose, the appeal wasn't just getting a storefront back. It was who's running it.
"Before, we never had a face to the owners. We're trying to build our own business and make ourselves independent, and that is where, I think, a lot of it went wrong."
Costa has said the new setup is built around that exact complaint, putting decisions at the store level instead of a corporate one.
"Ours will be localized and we'll be making a decision at the store level instead of at a global level."
What This Means Next Time You're On The Trail
Put the two stories next to each other and the pattern is hard to miss. A construction closure that could have just ended in a reopened bridge instead ended in a new park with a permanent stage, an inclusive playground, and a wetland boardwalk that weren't there before. A retail bankruptcy that could have left a University Avenue storefront empty instead became a locally run marketplace built by the people who actually own the building. Clive keeps using its disruptions as an excuse to build something better than what broke, not just to replace it.
If you haven't ridden or walked the Greenbelt Trail through that stretch since before the detour signs went up in 2024, it's worth going back. The route is the same length. Almost everything around it is not.
Whether you've lived in Clive for twenty years or you're still learning which detour leads where, that's the kind of local detail that doesn't show up on a listing sheet. It's the kind of thing Mauro Team tracks because we work in this market every day, not just when someone's ready to buy or sell. If you're weighing a move in Clive, or just curious what your own street is worth given everything that's changed nearby this summer, reach out and schedule your free consultation. We'll give you the straight answer, not the generic one.
