DENVER - As the Colorado Department of Transportation continues through the process of a planned Interstate 70 expansion, a Denver man is preparing to part with a home that has been in his family for more than 70 years.
The only life Mark Wonder knew growing up was one of living right next to a highway.
"Our little mansion, we'd call it. The little mansion next to the highway," Wonder said. " When my family would say, 'Go play outside!' My family would mean go play on the highway, and I actually could. That was the funny part."
Wonder says he's known about the expansion since 2003, when he was approached by CDOT.
"CDOT kept everybody well informed. ... they let us know what was going on," he said. "When you see the growth and what's going to take place, we know that the bottlenecking of Interstate 70. It's gotta be the worst traffic in the world. So change has to happen."
But now the house he was raised in, across the highway from the Purina factory, will now be razed.
"The way I'm going to be able to remember this house is when we're 40 feet below in lane No. 3 of westbound traffic, and just remember what it was like," Wonder said.
As a train rolled by through his backyard, he recalled when the fence wasn't there.
"On Fourth of July, we'd run to the railroad tracks because you could see two sets of fireworks," Wonder said. "To see that this is going to go, it's sad. It's sad, but it's needed."
CDOT is currently working on an environmental study for the project, which is likely to be released in the early part of 2016.
Construction could begin as soon as the later part of 2016 and early part of 2017.
"They were going to take it down last week, the garage. They were also going to take down the house next week, but it's going to take a little more time," Wonder said. "The building is actually starting to cave in and it's time for change, but it's a good change."
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