Has anyone told you Colby Park is "torn up" this summer and steered you toward Movies in the Park somewhere else instead? That's the rumor going around Windsor Heights, and it's only about ten percent true.
Walk into Colby Park on a Tuesday night in August 2026 and you'll find the splash pad running, the food truck plaza doing brisk business, and a crowd of lawn chairs facing the pavilion for another round of Nights in the Heights. The construction fencing is real. It's also confined to one corner of the park, and knowing exactly which corner changes how you plan your evening.
What's Actually Off Limits Right Now
The city is building a new water trail access point along Walnut Creek, located west of the park's pavilion. That's the only section of Colby Park currently closed to the public. The rest of the park, the splash pad, the accessible playground, the food truck plaza, the ball field, and the pavilion itself, has stayed open through the entire project.
Here's what's still running on schedule this summer:
- Nights in the Heights, the Windsor Heights Foundation's free Tuesday concert series, with food trucks arriving at 6:30 p.m. and music starting at 7
- Movies in the Park, held Friday evenings at Colby Park
- The splash pad, open daily from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day weekend
- The food truck plaza, built with support from Prairie Meadows Race Track and Casino as part of the 2024 park renovation
If you've been avoiding the park because you assumed the whole thing was a work site, the actual footprint is much smaller than the rumor suggests.
The Project Behind the Fencing
The construction you're seeing is part of a regional push called ICON Water Trails, a network aiming to activate 150 miles of creeks and rivers across central Iowa, including access points already built in Clive, Johnston, and elsewhere in the metro. Windsor Heights secured a $125,000 grant from the MidAmerican Energy Regional Fund to build its own access point, and the location the city chose was deliberate.
Mayor Mike Jones described the project as building on the park's 2024 upgrades by "constructing a water trail access west of the park's pavilion," a phrase that tells you exactly where to expect fencing and exactly where not to. The new access point will include limestone stairways, a native riparian plant buffer, and interpretive signage, replacing what had been an under-used and occasionally hazardous stretch of creek bank with a designated, safer place for people to reach the water.
Back in February 2025, the mayor talked about finalizing the design that year and completing construction sometime in the 2025 to 2026 window. That timeline slipped. The city's own newsflash describes the trail closure and construction as just getting underway now, in 2026, which means the project is running later than originally hoped and there's no revised completion date posted yet. Worth knowing if you assumed the fencing would be gone by Fall Fest.
Three Different Construction Projects, Three Different Finish Lines
Colby Park isn't the only place in town with orange barrels this year. If you're trying to figure out which detour applies to your Tuesday night drive to the park, here's how the three current projects break down.
| Project | What it affects | Expected finish |
|---|---|---|
| ICON Water Trail access, Colby Park | Trail segment and creek access west of the pavilion | No fixed date announced |
| 73rd Street reconstruction, final phase | 73rd Street north of University Avenue, between Sunset Terrace and City Wide Heating and Cooling, thru traffic detoured to 70th Street | Early September 2026 |
| Hickman Road water main, Central Iowa Water Works | Hickman corridor from 70th Street to Merle Hay Road | October 31, 2026 |
The 73rd Street closure is the one most likely to affect your route to the park if you live north of University Avenue. That final phase started April 20 and has thru traffic running on 70th Street between Hickman and University in the meantime. The Hickman Road water main work is a separate project entirely, run by Central Iowa Water Works rather than the city, and it's on a longer timeline that stretches into fall.
None of these three projects touch each other directly, but all three are visible if you're driving across town this month, which is probably why the general sense around Windsor Heights is that "everything" is under construction. In practice, each closure is narrow and each has its own end date.
The Tuesday Night Workaround
One detail that says a lot about how the city thinks about Colby Park: the splash pad's hours are built to bend around concert night. Under normal conditions it runs 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. all season. If Central Iowa Water Works moves to a Stage One water alert, hours shrink to 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Under a Stage Two alert, hours drop further to noon through 6 p.m., except on Tuesdays and during special events, when the splash pad stays open until 8 p.m.
That carve-out isn't an accident. It means even during a water restriction, families showing up for Nights in the Heights still get a full evening at the splash pad before the band starts. It's a small rule, but it tells you the park's biggest weekly draw was built into the city's planning rather than treated as an afterthought.
What's Still Ahead This Season
The city's own events calendar lists Fall Fest for Saturday, October 3, with Veterans Day Luncheon following on November 11 and Windsor Wonderland closing out the year on December 5. In recent years, Fall Fest has paired a Friday movie night at Colby Park with Saturday's full slate of activities. Last year's edition drew a reported crowd of over 2,500 to the Friday movie alone, followed by a pancake breakfast hosted by the Windsor Heights Fire Department, a parade, and a fireworks finale to close out Saturday night.
Between now and then, Nights in the Heights continues its Tuesday run at Colby Park, and Movies in the Park keeps its Friday slot. Sponsors for the concert series have included Renewal by Andersen and the Windsor Heights Chamber of Commerce, alongside the city itself, which speaks to how many local organizations have a hand in keeping the summer calendar full even with construction happening a few hundred feet away.
The Ice Cream Social, organized block by block through volunteer hosts, already came and went in late June, so if you missed it, that one's on you for next summer.
The Short Version
Colby Park has construction fencing around a single creek-access project west of the pavilion. Everything else in the park, the splash pad, the playground, the food truck plaza, the concerts, the movie nights, has kept running all season. Meanwhile, two unrelated road projects, one wrapping in early September and one running through the end of October, are the actual source of most of the detour signs you've seen around town. None of the three has a reason to slow down your Tuesday night at the park.
If you've been putting off a trip to Colby Park because you heard it was closed, this is your sign that most of it never was.
Windsor Heights keeps changing in small, specific ways, and knowing which changes actually affect your daily routine, and which ones are just noise, is part of what makes living here easier. If you're curious how any of this shows up in the neighborhood's home values or want a local perspective on what's coming next, Christopher Lewis is always happy to talk shop about Central Iowa. Let's Connect.
