At 5 p.m. on July 31, the barricades came down under the Interstate 80/35 bridge and the Clive Greenbelt Trail became one continuous path again for the first time since the fall of 2024. City Manager Matt McQuillen called it the return of a critical connection in the Des Moines metro's regional trail system, and for anyone who has spent the last two summers rerouting a bike ride or a dog walk around that stretch, the phrase lands. But the reopening is not the whole story. The timeline that got the trail here, and the piece of the project that still isn't finished, tell you more about what to expect this fall than the ribbon-cutting does.
If you use the Greenbelt regularly, here's what changed on July 31, what didn't, and what's still coming down the pike before the corridor works the way it's supposed to.
A One-Year Estimate That Became Two
The closure started October 1, 2024, when the Iowa Department of Transportation began work on a new interchange at Interstate 80/35 and Hickman Road. The city's own detour notice at the time routed cyclists through Urbandale's Timberline Park, then along Douglas Parkway and Douglas Avenue between 138th and 100th Streets, a path that added real distance and at least one set of stoplights for anyone trying to get from Clive's east side to its west side without a car, according to the detour description preserved on Wikipedia.
The estimate on how long that detour would last moved three separate times:
- October 2024: the original notice said the closure would run "through 2025"
- Sometime after that: the city's park projects page revised the estimate to "late spring or early summer 2026"
- July 31, 2026: the trail actually reopened, per the city's announcement
That's a jump from a stated one-year project to a closure that ran nearly two full years. Nobody at the city was being dishonest. Interstate interchange work runs on a schedule set by contractors, weather, and a state DOT calendar that doesn't bend for a bike path. But if you're the kind of Clive resident who checked the city website last spring, saw "early summer 2026," and planned your riding season around that, you were behind by a couple of months. Worth remembering next time a city page gives you a completion date on anything tied to interstate construction.
What the New Interchange Actually Solves
The reason the trail closed for so long wasn't really about the trail. It was about what's being built above it. The new interchange at I-80/35 and Hickman is a diverging diamond design, a configuration that temporarily shifts traffic to the opposite side of the road through the interchange so left turns don't have to cross oncoming lanes.
Iowa DOT transportation engineer Caleb Wright explained the basic logic in a conversation with DSM Bike Notes: "It's basically there to help the flow of traffic off the interstate." The metro's growth around that corridor is what pushed the upgrade in the first place. It's a car-traffic fix first. The trail closure was a side effect of building it safely.
Reopened Doesn't Mean Finished
Here's the part that matters if you're planning rides this month. The city is inviting people back onto the trail, but the same reopening report notes that some construction vehicles remain near the corridor and asks users to stay alert. This isn't a fully wrapped project with a bow on it. It's a bridge segment that's now safe and passable while the surrounding interchange work continues.
The bigger piece cyclists have actually been waiting on isn't done yet. Once the interchange is fully complete, Urbandale is adding a new trail segment on the north side of Hickman Road between 100th and 111th Streets, closing a gap that currently forces riders onto sidewalks or side streets. That new stretch is planned to include two pedestrian bridges over the interstate ramps and an underpass beneath Hickman itself, so cyclists can cross I-80/35 without touching a traffic lane at all. Once it's built, the corridor is meant to run unbroken from the Greenbelt through Urbandale into Waukee and onto the Raccoon River Valley Trail, with a connection toward Living History Farms along the way.
None of that is open yet. What reopened on July 31 is the bridge segment itself, which restores the direct route through Clive. The rest, the part that turns this into a genuinely connected regional trail rather than a patched-together one, is still under construction. If your riding plans depend on getting from the Greenbelt into Urbandale without backtracking through city streets, that piece is still a ways off.
The Rest of the Greenbelt Never Stopped
While the bridge was closed, everything else that makes the Greenbelt worth using kept running on its normal schedule, and it's back in full swing now that the detour is gone.
The Greenbelt Goats are still on the job. The herd was introduced in 2019 to graze down invasive plants like bush honeysuckle and garlic mustard along the trail corridor, and they've become enough of a fixture that the city sells feed at machines outside City Hall and goat merchandise inside the Clive Public Library lobby. If you haven't spotted them yet this season, they move around the corridor as the vegetation work requires.
Art Along the Trail runs every year from April through November, with nine sculptures chosen annually by a panel that includes city park board members, public art commissioners, a council member, and a representative from the local arts community. Selected artists get a stipend for the loan of their work, and the pieces stay up along the trail through the fall before rotating out. If you want the artist's own explanation of a piece rather than just a plaque, the city's Otocast app has audio recordings tied to each installation.
The food and coffee stops that have always anchored a Greenbelt ride are back to being reachable without a detour. 515 Brewing Company sits along the corridor as one of the trail's regular stopping points, and Sweet Dude Coffee & Café and 5 Borough Bagels handle the earlier end of the day for anyone starting a ride before the heat sets in. Swanson Memorial Park, with its old caboose, historic train depot, and general-store building, is a low-key stop if you're riding with kids who need a break that isn't just a bench.
What This Means for the Rest of the Season
The headline is simple: the Greenbelt is whole again after nearly two years, and that's genuinely good news for anyone who uses it to get somewhere rather than just around a loop. The detail worth holding onto is that "open" and "finished" aren't the same thing here. Watch for equipment near the bridge segment through the rest of this construction season, and don't expect the Urbandale connection with its new pedestrian bridges and underpass to be ready this year. That's a separate project still working through its own build schedule, and if the last two years taught Clive anything, it's that DOT timelines are estimates, not promises.
For now, the direct route is back, the goats are working, the art is up, and the coffee stops don't require a detour to reach. That's most of what regular trail users actually wanted.
If the Greenbelt's rhythm is part of why Clive works for you, you already know the corridor shapes more of daily life here than most people realize. Our Clive neighborhood guide has more on what else defines the area. And if you're ever curious what your home near the trail is worth in today's market, the team at Slavin & Partners is a quick call away.
