At 5 p.m. on July 31, 2026, the City of Clive reopened the stretch of Greenbelt Trail that runs under the Interstate 80/35 bridge over Walnut Creek. After almost two years of detours, the pavement connecting the east and west sides of the trail was whole again.
Twenty days earlier, a few hundred yards down that same corridor, a different closure ended. On July 11, 515 Brewing reopened its taproom under new ownership after about seven months dark. Two closures, two unrelated causes, one trail, three weeks apart. That timing is the real story here, not just the fact that a bridge reopened.
What Actually Closed, And When
The trail closure traces back to October 1, 2024, when the City of Clive announced the Greenbelt would shut down at the interstate bridge for construction tied to the new I-80/35 interchange at Hickman Road—a major corridor for residents evaluating Clive homes for sale. The closed segment ran between NW 114th Street and Campbell Recreation Area, the park just east of NW 128th Street at 12853 Woodlands Parkway. Detours picked up from Campbell Recreation Area on the west side and NW 100th Street on the east.
One detail worth knowing if you use the trail for errands as much as exercise: the city kept east-side access open to Clive City Hall, the Clive Public Library, and the Clive Aquatic Center throughout construction. If your loop started east of the interstate, you never lost those stops. If it started west, you did.
The Detour Had Its Own Bad Year
The workaround wasn't trouble-free either. On the morning of July 12, 2025, a bicyclist died near 134th Street and Douglas Parkway in Urbandale, riding the detour route, when a falling oak tree struck them on the trail. Urbandale officials closed the Timberline Park Trail afterward while investigators looked into the cause. For a stretch of that summer, the backup path wasn't a sure thing either, which meant the corridor was down to fewer working routes than the closure notices alone suggested.
A Different Kind Of Closure, Same Stretch Of Trail
515 Brewing's closure had nothing to do with construction. The taproom at 7700 University Avenue, in business more than 12 years and known for crafting over 300 different beers and two Great American Beer Festival gold medals, quietly closed in December 2025 and went up for sale.
What happened next is its own small local story. Scott Hedderich, a longtime regular who'd spent his career in government affairs lobbying, and his son Wil bought the business. They closed on the purchase May 1, 2026, and spent the following weeks on cleaning, equipment repair, and rebuilding relationships with vendors before bringing on brewer Jason Kyte, who'd worked at Granite City in Des Moines and Padre Island Brewing Company in Texas.
"We really haven't changed anything," Scott Hedderich said.
The reopening party landed on July 11, with roughly 880 gallons of beer ready to pour, including 515's original recipes alongside new house creations from Kyte.
Here's the timeline side by side:
What Closed | Closed | Reopened |
|---|---|---|
Greenbelt Trail bridge segment (I-80/35) | October 1, 2024 | July 31, 2026 |
515 Brewing taproom | December 2025 | July 11, 2026 |
Timberline Park Trail detour (Urbandale) | July 2025, after a fatal incident | Not confirmed in current reporting |
Three Reopenings? Not Quite
It's tempting to read this as a tidy story where everything that broke during the shutdown got fixed at once. It didn't. The bridge and the brewery both came back within three weeks of each other this summer, but nothing in current reporting confirms the Timberline Park detour in Urbandale has reopened since the 2025 closure. The more accurate read is that the trail's own main route, the one that mattered most for day-to-day use, stopped needing a backup at all once the bridge reopened. The detour's status became less urgent, not necessarily resolved.
That distinction matters if you're the kind of person who plans a route around what's actually rideable rather than what's supposed to be rideable. As of early August 2026, the main span works again, which means you don't need to know whether the Urbandale alternate does.
What The Loop Looks Like Again
The Greenbelt starts at 73rd Street and Walnut Creek, near the Walmart in Windsor Heights, and runs along the north bank of the creek for 5.5 miles to Country Club Boulevard. From there it shifts to an on-street segment for three-quarters of a mile near the north shore of Lake Country Club, then continues another 1.7 miles into Waukee, ending near Lions Park by Eason Elementary School. Wikipedia's route breakdown puts the full connected system at 11.3 miles. A Des Moines Register account of the 515 Brewing patio scene described the same corridor as "a 7.9-mile paved greenway that winds along Walnut Creek," which likely reflects just the core Walnut Creek stretch rather than the on-street connector and Waukee spur. Both numbers are accurate. They're measuring different things (you can also compare nearby trails in our guide to exploring outdoors in West Des Moines).
515 Brewing sits directly on that path, and its own site calls out the trailside patio as a warm-weather draw for anyone biking, running, or walking through. Current hours are Tuesday through Thursday from 3 to 10 p.m., Friday from 3 to 11 p.m., Saturday from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., which is worth knowing if you're timing a loop around a stop.
The Festival That Ran Around The Closure
Clive Festival landed July 17 and 18, 2026, based at Greenbelt Landing, 1801 NW 114th Street, with live music, the Thunder Over Clive fireworks show, bounce houses, food trucks, a Kids Art Expo, Touch a Truck, and a Cardboard Boat Regatta at the Clive Aquatic Center.
The Clive Running Festival ran as part of that weekend on July 18, with its 5K course split between neighborhood streets and the Greenbelt Trail itself. That race happened two weeks before the bridge segment reopened, which likely explains why the course again routed through neighborhood streets rather than staying on trail pavement the whole way. It's a small detail, but it means this year's race was probably the last one that has to work around a missing piece of the Greenbelt. Race proceeds aren't just symbolic, either. Past revenues from the event have funded the trail's water fountains and its winter snow removal equipment, so the same 5K that dodges a construction zone in July is quietly paying for what keeps the trail usable in January.
Picking The Loop Back Up
If your Saturday routine used to run the bridge to 515's patio and back, you can run it exactly the way you used to before October 2024. If you've been riding the Windsor Heights side for two years and never made it west, this is the first month since the closure started that the whole corridor, from the Walmart in Windsor Heights to Lions Park in Waukee, connects without a detour sign in the way.
We cover stories like this because a trail that reconnects, a brewery that comes back under new ownership, and a festival that funds its own drinking fountains all say something about how a place actually functions day to day. That's the kind of detail we like tracking as much as we like tracking home values. If you're curious what a corridor like this can mean for a property nearby, or you want to learn more about what it's like to live in Clive, Iowa, Megan Mitchum + CO is always glad to hear from you. Get an updated home valuation or contact us anytime.
