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It's been five years of conflict,
but Durango residents
may have found a growth plan that fits their ideals |
By Greg Hoch
for Headwaters News |
| Durango, Colo., faces
challenges, big challenges, as it stares at its future. After
20 years of working in the Durango Planning Office, I can
say that, while Durango residents believe most of the changes
in their community during that time have generally been for
the better, the changes in the past five years have been momentous
and unrelenting.
Many Intermountain West communities are confronting the same
challenges, and there may be something others can learn from
Durango's recent experiences. This article explores Durango's
issues, the community's response, and our growth-management
challenges, including whether to implement new-urbanist developments.
The question before us is: Will these new developments allow
Durango to retain its high quality of life, sense of community
and environment, and yet still grow in a responsible manner?
"This is a big deal,
as it has all the elements for becoming the most self-reliant
TND ever and a benchmark for the Smart Growth movement."
Over the past two decades, Durango has
confronted and responded to many quality of life issues: maintaining
a "real town" character, promoting good design,
preserving historical resources, expanding recreational opportunities,
providing a diversity of housing choices, acquiring key open
spaces, installing important public infrastructure, and maintaining
a steady but not too rapid rate of growth – all within
the capacities of the city to provide quality services, maintain
a healthy economy and a balanced budget, and preserve its
unique character.
Yet the past five years' changes have seen two polar opposite
positions emerge: those residents who want the city to enact
more restrictive growth-control measures, essentially keeping
the town the way it currently exists, and those who want the
city to grow in a way that will expand housing opportunities
to enable its children, as well as potential new employees,
an opportunity to afford homes in Durango.
City councilors, well aware of the
recent rapid escalation in land and housing prices, feel challenged
to resolve the all-too-common battles between those who already
have a piece of the action and want to close the door, and
those unable to get their feet in that door and find those
inside pushing it shut.
Durango has pondered whether to pursue more restrictive growth-management
policies that other Colorado communities such as Aspen or
Boulder or Telluride have enacted.
However, it's clear these communities and other Intermountain
West communities like them lack a broad resident workforce,
sometimes even a middle class, and appear to have become more
enclaves for the wealthy, often without a recognizable sense
of community.
Have growth management practices in these communities had
a role in bringing about these outcomes?
Durango's growth management strategy has a more plebeian
goal, one that emphasizes managing (not restricting or limiting)
growth, but with more emphasis on making that growth the type
the community wants.
The past few years have seen the convergence of five factors
into our local debate on what type of growth that should be,
where it should occur, and how the results will or will not
help to maintain our sense of place and community character.
These factors include:
1. The election of a City Council that favored new urbanism
(or TND - Traditional Neighborhood Development), sustainability
and green building principles, mixed use, as well as infill
development;
2. The fact that, because of extensive topographical constraints
and the Animas River flood plain, the city was forced to look
beyond the existing city limits for areas in which to grow;
3. Proposals for development on four very-large-for-Durango
parcels at the city's periphery (three with owners favorable
and even committed to following Traditional Neighborhood Development
design principles);
4. The decision by one of the community's primary institutions,
Mercy Regional Medical Center, to relocate its campus from
the center of the city to another location outside the city
limits; and
5. The emergence of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe as a major
economic player in the region, poised to diversify its investments
by expanding into land development and the local real estate
market.
The first factor was serendipitous, but nonetheless provided
staff and the community a clear idea as to what directions
we were to move in. The second factor forced Durango to take
a concerted look at where and how it could grow. While infill
development has been successful on some underused parcels
within the city limits, it became obvious too much infill
would negatively affect existing neighborhoods.
The conclusion was clear that new growth would need to occur
beyond the existing city limits.
Coincidentally, the third factor, the arrival of four extremely
large tracts of land on the city's periphery into the development
arena provided opportunities to address the first two factors,
propelling the debate as to what type of development is appropriate
for the community and discussion as to how these developments
relate to overall growth in the region.
The first tract, the Jenkins Ranch, a 312-acre parcel located
on a mesa above town it shares with Fort Lewis College, was
targeted for residential development in 1998. The subsequent
400-unit Sky Ridge project was marketed as a "village
and estates," but political machinations between the
developer and certain City Council members resulted in a project
that, while it sold well (because of limited competition in
a tight housing market), nonetheless never was a village.
The project failed to deliver on promised aesthetics (filled
as it was with oversized snout houses and little overall character),
and led local residents to the opinion that, if Sky Ridge
was to be the city's image for the future, they didn't want
it.
The second property is the 800-acre Ewing Mesa property, another
mesa to the southeast of downtown identified by area residents
as an ideal location for future development, primarily because
it is unseen by most residents and with few adjacent neighbors.
City planners actually pushed for greater density with a strong
TND focus in this location than what the owner wanted (a golf
course with estate lots), in return for which she would provide
some adjacent limited new urbanist villages. But overall,
development on
Ewing Mesa faces such major infrastructure costs and challenges
(water, sewer, streets and access) that it remains stalled
at this time.
Unless the county can curtail its
historic tendency to view all developments anywhere as good,
it will continue with low-density, large-lot development across
its rural landscape.
The third property, a 240-acre parcel
on the northeast edge of the city at the lower end of the
Animas Valley, had been envisioned for development as early
as the city's 1958 Comprehensive Plan, and reaffirmed in the
city's 1985 and 1997 plans. When approached by the developer
for city services in 2002, the City Council at that time said
that it would not extend city services to a county-style subdivision
with 3-acre lots. The council instead recommended the developer
annex a new urbanist development more in line with the city's
1997 plan.
The developer subsequently hired Calthorpe Associates and
submitted an annexation and development proposal for 800 units,
known as River Trails Ranch, in early 2003. The project enraged
many, most of them county residents, who declared their goal
for the parcel to be open space, and if not that, then the
county subdivision of 67 3-acre lots was preferable.
The multiple hearings conducted before the City Planning Commission
and City Council were heated and, at times, uncivil. Calthorpe
was pilloried for his new-urbanist scheme, as well as for
being from Berkeley, Calif. Despite unanimous support for
the project by the City Planning Commission, the City Council,
with two new members elected in April 2003, voted 3-2 against
the project.
That left the fourth property. This tract is actually the
most distant of the four from the existing city limits, physically
separated from Durango by a set of ridges and a tract of Bureau
of Land Management land, and accessible to town only via US
Highway 160.
This property was acquired in early 2002 by the Southern Ute
Indian Tribe's financial arm, the Tierra Group, which has
been investing the Utes' substantial oil and gas revenues
in various places, including local and national real estate
(estimated value of existing tribal assets: $1.6 billion).
The Tierra Group purchased 921 acres of this property, and
subsequently offered Mercy Regional Medical Center 35 acres
of free land (of a total proposed campus of 60 acres) upon
which to build a new regional medical campus. The Tierra Group
also proposed to extend utilities and roads to the medical
campus, as well as to pay for a new intersection onto Highway
160 to provide the needed traffic capacity and create safe
access to the facility. Naturally, Mercy selected this offer
for its new site.
Moreover, the Tierra Group retained the services of Duany,
Plater-Zyberk (DPZ) to prepare a Traditional Neighborhood
Design (TND) plan for a proposed 2,200-unit development along
with three mixed-use village centers located adjacent to the
medical campus.
This "Three Springs" development plan also includes
a K-8 school and a regional park with trails, and an as-yet-unknown
amount of commercial space (while each village will have its
commercial core, the development team remains undecided about
what its mix of commercial to residential will be).
What makes the Three Springs project unique is that a large
new-urbanist development is being built around what will be
an existing employment center, the new hospital and medical
office building. This development strategy will reverse the
typical experience with new-urbanist development, which has
the residential component built out to a point where commercial
uses within the development become feasible.
With Three Springs, the initial residential components will
begin at the time the hospital is ready to open, and the commercial
core near the medical campus may go in contemporaneously with
the opening of the hospital.
One commercial use being investigated is a supermarket within
the first village core. The location of Three Springs to the
east of Durango, in the direction of a large portion of the
county's population base, might make the supermarket a healthy
contributor to the development's commercial base, as well
as an asset to Three Springs' residents as their new homes
are built.
Jeff Speck, DPZ's design leader, testified at the January
2004 Durango City Council hearing on Three Springs that: "This
is the most promising project I've worked on in 10 years.
Typical TND projects are smaller and more limited. This is
a big deal, as it has all the elements for becoming the most
self-reliant TND ever and a benchmark for the Smart Growth
movement."
While Mr. Speck's observations may prove true, the applicant
and city staff continue to refine how best to develop the
Three Springs TND project, including the integration of sustainability
and green building strategies.
Discussion is also underway as to whether Three Springs' design
should be distinct from or somehow related to the historic
character of downtown Durango. Moreover, Three Springs must
meet the local market with a product mix and style not typically
found in Southwest Colorado. Will small lots and row houses
really sell in the new west? Can narrower TND street designs
accommodate large SUV-type vehicles?
Three Springs also has to make ends meet in order to provide
the mix of 10 percent affordable and 15 percent attainable
housing to which the developer agreed. And despite Three Springs'
significant infrastructure investment for the first phase,
it still must build alternative roadways into Durango for
its future phases, as the capacity of Highway 160 will be
sorely stretched as this project and other developments approved
by the county come on line.
This last point, the role of La Plata County, may prove most
important of all. Unless the county can curtail its historic
tendency to view all developments anywhere as good, it will
continue with low-density, large-lot development across its
rural landscape. Any county consideration to direct growth
into projects similar to Three Springs appears unlikely.
So while the city of Durango continues to aim for mixed-use
development with higher density, and negotiates for pedestrian-friendly
and sustainable design for these future edge developments,
the philosophy of the county remains contrary to the more
urbanized approach.
This rift is of concern to many, as the county's laissez faire
attitude and lack of concern for effective land-use planning
and overall community character threaten the ability to plan
for a long-term sustainable and economically viable Durango.
Yet while the road ahead appears to be littered with cracks
and potholes, Durango appears ready to take its eco-sensitive,
solar-powered, hybrid SUV down the road to its future. Perhaps
readers can respond as to whether Durango is on the right
road or whether others have headed down this road before.
Greg Hoch is Durango's director
of Planning and Community Development. |
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Rural
neighborhoods
sell room to sprawl
By Greg Lakes, editor
Headwaters News
April 14, 2004
Layers of
conflict are built into Western communities' struggle with growth:
There are old-timers vs. newcomers, settled newcomers vs. new
newcomers, and the inherent contradictions of keeping houses
affordable, keeping regulations from becoming onerous and maintaining
some sense of the community as it exists.
But one of the underlying forces is city vs. county, or arguably,
the attractive sprawl of low-density rural subdivisions vs.
higher-density new urban development.
As more people move in, and cities run out of room, the practice
of allowing outlying areas to fill with rural-style, low-density
subdivisions is becoming a flashpoint.
In Summit
County, Utah, the residents of Coalville and Kamas like
their little towns and see no need to take on the trappings,
the strip malls and the big boxes of Kimball Junction, which
feeds the resorts, workers and tourists of Park City a few dozen
miles up the road.
But the towns can't avoid growth, local officials say, no matter
how powerful their nostalgia. It's already coming, in sprawl
creeping up the highway.
And even if community leaders want to keep in-town development
in character, it may be an exercise in futility.
As the Salt
Lake Tribune delicately puts it, "Summit
County planners don't necessarily keep Kamas in the loop on
planned development in the valley as farmers sell out to builders."
One Summit County commissioner proposed to give counties more
control over growth and was voted out of office after one term.
In eastern Idaho, to quote the Idaho
Smart Growth coalition, "the name of the game is rural
residential subdivisions," with cookie-cutter subdivisions
providing housing for workers in Jackson Hole, Wyo., and for
commuters who work in Ogden, Utah.
Meridian, Idaho, continued its breakneck pace of growth and
its transformation from a suburb
of Boise to a bustling and sprawling city of its own.
The city is luring 30-something professionals with the second
highest per capita income in the state. The attraction is available
land and affordable housing.
In the burg of Bayfield, Colo., town leaders
welcome the growth Durango is trying to restrict. Bayfield
has about 600 homes, 1,700 people and plans on drawing boards
that will at least double the size of the town in the next few
years.
Bayfield has the county mindset that any growth is good, as
well as more than an abiding tolerance for medium- and low-density
housing.
One Durango developer proposed building as many as 200 homes
on 80 acres in north Bayfield, but local officials asked him
to lower the density.
Still, the advantage of few rules and plenty of room has its
obvious advantages:
On a day last November, the median price of homes for sale in
Bayfield was $207,000. Durango's median price was $410,000. |
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Send
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friend or colleague
Where do you live?
"I
want to live in a sprawling, deserted suburban wasteland surrounded
by big box stores and sterile schools isolated from the neighborhood
on bluegrass lawns the size of small states."
That's not a quote you will often hear on the evening news.
Planners all, we struggle with models of public process, focus
groups, traffic models, and McHargian environmental analysis
ad naseum.
We craft fine plans, and if we're lucky folks will nod and agree
that clustering into walkable communties to help preserve agriculture
and open space is a wonderful thing to do.
We all love visiting Mayberry.
Yet when it comes to voting with your mortgage check, where
do you go home to?
John C. Shepard AICP
(American Institute of Certified Planners)
Fort Collins, Colo.
Author's blog:
Differences account for one plan's
success, other's failure
During the past year, Durango's two
big Traditional Neighborhood Development proposals experienced
very different results.
The first – the River Trails Ranch, a 600-800 unit primarily
residential proposal – ran into a buzz saw of public opposition
and was ultimately denied by the Durango City Council on a 3-2
vote in November.
The other, the Three Springs mega-project – a 2,200 unit,
two- village TND with a K-8 school and regional park, and anchored
with a regional medical center and medical office building –
received a unanimous City Council approval two months after
River Trails Ranch was rejected.
Why was one project pilloried while the other was praised?
There appear to be four reasons: the location and character
of each area to be developed, the attitude of the majority of
adjacent property owners, each development's community benefit,
and the nature and timing of the city's public involvement process.
With little flat land left to develop, Durango assumed it could
move into flatter adjoining properties in order to accommodate
new growth. While the River Trails project was located closer
to the city and would have been less costly to service than
other properties, its location in the lower stretches of the
scenic Animas Valley north of Durango led many opponents to
the position that the property should be retained as open space.
This was despite the fact that the county had already given
conceptual plan approval to a 67-large-lot subdivision for the
same property.
On the other hand, Three Springs was proposed for flat lands
southeast of Durango, and it adjoins an already developing rural-county-sprawl
corridor straddling a state highway. The views weren't quite
as scenic, and the property was sufficiently distant from Durango
not to generate the vehement opposition that River Trails engendered.
Second, with regard to attitudes of property owners, while River
Trails had most of its neighbors shouting "no," Three
Springs had people both opposing and supporting it. While some
knew their open space views would be spoiled, many others supported
the proposed growth; wanted the city's central water services,
and anticipated the rise in property values that would come
with urbanization.
The most prominent were supporters of quality health care for
the Durango area; they claimed that lack of support for the
new medical center site could result in the loss of quality
health care for much of the population.
The third reason was that, while River Trails proposed minimal
employment or commercial/business elements, Three Springs is
to have major employers (the new regional medical center and
the new medical office building) in its first phase.
With the "Main Street" commercial of the development
directly connecting to the medical center and office complex,
having these types of services appealed to many adjacent property
owners.
Moreover, the creation of a regional park to meet the city's
growing recreational needs led many supporters of parks to the
hearings.
The final reason involved timing. The city executed an intensive
public involvement process for the Three Springs project, comparable
to what had been done eight years previously for the Comprehensive
Plan (which one might note supported the densities and land
uses of the River Trails proposal).
However, for Three Springs there was little lag time between
plan approval and the review process for the project.
And the city took the extra step of sending all property owners
in the area (more than 500 of them) individual letters inviting
their participation.
Consequently, all interested parties received plenty of information.
Many project proponents commented that no one could protest
they didn't know what was going on.
All these reasons led to the approval of the Three Springs project
in the same political climate that had led to the defeat of
River Trails Ranch.
While much remains to be accomplished to make Three Springs
meet its own and others' high expectations, at least the land-use
battle has already been resolved.
The challenge now is to see Three Springs become a high-quality
project that follows green building and sustainability principles,
with reasonably attainable housing, a good mix of uses, and
schools, parks, trails, and general alkability. Stay tuned.
Greg Hoch
Traffic, vistas real issues
My initial intention was to sit this
discussion out, but after reading the comments of other readers
I feel it is important to respond to Greg Hoch's opinion article.
I should begin by saying that I believe strongly in the urban
planning process and that I feel higher density developments
with more open space around them is a step in the right direction.
I am a resident of Durango and my family lived here for more
than 25 years.
In his column Greg Hoch argues that new Durango residents are
blocking city planning that has been in the works for decades.
That is an unfair and inaccurate account of what is happening.
Opposition to some of the new developments has come from a diverse
group of residents – old and new. These citizens are concerned
that growth (even if the city manager has been planning it)
is taking the city in the wrong direction.
The development that has received the strongest opposition is
known as River Trails Ranch. The 800- home development would
have been located on about 240 acres in the scenic Animas River
Valley.
A development of this magnitude in this location would have
changed the rural quality of the Animas Valley and led the way
for further development on that side of town by extending city
limits.
Greg Hoch and the developer of River Trails Ranch have argued
that by building River Trails Ranch the city would be encouraging
new urbanism (residents would be able to walk or ride a bike
into town and to work).
Unfortunately, the development is several miles from downtown
and even further from Bodo Industrial Park where many of Durango's
new jobs are being created.
Small businesses as well as Home Depot and Wal-Mart are located
south of town and more development is planned.
By encouraging development in the Animas Valley (on the north
side of town) traffic on already busy city streets would be
increased by residents traveling to work and to shop in Bodo
(to the south).
Long-time Durango residents see this problem and have overwhelmingly
opposed city development to the north. If that is contrary to
Greg Hoch's plan for growth then so be it.
By encouraging growth to the south, traffic through town will
be better managed and we can work on limiting growth in the
beautiful Animas Valley.
Residents of Durango (both new and old) have made a clear statement
about how they want Durango to grow.
I think this citizen participation should be applauded –
not derided as insurgency by transplants from other places.
Justin Howe
Durango, Colorado
Totalitarian doesn't work
Sure, and the Denver Post reported today
about all sorts of "smart growth" restrictions being
repealed in Colorado now that the policy chickens are roosting
and dirtying up the floor.
Never mind that much of the impetus for land regulation in the
inland West comes from comparative immigrants, moving to a place
worth saving from one regulated to death.
Why can't these people concede that the totalitarian model doesn't
really work, especially not in a free society.
I really can't understand the zeal of those who want to control
property they don't own. The opponents of the Durango project
didn't own River Trails, yet they wanted to control it without
paying for it.
The dumb growth people around here are the same way, litigation
up the wazoo, under various "Friends of" names because
the public has caught on to the main players in the "sprawl"
game.
Yet the evil developer has set up committees to accommodate
the community -- the REAL community -- and it looks like the
public's main genuine concern, that of light pollution, will
be taken care of toot sweet.
There's no regulations regarding light, but that's what's going
to be dealt with, by reasonable people rather than single-issue
hard liners.
The thing about control freaks and zoning regulation ... the
possibility of control really does bring out the freaks.
Dave Skinner
Whitefish, MT
Price to pay for democracy
As one whose ancestors arrived in Durango
in the 1880s and as an environmental activist in the region
for almost 40 years, I guess I don't qualify as a newcomer.
But, let me say that if newcomers muddy the water where planning
is concerned in Durango, it is because most everyone else, after
too many "planning" meetings to absolutely no avail,
have long since given up trying in a town that has never seen
a development or a developer it did not love.
In fact, if Durango were to be described metaphorically, one
would be left with little choice but to see her as a whore,
eager to sell herself to all comers, no matter the long-term
implications.
Durango – despite its glitzy Main Avenue – and La
Plata County are a mess of urban sprawl, devastated wildlife
habitat, ineffective planning, inadequate roads and a questionable
water future with much of what was special about the area 20
or 30 years ago gone or a fading memory amidst unguided urbanization.
While I will rise above yet again stating that sustainability
or "green" development are an oxymoron in the third-fastest
growing nation in the world, and most particularly in a county
that has experienced growth rates of 4, 5, even 10 percent a
year (doubling times as low as every four or five years), I
submit that if the backbone of a few determined newcomers or
whomever still loves the area for other than how it can enrich
their pocketbooks, complicate the developers' aspirations, that
is, after all, the price of what little democracy we have left
in our overcrowded times.
Hoch also fails to mention that when it came to the Mercy Medical
Center proposal, more naive citizens fell for its green portrayal
hook, line and sinker, never mind that it will destroy a last
precious bit of wildlife habitat and open the flood gates for
heavy urban development to spread to the southeast, with nothing
but Navajo Reservoir and the New Mexico state line to eventually
stop it.
Throw in that Durango's daily newspaper, ever a dedicated boom
booster, asked only a few of the probing questions about the
proposal it was journalistically obligated to ask, and then
only when it was too little too late, combined with the fact
that the proposal was hatched behind closed doors and sprung
on the public with no chance for input until most of the public
realized any protests were a waste of time, and it is little
wonder, as Hoch, states it was "accepted," by the
public.
As for myself, I can assure you that, from my view, Durango's
planning efforts are a farce. While its depicts its planning
as being "ecosensitive or solar powered," to this
former resident those efforts sound more like trying to make
a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
Kathleene Parker
Los Alamos
Caveat resident
Hoch's
observation (on newcomer discontent with rules set earlier by
locals) is reminiscent of something Wendell Berry said in The
Unsettling of America.
If memory serves, Berry said that people who intend to settle
and prosper where they are can be derailed by others seeking
their own version of El Dorado.
Among the possible responses to such conflict of vision, one
might pose a timeless warning to newcomers: caveat emptor.
What often seems to happen instead is that, still, the new vision
supplants the old. Alas, it's such a persistent thing that we
might need a new warning: caveat resident.
Lance Olsen,
Missoula, MT
No whining
My response to the newcomers who are
whining about Durango's growth plan: too bad!
If the city is forced to conduct a new round of public hearings
every time a new batch of people move to town, it would never
be able to adopt a growth plan, or anything else for that matter.
Almost all communities in the Rocky Mountain West are faced
with an influx of newcomers and the resulting growth. If we
do not plan for that growth, we will have nothing but big box
stores, miles and miles of strip malls, and gigantic parking
lots blighting the attractive landscape that so many people
moved here for in the first place.
Julie Burk
Helena, MT
Author's blog:
Newcomers demand
their own public input
Durango's move into traditional neighborhood
designs hasn't been without challenge. Indeed, the hearings
on the River Trails Ranch proposal were the most protracted,
bitter and uncivil hearings that local observers had seen since
the late '70s sagebrush rebellion.
What made the River Trails Ranch proposal so controversial while
the Three Springs project made it through the process relatively
unscathed?
The easy answer would be that the Mercy Regional Medical Center
saved the larger project's bacon. The hospital was generally
regarded as a benevolent potential neighbor, bestowing great
land values on its neighbors and being an established community
care-provider within the community.
But the right answer, if there is one, might be the characteristics
of the public processes followed for each proposal.
To understand what happened, one needs to go back to the mid-1990s,
when Durango recognized the city's 1985 Comprehensive Plan needed
updating. The city started a two-year public planning process
culminating in the adoption of a new comprehensive plan in March
1997.
There was little controversy in adopting the plan, which classified
properties for land use and density in and around the city limits.
Moreover, when the City Council adopted the Plan, citizens and
council members remarked how pleased they were that the plan's
public involvement processes had worked so well. They lauded
the personal interviews, focus groups, a steering committee,
public forums, interactive workshops, opinion surveys, public
speaking engagements at local service clubs, etc., used in the
Plan's process.
Within five years, the owners of the RTR property petitioned
the city for approval of an annexation with a development plan
that conformed with the plan's land use and density recommendations,
and with a variety of the plan's policies.
Yet, the project was ultimately defeated. Why? The most obvious
factor was extremely strong objections from neighboring property
owners.
Opponents railed at the city, saying it had no plan for growth,
that it was beholden to greedy developers, and that it had failed
to engage the public.
How did this big controversy about "outrageous" density
and bad faith against the city come to pass, within five years
of the adoption of a publicly supported plan allowing such density
at that location?
Again, the answer seems to be in the nature and timing of the
public process. Perhaps Durango needed to track and understand
changes in society, or at least the changing composition of
local real estate, a lesson that all fast-growing Intermountain
West towns and cities should recognize.
In a nutshell, what happened between the adoption of the 1997
Plan and the RTR project review was this: The owners of the
adjoining property and the town's activists had changed drastically.
Much of the property adjacent to, and frequently looking down
on, the RTR property had been purchased by people newly arrived
from other locations in the country (or even elsewhere from
within the region).
They generally were unaware of, or disinterested in learning
about, the existence of an adopted city plan. They simply did
not want their views of the open space in the Animas Valley
to change.
Aided by a few concerted activists who pursued a "take
no prisoners approach," the opponents took the fight to
the City Council, and won (though only by one vote).
Sound familiar? Tune into the next opinion piece and find out
how the second project, the much larger DPZ-designed Three Springs
project, was able to get passed despite some strong public opposition
to it. |
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