I ended yesterday’s installment by asking if the Springs Partner’s request for a $7 million bridge and connection road across their vacant 27-acre property — to be funded, supposedly, by the Town taxpayers — might suggest a desire on the part of the Partners to compete directly with the Springs Resort. In the drawing of Sketch A Plan, approved by a previous Town Council in 2012, the Resort is located directly adjacent to a proposed hotel complex that looks, to me, a lot like… well, a lot like the Springs Resort, with its various size soaking pools overlooking the San Juan River.
We are listening to Partner Bill Dawson, who used to own the Springs Resort with his partner Matt Mees:
“Yeah, I think there are a number of possibilities. I’m very happy with what we did with the Springs Resort; it’s been very successful and brings a lot of people into town. But it’s at capacity now, so they are turning away a lot of people. There’s an opportunity to put something else in there. Maybe a little bit of [inaudible] .. We’re not going to duplicate the Springs Resort; we’re going to — if we do something like that — it’s going to be a lot … it’ll be different, it will be exciting, a net addition to the community.
“So yeah, we’d like to have — I don’t think we want hotel rooms costing $600 a night. That’s not who we are as a town. But we’ll have nice rooms — bigger rooms than what we had at the Springs Resort.”
Council member Kathie Lattin:
“And you were also talking about how the [sections of the vacant land] that will have townhomes and condos.. and residential and retail and all that kind of stuff, within the different phases…”
Partner Matt Mees:
“Kathie, it still fits all of that. But I think with the bridge being there, it would accommodate even more of the retail, because we’d have the corridor from the edge of the bridge — once we start from South 5th Street where the greenhouses are being done, as soon as you cross the river, on the left we have about a 4 ½ acre piece where we’d like to see — we think — a hotel right there. Or… we’ve even thought about a water park. Something for people to do.
“The way we made the Springs Resort successful to begin with is, we created a hook for people to come to town to enjoy the mineral water, and that’s what they aim for. And we spent 20 years building that. So we need to expand on that, and make it more of what that is. Not the same — but more of what that is. So we see a hotel there, or more in the form of a water park.
“But behind that, as the street progresses toward the Post Office, would be retail on both sides. On the right hand side, just as your cross the bridge, there’s a [inaudible] piece. Well, it’s in the floodway, but it would work for, maybe a geothermal brewery? Something that would have outdoor seating, because there’s a lot of land we could use for seating people along the edge [of the river] for a restaurant. It could also be something for the locals to use, and the guests of the hotels.
“A lot of what happens, when people come to town, they say there’s not enough stuff to do. So consequently they don’t stay here very long. They leave and go someplace else. The timeshare people stay for a full week, but the hotel people — from Day One, 25 years ago, we tried to figure out [inaudible]. We need to figure out more stuff for them to do, and within walking distance. We have more people showing up in town that are parents with kids, and want more stuff to do… [inaudible] … we’ve got to try and get some concentration and density downtown.”
I’d like to pause here and consider an issue that has not, to my knowledge, been discussed at any Town Council meeting since maybe 2008 — which is the precarious lack of information about how much geothermal water is actually available from the Great Pagosa Aquifer, on a regular basis. (We wrote about this issue in a Daily Post article.) We might reasonably assume that the aquifer produces a limited supply of hot water? But no one knows what that limit might be.
As far as I know, the Springs Partners own some geothermal water rights, but I have no idea how many gallons per minute. And I have no idea if the Springs Partners own any of the water rights now being used to supply the Springs Resort, and which the Partners might decide to divert to their own new hotel… if the bridge were built with taxpayer dollars.
This issue has never been discussed, as far as I know, with the current Town Council.
We also might wonder which retailers would want to open shops across the proposed South 5th Street bridge, in the middle of 27 acres of vacant land… when there are still acres and acres of vacant land right along Highway 160 that have been sitting determinedly vacant for the past 10 years, and still show no sign of being developed.
Maybe the Council will ask about those issues, during the final minutes of their illegal executive session with the Springs Partners? Or maybe not.
Kathie Lattin:
“Between the two of you, right now, with the plans that you’re looking at — the hotels, the water parks, whatever — do you guys have the ability right now, or do you have the ability with the developers who have already talked to you, to go ahead and launch this, and get things going? Sooner, rather than later? I talking like in the next four or five years?”
Bill Dawson:
“Well, basically what we’re talking about…” and then the recording becomes inaudible. It sounds like the name of the third Springs Partner, Jack Searle, might have been mentioned, and something about “Denver.” Then we hear:
“We’ve had a lot of conversations with different people who are very interested in what we’re doing, but we’ve said, ‘Okay, in this situation right now, what are we [the Springs Partners] willing to do?’ We’re committed — the three of us – we’re willing to spend $6 million [developing the land]. We might do a mixed-use development, with commercial on the first floor, and offices on the second floor, and maybe condos on the third floor. This is something that we’d be willing to get started on right away. That’s within our means.
“Or we might start on the water park, or the hot springs…”