A friend called me yesterday, wondering how the ‘Cabin Fever Festival’ video in Part Three was in any way related to an editorial discussion about ‘seeing the future’ of Pagosa Springs. Good question. I tend to see everything that happens in Pagosa as related to our past, present and future. Former County Commissioner Michael Whiting spearheaded this second annual festival to help promote a recreation project he’s been involved with — Pagosa Climbing Initative — and was able to draw sponsors into the mix, and ultimately attract hundreds of people who essentially stood around a big bonfire, drinking beer and making conversation.
Does it get any better than that?
We can assume that this annual event will continue, year after year, until it doesn’t. The vacant property on which the event takes place is the proposed location for a $180 million Springs Resort expansion, and the preliminary plans we’ve seen for that expansion include a ‘central town square’ of some kind — a gathering place, where events like the ‘Cabin Fever Festival’ might be able to happen.
I also mentioned, yesterday in Part Three, the Town of Pagosa Springs’ updated Comprehensive Plan yesterday — a rather complex document that lays out some big ideas for our community’s future. For example, in Chapter 7, Implementation, on page 83. (You can download the entire 111-page “Comp Plan” on the Town website).
One way to successfully implement this Comprehensive Plan is through projects that exemplify the goals and actions contained herein. This plan calls these “Catalytic Projects” as any one of these would act as catalysts for the goals and actions of the Comprehensive Plan.
These projects include:
- Project #1: a redevelopment at the corner of Lewis and Main Street
- Project #2: a walkable mixed-use development on the Springs Partners site in downtown
- Project #3: A sub area plan for uptown
- Project #4: The attraction/creation of other local specialty businesses that employs between 25 and 50 people
- Project #5: An affordable or attainable housing development that will increase housing opportunities
- Project #6: The completion of the Town to Pagosa Lakes Commuter Trail
- Project #7: The establishment of a Recreation Center and/or Recreation District
We can start with Project #1. A project worthy of taxpayer investment?
This three-quarter-acre vacant parcel was once home to one of the oldest commercial buildings in downtown Pagosa: the Adobe… so named because some of the original structure was in fact built of adobe bricks, before it was renovated and expanded. The two-story condominium, in its final days, housed the Bear Creek Saloon and a couple of other commercial businesses on the first floor, and a number of smaller businesses in the offices upstairs.
If you look past the real estate sign, you’re looking at buildings on the 400 block of Lewis Street. An art gallery. A title company. A dance studio. A juice bar. An office condominium. A frozen yogurt shop. Some cars and trucks.
No pedestrians, on this winter morning.
We’ll be talking more about pedestrians in this editorial series, because we’re planning for Pagosa’s future, and the Town Council goals adopted last summer specifically, and somewhat urgently, mention “a walkable downtown.”
But first, about the Adobe site. From the CREN real estate listing:
Pagosa’s prime downtown development site is available for purchase. The historic Adobe site fronts US Hwy 160 and Lewis Street, situated adjacent to the Town Bell Tower and across from the Courthouse. Site specifications include 0.78 acres (with potentially additional 0.24 acres of town property including Town Bell Tower and public parking available for site plan), zoned multi use, 49 paved parking spaces, including all existing utility taps… Enterprise Zone Tax Credits potentially available, potential use of geothermal well for water and space heating for commercial purposes and recreational spa use…
On the Jann C. Pitcher real estate website, you can find a few more photos of the parcel. All of those photos include at least a corner of the adjacent, one-quarter-acre Bell Tower property, which is publicly owned and not currently on the market.
Town property. That is to say, you and I own it.
Here’s a map from the Jann C. Pitcher website, to which I’ve added some color and street names. The pink area shows the vacant lot, centrally located in the heart of our historical downtown. The green area is the publicly-owned Bell Tower Park, which was once the location of Town Hall, back in the 1990s when Town Hall was a rather modest modular building.
As we noticed in the CREN real estate listing, the Adobe property is being marketed as “potentially” including “0.24 acres of town property including the Bell Tower and public parking available for site plan.”
And as we also noticed, the Town’s Comprehensive Plan includes the following “Catalytic Project”:
- Project #1: a redevelopment at the corner of Lewis and Main Street
I had the privilege of participating in the Comprehensive Plan interviews conducted by the SE Group back in 2016. The Town of Pagosa Springs had hired Frisco-Colorado-based SE Group to guide the 2017 Comp Plan update. If you visit the SE Group’s website, you might get the impression that their work is focused around “lifestyles and tourism.”
From the SE Group website, from 2016:
We provide strategy, planning, design, and permitting consulting services focused on unique places that support outdoor recreation, rural and small town lifestyles and tourism… Everything we do is rooted in a genuine desire to help our clients create places that provide a high quality of life and an exceptional experience for community residents and visitors alike.
I happened to be sitting in an interview when one of the SE Group consultants said something like:
“Hey, the Town has a little park right next to that vacant Adobe building parcel. Maybe the Town could bundle the park property with the Adobe parcel, and bring the [future] development right up to Main Street. That would give the developer frontage on your main street, instead of being tucked back on Lewis Street…”
Everyone at the table seemed to think that would be a great idea. What was not clear, at that point, is how exactly the public property would be bundled.