“This is one of the happiest days of my life,” laughed Pagosa Springs Town Manager Andrea Phillips, wearing a hard hat and a colorful blue cloth face mask, as she addressed a small gathering of mostly men — also wearing hard hats and masks on April 28.
“No, really. I started here [as Town Manager] almost three years ago, and when I toured this facility, I have to say, I was pretty appalled that our staff was working in these facilities. And so, over the last few years, we’ve been working hard to assess our needs and find a way to move forward on a brand new facility that’s going to serve our needs now and into the future. So I’m super excited about this.”
The gathering was taking place at the Town Shop, located on South Fifth Street between the Pagosa Springs High School parking lot and Yamaguchi Park. The gravel-surfaced facility includes a mish-mash of shop buildings salvaged and repurposed over the years from various sources, centered around an old Forest Service building dating from the ’40s or ’50s.
People were making an effort to stand six feet apart, even though some may have been close friends.
Besides the Town Public Works department and Parks department staff, the groundbreaking ceremony included some of the design and construction professionals connected with the proposed new facility, which will cost Colorado taxpayers somewhere in the neighborhood of $5.2 million when completed.
I don’t believe that dollar amount includes interest payments on the “Certificates of Participation” — a form of long term debt that was subscribed without voter approval.
Ms. Phillips:
“We’re going to have Council member Madeline Bergon, who is our mayor pro tem, make some comments and then we’ll do a big group photo. We’ve got some gold shovels for that, and then we’ve got some refreshments here, too.”
Ms. Bergon addressed the gathering.
“This is probably one of the largest undertakings that the Town has taken on, in a long time, so ‘thank you’ to everybody for all of your hard work. As you can see, a lot of the buildings here are not really adequate for storage, for maintenance facilities, Parks and Rec and all those guys, so we are super stoked to get rid of these old buildings and rebuild…
“I would like to give a shout out to Tracy Bunning and David Schanzenbaker. They were previously on the Council and saw this project through, and they did just step down a few weeks ago. We also had help from DOLA (Colorado Department of Local Affairs) who provided a matching grant…”
Ms. Bergon named off several of the professionals involved in the project design, and noted the presence of representatives from Alamosa, Colorado-based Alcon Construction, a firm that appears to specialize in metal industrial buildings.
“Alcon is our Construction Management and General Contractor. There will also be several subcontractors, and the thing that I really like about Alcon is that they have a large focus on sourcing local subcontractors. That’ll be really good for the community…
“We’d also like to thank our neighbors for all their patience, and the input they’ve provided, especially the Archuleta School District, who provided some land dedication to help us with public access, parking improvements, and just general traffic improvements.”
The shop — like the adjacent high school and park — is situated at the edge of a residential district, and one of the arguments for the new facility was to enclosed the heavy diesel equipment, so the neighbors didn’t have to listen to large machines warming up in the early morning hours.
“The idea here is to integrate into the neighborhood. So we don’t want to be a big eye sore — which is something I think we have been, for a while. So I’m really, really excited to see some revitalization, and a new project moving forward.
“So demolition is set to begin this week, and construction will hopefully be wrapping up through the first quarter of 2021.”
Ms. Phillips then organized the Town staff and officials and construction professionals for a “groundbreaking” group photo, with included tossing shovels of gravel into the air with gold spray-painted shovels.
I suspect everyone familiar with the Town Shop would agree with Ms. Bergon’s characterization of the old facility as “an eye sore” — if we consider old industrial sites, in general, to be “eye sores”. Certainly, the site had its share of junk parts and materials laying around, and during a tour of the facility three years ago, it was evident that the Town had put very little effort into making the work spaces clean and attractive.
The shop work spaces, back in 2017, looked like… well, old shop work spaces. Somewhat dark, primitive, utilitarian, perhaps dirty and greasy. In need of a woman’s touch, you might say.
We bought a 94-year-old house in downtown Pagosa, in 1994, and it had two garages on the property in worse shape than the old Town Shop. No electricity, broken windows, not insulation, exposed rafters, dirt floors, barely functional doors. Using only our own money, we remodeled both garages into useful and pleasant spaces to live and work in.
There are many ways to build a stronger community. Putting the taxpayers deeply in debt for overpriced metal buildings may not be the best way.
But it sometime seems that’s the only way government knows how to operate.