Photo: Reconstruction of the McCabe Creek Bridge by Colorado Department of Transportation, summer 2022.
You may be aware that the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) is planning a main street (Pagosa Street and San Juan Street) reconstruction project through Pagosa Springs between 1st and 10th Streets with construction expected to begin in 2024…
— from the municipal MyPagosa.org website
I hear we’re going to be suffering through some road repairs this summer. As we did last summer. And the summer before that. It’s been inconvenient… and tough on local businesses.
Apparently, downtown Pagosa Springs hasn’t seen the worst of it yet.
At a community meeting last summer, a team from the Colorado Department of Local Affairs explained a government-funded ‘Facade Improvement Grant’ program to an audience of about 25 people — a program aimed at making downtown Pagosa more attractive — and a local business owner posed a (related?) question about highway repairs.
“I have a business downtown, and I’m all for making it prettier. But I’m trying to figure out what the hell I’m going to do — over the next two years or three years — when there’s CDOT going through. We want things to be beautiful, and we can make it beautiful — but are you guys going to give us some money, when there’s no people coming to our doors? Or are you going to make sure there’s a walkway, so people can access the stores?
“What am I going to do, when no one wants to cross the construction? Am I going to close? You’re going to lose my business, and you’re going to get another piece of crap business that’s selling ‘Pagosa Springs is great’ souvenirs…”
A bit of background.
The Colorado Department of Transportation — CDOT — maintains highways. Local governments maintain county roads and downtown streets, but CDOT is responsible for the highways that connect towns and cities, and that facilitate through-traffic.
Historically, many local governments — having their own concepts about how a major highway ought to function — have found CDOT challenging to work with. The Department has historically presented itself as a somewhat arrogant state bureaucracy with fixed ideas about transportation, and little concern for the specific needs of individual communities.
For several years, CDOT has talked about rebuilding the problematic highway segment running through downtown Pagosa, and recently was able to find the money to fund the project. As I understand the current plan, CDOT will remove the asphalt between South 8th Street and 2nd Street — basically, six city blocks and install new road base (I assume?)… and a lower-maintenance concrete surface.
During this process, the Town government will be rebuilding some sidewalks, and utility companies will be upgrading their pipes and wiring.
Additionally, CDOT will add ‘median’ strips in a few places, and eliminate the (popular?) pedestrian crossing at the Old County Courthouse. The redesign would include enhanced bike lanes, but the bike lanes would not extend beyond downtown.
Highways are not exactly a growth industry at this point in Colorado’s history, even though the population of the state increased by about 26 percent between 2001 and 2019. During that same period, Colorado’s state budget for health care increased by about 220%; state funding for K-12 education increased by about 95%. (Not adjusted for inflation.)
The CDOT budget increased by only 14 percent. (Not adjusted for inflation.) Basically, funding for our state highways has been ‘flat’… while other social needs have seen significant increases in state spending. Since 2001, Colorado has a 1.5 million more people using the highways… with essentially no additional money to maintain those highways.
The picture is even more depressing if we were to factor in the 37% inflation we’ve experienced since 2001. The amount of monetary value we are spending on our state highways is actually less than it was 20 years ago.
Are we lucky that CDOT has decided to use some of their limited funding to rebuild Highway 160 through six blocks of downtown?
Or will this two- or three-year project be a disaster for downtown businesses?
While the planning for this CDOT project has been taking place, the Town of Pagosa Springs was applying to become an official member of ‘Main Street Colorado’, a government-funded agency that tries to help ‘revitalize’ downtown districts — presumably, struggling downtown districts. There is little doubt that downtown Pagosa Springs will be struggling during the CDOT project.
If you visit the ‘Main Street Pagosa’ website, you will find zero information about this (tragic?) upcoming highway reconstruction.
But apparently, Riff Raff Brewing Company is on top of the problem. They are hosting a “CDOT Construction Update” open to “downtown business owners and managers” today at 5:30pm at Riff Raff Brewing (original location). Attendees will get an update on the CDOT project, and have a chance to meet the ‘Main Street Cone Zone Committee’ and learn how they plan to help. The Committee will be soliciting “your thoughts and concerns”.
“Together, we can make it through this construction project”.
I’ve run across various claims, over the years, that a certain kind of magical power can be generated through ‘positive thinking’.