In Part One on Friday, we shared the 4-to-3 vote of the Pagosa Springs Town Council, to donate Town-owned property to Archuleta County and La Plata Electric Association (LPEA).
A total of five or six acres, two miles down Trujillo Road at the hairpin turn. The justification? Better service to the community.
The other discussions about gifts of public property, at the June 6 Town Council meeting, concerned South Pagosa Park, near the High School on South 8th Street.
That park was the subject of considerable controversy a couple of years back, after the Council contracted with Dallas-based Servitas to design some workforce housing within the park — without first asking the neighborhood how they felt about losing park property to a housing project. Following a minor uproar from the neighbors, the Town relocated the proposed housing project to a 3-acre parcel near the Walmart store, in the uptown Aspen Village subdivision.
Now, two different projects were applying to the Town Council for permission to use the existing park.
Seeds of Learning Early Childhood Education Center has been leasing Town-owned land adjacent to South Pagosa Park for the past 20 years… and now, at a time when childcare programs are getting significant new support and encouragement from the Colorado state government, Seeds would like to essentially double its enrollment, by fundraising for additional buildings to be built on their existing leased parcel. The proposed project would also involve additional parking — on South Pagosa Park property — and new dedicated playground space accessible only to Seeds children.
From the Town Council agenda:
We are currently at capacity with 45 slots for full-time or part-time students from approximately 58 different families. Our current wait list has 60 children and continuously ranges from 40-60 children. In addition, we receive calls every day from families who hope to move into the area or just recently relocated here who need childcare immediately to start their employment. Seeds of Learning seeks to expand its high-quality early childhood education programs to accommodate approximately 43-53 additional preschool spots by 2027. This expansion will allow us to meet the needs of our growing community and workforce…
As shown in the current planning documents for the expansion, a portion of a new Seeds playground would extend into South Pagosa Park.
The proposed new playground is colored blue in this map. The yellow areas are South Pagosa Park, outside of the Seeds lease. About 2,000 square feet of park property would be donated to Seeds for this expansion. The orange buildings would be new construction.
Perhaps in an attempt to prevent the kind of neighborhood protest that resulted from the Servitas debacle, the Town held a neighborhood meeting, attended by about 20 people, and also allowed public input at their MyPagosa.org website.
At the June 6 Council meeting, we heard from Seeds Board President Lisa Peters, explaining that Seeds would need to raise millions of dollars in order to fund this expansion, and would begin that fundraising process once the Town votes to allow the playground encroachment. She predicted the completion of the expansion by perhaps 2027. The orange traffic cone in the following photo shows approximately where the proposed encroachment would end.
Ms. Peters noted that Seeds currently loses money on each enrolled student, so the school will be attempting to raise funds to create an endowment, to help fund the tuition shortfall… a shortfall which will be made more challenging by the proposed facility expansion.
After asking questions of Ms. Peters and Town staff, the Council voted to grant Seeds permission to encroach into South Pagosa Park as shown on the map, but wants to have further discussions about how parking spaces are assigned, and how the South 7th Street alley and traffic flow will operate.
Details to work out… over the next few years. Including details about how the park’s existing gravel parking lot/alley, shown below on the right, would be allocated.
On the other end of town, the Wings Early Childhood Center is also raising money to expand its facility, having been gifted a small chunk of public land by the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners, for additional playground space.
In the Aspen Village subdivision near Walmart, Pagosa Peak Open School recently received a $20,000 grant from the Town Council to assist with opening a preschool classroom inside its existing building, with a new preschool playground to be located along the south side of the building.
So the community has at least three organizations hoping to expand childcare options over the next few years.
A somewhat more intense conversation took place concerning the other organization looking to use the public land in South Pagosa Park.
Over the past few years, the non-profit Pagosa Multi-Purpose Pavilion folks have been using the park’s (poorly maintained) basketball courts during the winter months for a combination ice rink/hockey rink. It’s been a stressful but ambitious effort.
But Pagosa’s typically sunny weather during the winter months had made it difficult to prevent the ice from becoming soft during the afternoons. A variety of efforts have been tried for shading the rink from the afternoon sun, most recently large panels of black mesh fabric suspended above the rink.
The efforts have been only partly successful, however. We heard at the June 6 meeting that the rink was operating only about 30 days last winter. Unfortunately, the black mesh fabric banners doesn’t stop snow from falling on the rink and taking it out of commission until volunteers can get it removed. We had a good amount of snow last winter.
As of this past weekend, the rink ‘boards’ (walls) were still in place at South Pagosa Park, although the rink probably won’t be used until next December, at the earliest?
The group would like to have our local governments help finance a fairly massive new structure, to be installed where the rink currently sits.
According to the presentation, it seems the organization is proposing to have taxpayers fund most of the expense…