PHOTO: The Peak Deli, corner of N. 4th Street and Highway 160. Summer, 2022.
If you’ve had a chance to read Parts One through Three of this editorial series, you know that I have concerns about a “Main Street” program that will apparently ignore the uptown commercial (and social?) core of our community, and will apparently focus its time and energy on the old, historical downtown that’s been slowly transforming itself from a functional downtown into a tourist resort.
This is nothing new, of course. Over the past three decades, the Town of Pagosa Springs has given regular lip service to the idea that we need a ‘diversified economy’, while doing everything possible to encourage tourism and a ‘second-home’, ‘short-term-rental’ community. According to the Town’s budget documents, about $7.6 million has been spent promoting tourism over the past decade — not including millions more, in public funds, spent on tourist-focused infrastructure, centered around the downtown hot springs resorts.
To say nothing of the private investments.
It’s only in the past year, it seems, that the Town Council has finally realized where such policies would ultimately lead us: to a community where the tourists comfortably occupy our residential homes, and a poorly-paid workforce ends up paying through the nose for whatever long-rentals still remain, or living in tents, cars, and RVs
So I was encouraged, somewhat, by the discussion I heard on September 8, during the initial training for our new ‘Main Street Advisory Board’ — a group of volunteers charged with creating a strategic plan for improving the area show in this map:
Following a morning of facilitator-led discussion, the volunteers — Rosanna Dufour, Robert Melun, Barbara Swindlehurst, Jeremy Martin, Rose Chavez, Haz Said, Rick Holter, Anne-Marie Sukcik, and Jeff Posey — enjoyed sandwiches provided by The Peak Deli, and began a process to define, more accurately, their primary goals for this new advisory board.
What would this particular group of local residents like to see happen within the area defined by the map above?
Well, now. That depends, to some degree, upon the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT). The community has been properly warned that CDOT has developed drawings showing a massive highway project scheduled for downtown Pagosa Springs within the next year or two.
Note the current disruption, with which we’re already familiar, near South 6th Street.
CDOT plans to tear up several blocks of Highway 160, right through the downtown historic district, and replace the failing asphalt with a more durable concrete surface. The plan also includes some sidewalk repairs and improvements, and possibly (if we are forward-thinking enough) the replacement of any old underground utilities that will now be buried under tons of new concrete.
The project, then, will be a complex collaboration between CDOT and the Town government and the utility companies. And if the current McCabe Creek culvert project is any indication, the disruption will last longer than anyone wants it to last.
The Main Street group labeled this future event, “The Great Disruption”, and determined that their goal, for the moment, would be to help the Town government develop plans to protect the downtown commercial district from an economic and social demise during this (two-year?) project.
Here’s facilitator Melissa Antol, following an afternoon ‘small-groups’ brainstorming session:
“What I’m trying to understand, about this Great Disruption, what is the role of ‘Main Street’ to play?”
Rosanna Dufour:
“When our group discussed it, we were talking about a few different things. You know, the support and communications. We know that a lot of people are not aware of what is about to happen, and what sorts of support they are going to need…
“We also thought we ought to be able to sit down and assess, you know, what the Town is doing and what CDOT is doing, and see what we can do to help fill the gaps, the missing pieces. Like when James [Dickhoff] was talking about the sidewalk on Main Street. The sidewalk from Peak Deli to Scott Anderson [chiropractic office] needs just as much help…”
Ms. Dufour is here discussing the proposed widening of the sidewalk on the 400 block of Main Street (aka Pagosa Street, aka Highway 160) in relation to the sidewalk on the 300 block, immediately to the east. Should both sidewalks get widened? Maybe not?
“So it’s like, there are just some gaps, because there are a lot of different projects…”
Ms. Antol:
“But I see that as a different priority. The Town is always going to be undertaking a series of new projects, right? So it’s not just a one-time thing. Is the role for the Main Street organization to connect disparate efforts and helping to build a cohesiveness that we believe we need, as a community?
“The projects could be new sidewalks, new street crossings, installing new streetscape furnishings. So to me, it’s looking at the broad umbrella, because over the next five years, there could be four different projects you guys are working on. Like maybe the public benches on the east end of town don’t match the benches on the west end of town, and the Main Street group wants them to match, for better cohesion.
“I’m just using that as an example. So I’m just trying to help you distinguish between a long-term priority and a specific project.”
As I sat in the audience during this meeting (as the only member of the public present) I had the luxury of remaining mentally outside the discussion about details, like the design of future streetscape furniture.
What, for example, might be more important to the future of the Pagosa Springs community than matching benches or the width of a sidewalk?
Is there a big picture issue that we’re not seeing? A ‘forest’ of community that we’re not seeing, because we’re focused on the ‘trees’…?
Just asking.