As a former mayor of Colorado Springs, I know first-hand the overwhelming challenge faced by local leaders trying to balance the books while keeping the lights on at the firehouse, police station, library and every other essential service – all without raising the ire of the neighbors who elected you.
So I’m not without sympathy for the Palmer Lake Board of Trustees as it faces intense and often vitriolic public opposition to a proposal to annex land two miles outside the town boundary to make way for a Buc-ee’s gas station with 120 pumps, and 780 parking spaces.
But Buc-ee’s is not the magic bullet of tax revenue some in Palmer Lake, a town of just 2,600, hope. Rather than save the town, the massive travel center instead is likely to end up killing precisely what makes Palmer Lake and the surrounding Tri-Lakes region a unique Colorado treasure.
Even if you’re not a local, you probably are familiar with the vast Greenland Ranch open space that stretches from the mountains to the plains on either side of I-25 between Larkspur and the summit of Monument Hill. Greenland Ranch’s 40,000 acres is the only protected open space along I-25 between Fort Collins and Colorado Springs and is a crown jewel – a living and thriving reminder of the Front Range before the sprawl of urban development.
Buc-ee’s wants to build its massive travel mecca directly across a two-lane road from this ecological linchpin, adding thousands of cars every day, flushing millions of gallons of water down its famously clean toilets and casting an unnatural glow from its parking lot lights into a critical big-game migration corridor.
Over the past three decades, Coloradans have invested more than $100 million to preserve and protect the Greenland Ranch open space. It was a cause celebre for two governors – Roy Romer and Bill Owens – and Liberty Media founder John Malone played a crucial financial role in protecting the ranch from development. It is something the state rightly should be proud of and fierce to protect.
Nowhere should that be more true than in Palmer Lake because the open space commitment all Coloradans have made over the years insulates and protects the bucolic appeal of the town. I grew up in the Pikes Peak region and while my law firm has clients that oppose Buc-ee’s, my opposition is as a lifelong resident who has watched as the wild places that are the birthright of Colorado children are lost forever to inappropriate development.
What makes Buc-ee’s inappropriate is this location. Buc-ee’s is, by all accounts, a great place for weary travelers to grab a bite and take a break from the road. I oppose depriving landowners of their land without compensation (and, in fact, the owners have at least one backup offer to purchase and protect the property). All of us should reject a proposal that negatively impacts a resource the public paid – and pays – to protect while a private out-of-state corporation makes big bucks.
As a former local official, I know that strategic development builds the economic foundation of towns to provide vital community services. But development needs to make sense and fit the character of the town. In Johnstown, Colorado’s only other Buc-ee’s location, local officials have seen other businesses locate next to Buc-ee’s to offer complementary services and products. Those kinds of synergies are a lot less likely at the proposed El Paso County location. Why? Because the pine-studded property is bordered by a rural church, I-25 and the Greenland Ranch.
Palmer Lake’s land grab would let the town capture whatever ostensible revenue Buc-ee’s generates while dumping all of the inevitable downsides – traffic, noise, pollution and light – on citizens in unincorporated El Paso County who have no voice whatsoever in Palmer Lake elections.
In addition to not being very neighborly, annexation to make way for a Buc-ee’s is bound to change the entire region. Once up and running, Buc-ee’s would serve roughly four times as many travelers every day as Palmer Lake has residents, which would require hiring new police and fire personnel and new equipment while jamming thousands of cars onto country roads.
The Tri-Lakes region of which Palmer Lake is a part is a unique slice of Colorado as it once was. There are too few places like it left. Palmer Lake trustees may believe they are saving their town by welcoming Buc-ee’s, but if doing so requires sacrificing the elements that make Palmer Lake and the Tri-Lakes special, what, in the end, are they really saving?
John Suthers is the former mayor of Colorado Springs, former Colorado Attorney General and served as the United States Attorney for the District of Colorado. He is a shareholder at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.
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