Tuesday, April 2, 2024

(1of3) Village at Wolf Creek, Ryan Bidwell 'the early years' 2009


I intend to produce a series of informative write-ups dedicated to explaining why allowing LMJV to bulldoze a luxury "Village at Wolf Creek" into Alberta Park (~10,300’), - the hydrological heart of the Wolf Creek watershed in the Rio Grande National Forest - is inviting irreparable environmental damage, along with their own business failure, resulting in region wide unintended financial burdens.  


The evidence will argue that it’s in everyone’s best interest (including potential naive investors) to preserve this high elevation hydrological heart of the Wolf Creek watershed, which flows into the much beleaguered Rio Grande River, to leave it alone.  


I recognize I’m a life long unabashed tree-hugger, so it’s self-evident to me.  That’s why I’m going to make a point to minimize my own opining, and to allow the efforts of various authorities and experts to do the explaining.  


Since I've long been impressed with Ryan Bidwell’s informative 2009 backstory, given in Pagosa Springs, at about the end of the first LMJV epoch, and the beginning of Red McCombs' land swap epoch, which itself ended a couple years back - I've transcribed the talk.  


What follows is a three part series, each featuring three (10ish minute) segments and a transcription that I annotated with links to further details where appropriate.


======================================================


Wolf Creek Village Presentation from Colorado Wild -- Part 1

Ryan Bidwell - (1/9)



Oct 22, 2009:  Ryan Bidwell, Executive Director of Colorado Wild, provides his group's position on the proposed Village at Wolf Creek. 

Filmed by D. West Davies  (AllThingsPagosa.com/), and of Jim Smith Realty at the Riverwalk Cafe in downtown Pagosa Springs.


Colorado Wild joined with the Center for Native Ecosystems and are now 

Rocky Mountain Wild


0:00 - Ryan Bidwell:

(Before) In 1986 the piece of land that Mr. McCombs now owns was public land, Forest Service land, as was all the other property up at Wolf Creek Pass.  There was in essence no private land in or around the ski area.  All of the other ski area buildings and facilities are on National Forest Service land ski area has a long-term lease to operate their operation.


0:29

Mr. McCombs proposed a land exchange with another partner Charles Leavell to acquire a piece of land right at the base of the ski area.  They were originally looking for 420 acres that included highway frontage as well as property in the current basin area of the ski area.


0:48

The Forest Service at that time did an analysis, what they call an Environmental Assessment, look at the pros and the cons of the exchange, and they invited the public to comment on it and they reached a decision in February 20th of 1986 to deny the proposed land exchange.


1:05

The reason that they said it wasn't in the public's interest to take about 1200 acres of grazing habitat scattered in little parcels around Saguache County and swap it for this 420 acres of Federal Land right at the base of a ski area.  They didn't think the values were right.  They thought it was inappropriate to break up a landscape that was entirely public and create a chunk of private land right in the middle of it.  It was inconsistent with Forest Services policy.  


1:35

Wolf Creek Ski Area is in Mineral County, but the private lands that Mr McCombs owned, and that he wanted to swap were in Saguache County. 


So that was in February.  Two weeks later in March of 1986 (in Washington, DC, the USDA-USFS) issued the exact opposite decision.


For more of those details view: Case 1:15-cv-01342-RPM Document 67 Filed 05/19/17 USDistrictCourt Colorado, Page 1 of 40


The Forest Service prepared an environmental assessment (EA) of the proposed land exchange pursuant to NEPA.3 Initially, on February 20, 1986, the Forest Service issued a Decision Notice determining not to undertake the land exchange. Decision Notice, W01362. That decision noted that the exchange “would create an isolated, developed non-Federal parcel in a large area of solid Federal ownership,” and was based on the assessment that “subsequent environmental, social, and economic impacts resulting from development are not at all clear,” that “many decisions concerning the management of the National Forest System are irreversible,” that “such grave irreversible actions require clear benefits.” Id., W01363-64.

Two weeks later, on March 6, 1986, the Forest Service reversed itself and issued a new Decision Notice approving the land exchange. Decision Notice, W01366-69. The new decision acknowledged that the February decision was based on “the fact that development of the Federal tract could be in derogation of the Wolf Creek Ski Area and other adjacent National Forest System lands,” but concluded that LMJV‟s agreement in principle to certain mitigation measures would “alleviate this concern.” Id., W01368. It also noted that Mineral County would regulate “components of development that are subject to County ordinances and regulation,” and that “other local, state and federal agencies will have review and approval authority for many components of any development plans that are proposed.” Id.4   (page 3 & 4 and so on.)


MARCH 8, 2012 at NO-VWC.blogspot

The Red McCombs’ Alberta Park Real Estate Poker Game


MAY 6, 2012 at NO-VWC.blogspot

FOIA RESULTS = USDA Forest Service: Decision Notice and Finding of No Significant Impact {3/6/86}


OCTOBER 2, 2015 at NO-VWC.blogspot

Details of the VWC Land Exchange EIS FOIA Federal Court decision


1:52

During that period of time some conversations transpired, that there is no documentation remaining today.  So no one really knows for sure what happened in those two weeks.  We've heard from secondhand information from Forest Service staff that were involved that the word came down from on high in Washington DC, that the land exchange was to be approved.  I can't document that, so I just throw that out there as a possible explanation of what happened in those two weeks.


OCTOBER 5, 2012 at NO-VWC.blogspot

Freedom to inform refused by the USDA Forest Service [updated!]


2:24

Regardless of why it happened, the land exchange did end up being approved in March of 2006, but it was a different land exchange than what had originally been proposed. 


First off the parcel that Mr McCombs acquired shrunk.  It went from 420 acres down to 300 acres.  It moved away from the highway, so he no longer had a highway frontage on highway 160, and moved out of the base area the current ski area.  So they no longer had base area real estate.  


From LMJV’s, Village at Wolf Creek’s promotional website

Federal Register/Vol. 73, No. 185/Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Federal Register/Vol. 76, No. 75/Tuesday, April 19, 2011

ORDER SETTING ASIDE AGENCY ACTION (May 19, 2017)

USDA-RGNF Media Briefing announcement - 2020

Rio Grande National Forest Plan Revision - 2020

USDA-RGNF Record of Decision

     Village at Wolf Creek Access Project Final EIS, Feb. 2019


2:55

If you will at that point in time you might remember that the Alberta Lift hadn't been constructed so it was kind of the parcel was kind of off to the side of the ski area that at the time.  And the Forest Service attached an easement to the property that they gave to Mr McCombs, what they call the scenic easement that is still held to this day, by the US Forest Service, and by the public.  


It restricted what types of activities, what type of facilities, an approval process, so on and so forth.  They placed a bunch of restrictions on what could happen on Mr McCombs private property.  So all of us, the U.S public owns an interest in that piece of property it's not just a piece of private land and I think that sets this piece of property apart from I guess a lot of just private land pieces of property.


3:44

A lot has happened since then.  The parcel sat idol for 15 years or so, then in 1999 Wolf Creek Ski Area sought approval for construction of the Alberta Lift as well as the upgrades to their base area including the new parking lots, that they just finished in the last couple years, and all those terraced lots. 


Our organization Colorado Wild was involved in looking at the ski area part of that and what the impacts to public land would be from adding a lift from the parking lots etc and as we were looking at that we realized that the ski area's parking lot proposal extended all the way up to this piece of private land, but there was no consideration at that point in time of what building a parking lot up to the boundary of a piece of private land might facilitate.


4:35

All right, so when the Forest Service approved the construction of that parking lot, Colorado Wild filed what's called an administrative appeal with the Forest Service.  Basically asking a higher level official than the Forest Service to take a look at it - and we said hey you guys haven’t really considered what the impacts on this piece of private land might be, by building essentially a big road right up to the private land boundary.


4:57

The Forest Service the regional office of the Forest Service agreed with us, they backed the parking lot up 250 feet from the private land boundary and said, hey if we're ever going to build a road across that 250 feet, we'll do an Environment Impact Statement and invite the public to comment and we'll look at all the issues pros and cons you know across that bridge and get there essentially. 



5:22

Now it’s 1999.  Sure enough, what was going on at that point in time was that Mr McCombs was trying to acquire access to his piece of property.  That is, year-round access to his piece of property, without going through a public process to consider the impacts of what.  


Gaining that access without going through a public process about what he was actually planning to do on that piece of property, without having to seek all the various approvals that would be necessary to do so. 


That was his first attempt that ended up being stymied to gain access to this piece of property without going through that public process, just like any other individual would have to go through.  About that same time you know in 2000 they did start working through their land use approval process in Mineral County and they gained preliminary approval for what we can call the Old Village Plan.  I guess for lack of a better word since there's now a new plan at least in conceptual terms.  


The old plan was this 2173 residential units although, some of those units are hotel rooms and they counted four hotel rooms as one residential remix.  Also about 222,000 square feet of commercial space and more than 4,000 parking spaces, etc.

( which calculates out to over 30 acres (=1,306,800sq ft) of pavement. On top of what is now pristine and productive watershed and wildlife habitat and migration corridors.)

6:43

A very large residential development and commercial development you know on the order of something about 10,000 people in terms of its capacity.  You know, Mineral County shepherded that through the preliminary approval process without a whole lot of conversation.  I think some people in Mineral County certainly folks here in our Archuleta County and in Rio Grande County it was a bit of a wake-up call of what was being proposed in their backyard.


7:14

This is a huge project, you know, a city of bigger than Alamosa (currently almost 10K inhabitants) in an otherwise undeveloped area, at least you know that was what it looked like and it raised a lot of questions.  


You know questions about highway safety, with all the traffic questions; about wildlife; and water quality; and did he actually have water rights to do this sort of thing; and where is the power going to come from; and what about public safety with high elevation; and how do you get people off there in a nasty storm.  Who’s going to provide services to this community? Police, Fire, EMS?  


The sort of traditional services provided by a local government, and when in this instance there is an approximate local government because obviously Mineral County’s County Seat.  Creed is (40 mountain miles distant) a long way away from Wolf Creek.


7:58

Those were all questions that were kind of hanging out there and people looked to the US Forest Service to try to answer those questions.  And we said, well the Forest Service (told us) that they would do in EIS and consider all these impacts before they granted access to this project.  


Sure enough Mr McCombs didn't want to go through that process so in 2001, 2002 he hired a number of lobbyists that encouraged then Congressman Tom Delay from Texas to introduce riders on unrelated legislation energy bills and things of that nature that would essentially just grant an easement across Forest Service land to Mr McComb to build this village.


8:40

To access it without going through the EIS process that they had agreed, that the Forest Service had agreed to do in 1999.  Fortunately thanks to the help of a number of members of the Colorado delegation that didn't think it was particularly appropriate for Texas lawmakers to be dictating what happened here in Colorado, those initiatives were defeated.  


In the end of 2003 McCombs eventually tried to start down the road of an Environmental Impact statement of the Forest Service process that involved public hearings and public comment periods.  Eventually a lot of controversy which I'm sure many of you all remember.


===============================================


Wolf Creek Village Presentation from Colorado Wild -- Part 2

Ryan Bidwell - (2/9)



0:00 - Ryan Bidwell:

McCombs entered that process very reluctantly and then proceeded to try to manipulate that EIS process to achieve the outcome that he wanted to see, which was access being granted to the piece property without having to deal with a lot of the other sort of concerns and issues that the public raised.  


0:32

The Forest Service doesn't have the staff to do these kinds of big analyses, that resolves questions anymore.  The agency’s been shrinking for about 20 years.  So they outsource an analysis like that quite frequently, to a private contracting.  In this case was referred to Tetra Tech a 10,000 employees firm with offices all over the country and all over the world.  The Farmington office of Tetra Tech to this is sort of the lead office on the EIS.  


1:01

 What we ended up finding out long after the fact.  Was that Mr McCombs and his and his project leader Bon Honts were essentially blackmailing and bribing Tetra Tech, the company that was doing this Environmental Impact Statement.  


Withholding payment and for each and every chapter of the document, of a 600 page document, until it said the things that they wanted it to say.  So rather than this contractor working independently for the Forest Service they’re supposed to provide a, hopefully, an independent analysis. 


What ended up happening was that we had a contracting firm working directly for the developer to construct an analysis that justified granting access without providing, really any consideration to all the other associated impacts.  


So we end up with a 600 page document that analyzed 250 feet of road - and ignored whether the route started on the state system, and ignored where the road went on to the private land.  As you can imagine building 250 feet of road that doesn't go anywhere and doesn't start anywhere doesn't create a whole heck of a lot of impact.   And so the Forest Service approved access for the partially that road and another separate access point to provide two access points to the village in 2006.


Ski village lawsuit was last resort

Erin Smith, Oct 21, 2006 - Pueblo Chieftain

"It is alarming that the public's nearly 3,000 comments seem to have fallen on deaf ears; yet when the developer asks for a favor, federal officials go out of their way to respond.”

01-18-06_LEGAL_JointNoticeOfAppeal.pdf

07-13-06_LEGAL_ResponseToAppeal.pdf

11-13-06_LEGAL_SpecialUsePermitCoverLetter.pdf

11-13-06_LEGAL_SpecialUsePermitToBuildAtWolfCreek.pdf


Mineral County Conceals Collusion with Wolf Creek Developer

Published by Chris Talbot-Heindl - January 18, 2006


LAWSUIT CHALLENGES WOLF CREEK VILLAGE ACCESS ROADS

SAM Magazine--Wolf Creek, Colo., October 20, 2006--Colorado Wild and the San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council have filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Forest Service's decision to allow two access roads accessing the proposed Wolf Creek Village to be built. Both groups contend that the roads, which would cross public lands, are only two dominos in the controversial development which would bring substantial growth the southern Colorado resort.

At issue is the Forest Service's April 3rd Environmental Impact Statement and Record of Decision.


Lawsuit Challenges Forest Service Decision, Ongoing Improprieties

Published by Chris Talbot-Heindl on October 21, 2006

Friends of Wolf Creek groups filed a lawsuit in federal court Thursday October 20th challenging the Forest Service’s April 3rd Environmental Impact Statement and Record of Decision authorizing two separate roads across public land to access the proposed “Village” at Wolf Creek. The lawsuit filed by Colorado Wild and the San Luis Valley Ecosystem Council also challenges recent Forest Service actions modifying their earlier decision to make it easier for the developer to begin construction


PILLAGE AT WOLF CREEK UPDATE

Friends of Wolf Creek Update - November 22, 2006

Court Suspends “Village” Construction – Another Wild Winter at Wolf Creek


Ryan: Colorado Wild sued basically because - 


(Audience) How do you verify and document that he was actually doing this, do you guys have that?”


Ryan: Absolutely a bunch of that stuff is up on Wolf Creek Friends website.


(Audience) “So this is fact?”


2:37

Ryan: We argue this to the Court, and the Court granted the preliminary injunction on the basis of these claims.


(Audience)  “Claims or facts?”


Ryan: We believe they are facts and the court agreed with us.  

The developer doesn't agree with them. 


I was never there so I can't say for sure what transpired but based on the documentation that we saw, which included the developer actually writing sections of the EIS.  Writing sections of Forest Service access policy.  Writing sections of Mineral County Land Use Code.  


Wolf Creek development tangled with political ties

Mike Soraghan - Feb 3, 2006 - Denver Post

Ex-forest official disputes OK of Wolf Creek roads

Electa Draper, April 5, 2006 - Denver Post

Inspector: Access roads properly approved

Denver Post Newsroom, Sept 9, 2006

Finishing with: 

“However, the retired official, Ed Ryberg, said Friday that he stands by comments made in an April story in The Denver Post, which accurately portrayed his concerns. 

He said the environmental review that resulted in authorization of two access roads for the project was fundamentally flawed. He further said that Rey’s deputy, Tenny, involved himself with McCombs’ access problems to a degree Ryberg found unusual and that Tenny made efforts to help McCombs.

“Ryberg said he could not say he had direct knowledge of the actual impact and result of Tenny’s efforts on other Forest Service officials who made the key decisions regarding the project.”


E-mails link Wolf Creek developer and (Tetra Tech Inc)

Fort Collins Coloradoan, Judith Kohler - March 4, 2006

Magistrate recommends extension of injunction in Wolf Creek case

June 6, 2007, AP, Denver Post

Scale back oversized plans for pristine area

December 17, 2007, Denver Post Newsroom

Feds agree to redo environmental review of proposed ski village

Feb 19, 2008, AP, Denver Post

Wolf Creek development stalled by court settlement

Feb 19, 2008, Matt Hildner, Pueblo Chieftain


3:15

Ryan: As well as the developer withholding payment until certain changes were made to the text of the document.


3:22

We're talking in this case, about a 4 million dollar contract to write this document.  A significant chunk of money that was being withheld until the document met the developer’s expectations, rather than meeting Forest Service’s expectations.


(Audience)  “Who paid for that?”


Ryan: The developer paid for that.


3:44

Yeah, the developer is required to pay for it.  But traditionally legally what's supposed to happen is the developer puts the money in an escrow account and the contractor reports directly to the Forest Service and you know, if the contractor meets the Forest Service's expectation the contractor gets paid, it is a government contract, not a private contract. 


(Audience)  “Do we know why it was done that way?


4:12  

Ryan:  Well it wasn't done that way because in this case Mr McCombs chose to, … actually, other than Mr McComb directly, it was Mr Honts who was the head man of the project  He wasn't very happy with the direction that the EIS was headed based on the Forest Service direction.


So (Mr Honts) took it upon himself to try to negotiate with the contractor directly, to try to influence the outcome of the analysis 


(Audience) “This couldn't be due to maybe, you know, I think you have some errors here, maybe want to look at this again?” 


Ryan:  No it was more about like the scope


(Audience) ‘I’ve dealt with them before too and it was, they ended up asking a lot of questions and we ended up agrees.’ 


4:57

Ryan:  Yes there are certainly factual issues that only the developer can answer about.  

What do you wanted to do over here on the piece property?  Those issues aside, we're talking about the scope of the analysis itself.  Should the analysis include assessment of the impacts of the village, or should the analysis included only assessment of this 250 feet, and that's a very fundamental foundational issues to the analysis were the kinds of things that the developer were lobbying actively


(Audience) ?was the easement right, was the road?


Ryan: It was the analysis of the road and associated impacts related to it 


(Audience)  But not the rest (of the development)?


5:44  

Ryan:  No. So -


(Audience) “One other question, how many feet of road access will need to get there?”


Ryan: Depends on how he gets there.  If he goes through the existing ski area parking lot.  It’s about 250 feet. I think if it comes directly off the highway 160 it's about 1,100 feet, depending on where you start and finish.  Somewhere in that ballpark.  Coming directly off of highway 160 involves bridging a significant ravine.


There's cost issues associated with that, yeah but it kind of depends.  Also depends of where CDOT will allow you to access the state highway system.  As I'm sure you all know CDOT is pretty regimented and strict organization and there are rules and regulations that they make and people follow. 


(Audience)  “… get ten thousand people going through this parking lot?”


Ryan:  … what Forest Service ultimately decided was whether it would be better to have a separate access point.  Rather than funneling all those people through the ski area’s parking lot.   Primarily because CDOT hates the Ski Area's current intersection with Highway 160 and the S turn there from a safety perspective.  They didn't like the idea of adding much more traffic to it.  


7:00

It's also tricky spot to envision building a great separated interchange, which is what would be required for a development of this scale.  You know, you’re talking about the bridge thing like over in Durango.  Overpasses and off ramps and all that sort of thing.  The second place is on landscape, where that makes more sense, feasibility wise.


===============================================


Wolf Creek Village Presentation from Colorado Wild -- Part 3

Ryan Bidwell - (3/9)



0:00

(Audience)  If the money was in escrow, who’s controlling the money that's in escrow?


Ryan:  In this case Mr. Honts renegotiated the payment plan with Tetra Tech, so that he would pay them directly.  The Forest Service didn't object to that.  Which was unfortunate.  


As these projects go along just like any other contract, you end up with renegotiating a contract endless times as the scope changes, and so on and so forth.  And so, one of those contract renegotiations involved a change in how they would be paid.  Such that Mr Honts got to approve all of the products.  Before payment would be authorized, and it would come directly from McCombs rather than from a Forest Service escrow account.  So the process got pretty well botched.


1:01

As a result the product got pretty well botched and we ended up with an analysis that didn’t really say anything.


It didn't answer anybody's questions about, hey what are the impacts going to be to the local economies in the South Fork (25mi to the East), you know Pagosa Spring (23mi to the West)?  How many people are we actually talking about traveling on Highway 160 and what are the impacts to public safety?

Where is the power going to come from for this project if the power line coming up to the Wolf Creek Ski Area currently is more or less at capacity? So on, and so on, and so forth?  None of those questions got answered because the analysis was artificially narrow in scope.


Colorado Wild filed a lawsuit, the court issued an injunction, basically agreeing with us that it appeared that this analysis really didn't meet the requirements of the law.  Where the EIS needs to be, that is kind of thorough and comprehensive and addressing the concerns raised by the public through that process.  


So rather than wait it out, and wait for the court to eventually issue a final decision.  The Forest Service and the developer came to us, and said, hey we can see the writing on the wall we know the Court doesn't seem to like this document very much.  You know we've been pretty well beat up in the press, we're willing to make this all go away.


We want to sign a settlement agreement with you and say and we'll start all over and we'll do a new EIS and we'll help the Forest Service do it themselves with their own staff this time rather than a private contractor, the developer will still pay.  But, we're going to start all over, and we're going to do a comprehensive analysis and finally get this project done.  And we said great, now that's what we've been asking for all along.  


2:50

(responding to question) I think that's a you know i think there's a real misconception about where Colorado Wild is coming from on this project.  Part of that is everybody's got a different perspective on this project and I'm not here to change anybody's mind about whether the village is a good thing or a bad thing.  


What I do want you to understand is that, and what our organization believes in very strongly, is that if this project goes through a legitimate public process, which we would hope would be the case for any large-scale project, or any project for that matter.  But particularly a big controversial project goes through a legitimate process where we get good information about what the impacts pro and con of the project are going to be and then we make a decision based on that good information - we don't really have any problem with what ends up going on up there.  


What we've had a problem with all along has been the developer's attempts time and time again, behind closed doors with will creek ski area, through Congressman Tom Delay's efforts, through to paying off a private contractor to try to keep all those issues off the table, or at least push them forward in times at some point after approval is already granted and say we'll deal with that stuff later.  That’s, you know, we just got to get some approvals first, we just got to get this project going.  


The process has always been botched.  That's why we feel like the project has never really gotten the discriminate it deserves.  It's my belief that if this project went through a legitimate process for various government agencies that have the expertise to say how much water does it take to actually serve a village of ten thousand people.  You know where, and how much sewage does that create, how can you properly treat it, and deal with it, and put the effluent back in the (Wolf Creek and into the Rio Grande River) without (damaging) fish habitat.  


If all those agencies got to weigh in and we’d be back on that project based on that analysis, we’d end up with a really different project than what Mr McCombs has proposed, so far.   A really different project from what Bob Honts proposed and frankly a very different project from what Clint Jones is proposing right now.  


Because we’re still in the same process of, you know, here's our (LMJV) grand idea, let's approve it first and then we'll do the analysis separately.


5:02

What we've been asking for all along - and frankly that’s what the law requires is that you do the analysis up front, and then you make a decision, once you actually know something about what the impacts are going to be.  It very well may be that those impacts end up being you know largely positive from an economic perspective or largely mitigable from an environmental perspective and we can find ways to make them go away.  


But I personally believe that the impacts would be significant, significant enough to warrant reconsideration of the project scaling, it back down in size.


(Question) Do you, does Colorado Wild have an idea of how big (many guests) would be appropriate?  How many well how many and what kind of units would be able to go up there and uh from Colorado Wilds perspective?


5:57

Ryan:  You know, we (Colorado Wild) don’t, and we've been criticized for that, and I understand that from one perspective.  


But it's for the reason I just explained.  I don't have the expertise of the State Department of Public Health and Colorado Department of Public Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency and everybody.  You know, we're literally talking about dozens of specialists to look at every little aspect of this product and say you know what makes sense, what’s feasible based on the property, on the on the water rights, on the traffic situation, etc. 

 

Those are the kind of analyses that we don't have the resources as a small organization to do - and frankly you know, no one would believe us if we did them anyway.  


But that's why we have these government agencies and their respective regulatory processes in place to provide that service to the public and hopefully to use that information to inform public policy and make decisions on these things.


7:03

My guess is you know when this land exchange was originally approved they anticipated a couple hundred units.  In some parts the Environmental Assessment two to three hundred, depends where you look. Yeah when you talk 200 homes versus 2 to 3 thousand units.  Now Clint’s proposal’s looking at eighteen hundred units, again a lot of those being hotel rooms.


Where he (LMJV) began counting four hotel rooms equaling one unit, so 2500, 2800 spaces for people that reside.  Yeah that's a really different scale than the 200 or 300 hundred residential units, that was originally envisioned back in 1986.


7:48

My hunch is it’s probably somewhere in between those two numbers that's pretty sustainable up there.


(Question) His first phase includes about 400?


Ryan:  Somewhere around 475, 450 acres.


(Question) Is it, you think, that's probably sustainable? 


Ryan:  Yeah, my gut feeling is that it might be.  But I don't think that's our responsibility to decide, as just one organization.  I think ultimately it would be ideal and legal for that to be defined by what the resources are at hand. My hunch is that that's pretty close but again we just don't have the information to make a really good decision about that.


===============================================

End of part one of three.

============================================= 

PS. For what it's worth,  I am simply an individual off in rural Colorado, doing my thing and hoping it might be a constructive part of this effort to save Alberta Park, and ultimately get it back under protection.  If you really want to help, please be sure to contact one of the organizations that have been doing all the heavy lifting.

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