May 11, 2005 the Estes Parkian posted these comments concerning the Estes park Urban Renewal Authority. Being ahead of the curve generates its own creability. We are repeating the article from May 11, 2005.
At some point in the not to distant future we will all look around and those of us that remain will ask what happened? Estes Park was in trouble and no one had the courage to do something.
Over twenty years ago EPURA was formed to help rehabilitate the downtown commercial district after the Lawn Lake flood. Urban renewal authorities have special powers but they must also follow special rules. Not being one for the rules the town has been a bit sloppy on protocol. As a statutory town our town board was thrilled to snuggle close to EPURA, always eager to assimilate the powers of others by awarding commissions on boards and hiring spouses. The Town has modified and morphed EPURA and abused its powers. The Mayor wrongful referred to the Authority as the planning arm of the town. This is absurd; EPURA is a project authority and nothing more. The intent of a urban renewal authority is to eliminate blight areas and restore them to economic viability (examples: ghetto’s, abandon tenant houses, dump sites). Granted, EPURA in the early days started on the core of their assigned task; the downtown commercial district and the river walk. There are a lot of small business and property owners each needing to be dealt with, not an easy task, so Staff decided (this comes from a former town administrators mouth) EPURA would only deal with the big boys, Holiday Inn, Stanley, RMNP etc. and abandon the inter core of the bread basket. The logic being, all the smaller entrepreneurs were too hard to deal with so they expanded the EPURA boundaries to team up with those big boys. Small business owners you're just out of luck, but you get to pay for it suckers!
To date the town has continued to ignore the downtown business district. “The only way to deal with that mess (referring to downtown), is if a fire takes the whole thing to the ground,” (This from the mouth of a former town administrator). Even though the buildings in the downtown area are full of toxic mold, asbestos, lacking even basic wiring, truly health, economic and blight needy attention. The town has directed EPURA to build a new park-and-ride for RMNP. How in the name of basic honesty can you consider the Information Center a blight area when it sits right next door to the most antiquated human waste treatment facility in Colorado. And Estes Park has more than her share of human waste, think Town Mayor and Trustees. Remember two years ago the facility leaked 68,000 gallons of raw human excrement into Lake Estes? The mayor wants this to be the center of our visitors Estes Park experience. Great John, park them next to the sewer plant and bus them into the park, ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT INDEED!! Where is our money really going?
The Estes Parkian - a Home Rule of One
