Sneak Peek of the Week
New plan for Sweetwater Lake envisions “authentic” feel without the state park banner
250
Possible daily visitor cap at the proposed Sweetwater Lake area managed by Colorado Parks and Wildlife
It’s been about two-and-a-half years since Gov. Jared Polis stood atop a cliff overlooking Sweetwater Lake and announced the 43rd state park had saved the lake.
It has not been a smooth ride.
The Forest Service, which acquired the 488-acre parcel in 2021 after decades of developer plans for golf courses and luxury homes, needs Colorado Parks and Wildlife to manage the property. But residents of the tiny Sweetwater community around the lake worried that a new state park would lure thousands of visitors up the winding dirt road to their quiet enclave above the Colorado River in Garfield County.
Many wondered if the private developers would have been better for the lake.
Over nearly two years and more than a dozen meetings, the community members hammered the Forest Service and CPW to protect the area’s equestrian and Western history and keep Sweetwater small and special. The agencies listened and this week the Forest Service unveiled a plan for Sweetwater that is unlike most any other park in the state.
The plan calls for possibly restoring historic structures around the lake but notes existing buildings “that are in a state of severe deferred maintenance” will be torn down. The plan calls for construction of a new lodge with administrative and visitor services, limited food service “such as a small coffee or pie shop.”
Scott Fitzwilliams, the supervisor of the White River National Forest, said at an April 4 community meeting in Gypsum that the design of any new construction would “have an authentic feeling that reflects a lot of what you see around the Flat Tops.”
“Not a kitschy Western facade,” he said. “We think we can improve quite a bit on what’s there architecturally … where visitors can get that feeling that is authentic and different. It’s not going to be your average place.”
CPW said it is willing to discuss not calling Sweetwater a state park. The Forest Service proposal calls for 15 to 20 new campsites, converting at an existing federal campground into a day use site, construction of eight to 12 new “rustic” cabins, new horse stables, four to seven horse campsites and improved lake access. The plan will not allow new uses like mountain biking or motorized travel. The Forest Service has proposed possibly capping visitation to the lake at 250 daily visitors.
How to control traffic remains unknown. That could involve signage at the bottom of Sweetwater Road. It might involve reservations. Colorado Parks and Wildlife requires day-use reservations at only one of its parks: Eldorado Canyon.
“We are going to have to limit people. There is just no getting around that,” Fitzwilliams told the community at the April 4 meeting.
The White River National Forest is taking comments on the proposed plan for Sweetwater Lake.
>> Click over to The Sun next week to read this story
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Breaking Trail
Legislation clears path for state bonding authority to buy the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park
$169 million
Cost of acquiring the Stanley Hotel under an initial bond-financing plan proposed this year
An amendment to legislation that modifies a grant program for Colorado’s creative industries will allow the Colorado Educational and Cultural Facilities Authority to buy the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park.
A lengthy amendment to House Bill 1295 — which extends incentives offered under the Colorado Community Revitalization Grant program and was approved by the Colorado House late April and the Colorado Senate this week — allows the Colorado Educational and Cultural Facilities Authority to create a nonprofit company to manage a facility and direct revenue from that facility toward the organization’s mission to support schools and art facilities in the state.
The legislation, which requires the signature of Gov. Jared Polis, is a critical step in the authority’s plan to buy the historic Stanley Hotel in Estes Park and issue bonds to support the construction of a new film center at the hotel. Once the bonds are repaid — the bonds could be for $450 million — the authority will own the hotel and film center as a private revenue generator to support schools and cultural facilities.
The authority was created in 1981 to lend money to educational and art organizations for new and renovated schools, venues and museums but the original legislation that created the authority barred it from owning or operating those facilities. The new legislation changes the authority’s mission to include ownership and management of facilities and expands the definition of the facilities supported by the authority to include a film center, a hotel, eating and drinking establishments, gift shops and lodging.
Owning the Stanley Hotel would be a new role for the bonding authority that has directed $7.6 billion in bonds to schools, student housing, performance halls, museums and Olympic training facilities across Colorado since the early 1980s.
The 140-room Stanley Hotel — the inspiration behind Stephen King’s “The Shining” — is owned by the Grand Heritage Hotel Group. The group’s CEO, John Cullen, has declined to comment as details for the transfer of a hotel he bought out of bankruptcy in 1996.
Originally Cullen planned to sell the Stanley Hotel to Arizona-based nonprofit Community Finance Corp., which would use bonds backed by CECFA to develop the Stanley Film Center. When the deal with the Arizona group did not materialize, the Colorado bonding authority stepped in with the plan to acquire the hotel, which required legislation to adjust its mission and allow the purchase and management of a property.
Part of the original deal included the sale of Cullen’s 89-unit Fall River Village Resort. A new deal has emerged with the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority, the Estes Park Housing Authority and Grand Heritage Hotel Group that would convert the Fall River Village property from vacation rentals to workforce housing. The Fall River Village deal is not connected to CECFA’s plan with Cullen for the Stanley Hotel.
“It’s important to note that CHFA is not party to any agreements or arrangements pertaining to the sale of the Stanley Hotel, including whether that sale may be conditioned upon the sale of Fall River Village Resort,” said Matt Lynn, a spokesman for the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority.
The Colorado Economic Development Commission in 2015 designated the proposed Stanley Film Center a Regional Tourism Act project, qualifying it for $46.4 million in state sales tax incentives over 30 years. The commission last month approved an amendment to the Stanley Film Center plan that included listing both CECFA and the authority’s subsidiary “Stanley Partnership for Art Culture and Education, LLC” as owners of the film center.
The Playground
A plan for wolverines “that is completely opposite from wolf reintroduction”
45
Number of wolverines CPW could introduce in three years to help restore a population of more than 100 animals in the next few decades
There was a phrase repeated over and over as lawmakers pondered legislation that would direct Colorado Parks and Wildlife to reintroduce wolverines to Colorado’s high country.
“Wolverines are weasels, not wolves.”
And legislation crafted over two years to return the scavenging wolverine — members of the weasel family — is not the voter-mandate to bring back to Colorado.
Colorado lawmakers have overwhelmingly approved the return of wolverines to Colorado’s alpine landscape, with a plan “that is completely opposite from the wolf reintroduction process,” said Sen. Dylan Roberts, a Democrat from Avon who co-sponsored the legislation with Sen. Perry Will, a Republican from New Castle.
Roberts said the pair’s Senate Bill 171 marks “a responsible way to do wildlife reintroduction.”
Roberts and Will are among the most outspoken critics of the state’s wolf reintroduction effort and spent two years crafting the wolverine bill with input from Western Slope residents, the resort industry and wildlife biologists.
The wolverine legislation allows the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to designate an experimental population in Colorado, which gives Colorado Parks and Wildlife the ability to manage reintroduction. The legislation also establishes a funding program so ranchers who lose livestock to wolverines can be compensated. And there is no deadline for when Colorado Parks and Wildlife should return wolverines to the state.
All the requirements in the legislation were built to avoid the pitfalls of wolf reintroduction, “where they just went to the ballot first and then filled in all the safeguard afterwards,” Roberts said.
“I think the bipartisan support and sponsorship of this legislation reflects the long-term process this has gone through rather than rushing it though like wolves,” he said.
There are somewhere between 300 and 400 wolverines in the lower 48 states of North America. The U.S. and Fish and Wildlife Service in 2020 declined to list the wolverine as threatened but a federal court overturned that decision. In November last year the federal agency designated the carnivore as threatened, citing updated threats based on climate impacts to high altitude snow coverage, fractured habitat and trapping activity.
Colorado wildlife officials first began planning wolverine reintroduction in the late 1990s but restoration plans were delayed as the state focused on returning Canadian lynx. Wolverine reintroduction was delayed again in 2010 as federal officials weighed the protection status for wolverines.
>> Click over to The Sun on Friday to read this story
Counties cheer the death of backcountry hut legislation
Colorado lawmakers this week killed legislation that would have prevented counties from enforcing locally crafted short-term rental property regulations on off-grid, backcountry lodges, cabins and huts.
Senate Bill 213 was unanimously rejected by a Colorado House committee Saturday after the Colorado Senate overwhelmingly approved the bill days earlier. Counties were lining up in opposition to the legislation, arguing the bill’s language could prevent safety and construction regulation of homes that were not in the backcountry.
County commissioners were quick to point out their support for networks of backcountry cabins while supporting locally crafted regulations versus state rules. But just in case lawmakers continued with the legislation, at least one county was making a plan to override the impact of Senate Bill 213.
Pitkin County commissioners this week planned an emergency ordinance that would have placed an immediate moratorium on all short-term rental bookings and activity in the county’s rural and remote zoning districts, which are designed to protect the natural environment while allowing limited recreation and development.
The commissioners have spent two years studying short-term rentals in the rural zoned areas of the county, with public comment “overwhelmingly” critical of vacation rentals in the backcountry areas of the county, reads a letter commissioners sent to Colorado lawmakers last week urging them to reject the legislation.
There were many similar letters coming from county commissioners following the Colorado Senate’s approval of the bill. The family of Drew Fink, the Boulder resident who proposed the legislation to Senate President Steve Fenberg, is suing Gunnison County over county rules that prohibit more than six occupants of his backcountry cabin outside Crested Butte, was also paying for lobbyists to shepherd the legislation. Fink told The Sun the lawsuit and the legislation were not connected.
Colorado Rep. Judi Amabile, a Boulder Democrat like Fenberg, was a sponsor of the bill in the Colorado House said the legislation was in response to a constituent’s concern and was proposed by “a coalition of Coloradans who are passionate about what makes Colorado Colorado.”
Pitkin County commissioners on Tuesday tabled consideration of the moratorium on all short-term rental activity in the backcountry areas of the county, citing the end of the state legislation.
“Right now we don’t have the need and we can look at other opportunities and options until the time this legislation might come back,” Pitkin County Commissioner Patti Clapper told The Sun.
— j
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