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Reservoir Hill in Dire Straits |
Cynda Green | 1/24/12
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Note: There is an important meeting tomorrow, Wednesday, January 25 about the impending Reservoir Hill Development plan that will turn Reservoir Hill into an amusement park geared to tourists. Please continue reading to understand why you must attend this 6pm meeting at the Ross Aragon Community Center.
For the last few months, Bill Hudson and my dog Cody and I — and sometimes our friend Glenn Walsh — have been hiking up Reservoir Hill two or three times a week. We don’t run up the hill — we walk, while exchanging conversation and ideas, often about Reservoir Hill and its impending development into a park-with-amusements.
It’s an eerie feeling to discuss Reservoir Hill’s future while enjoying its present. Reservoir Hill is a relaxing place to be, but at the same time there is a sense of urgency that we must stop and reconsider the expensive path that the Town and the Reservoir Hill Task Force are proposing — to forever change Reservoir Hill from a place of solitude to a place of clanking rides and noisy people, presumably tourists with money to burn.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the December 13, 2011 Reservoir Task Force meeting I attended. There were two things about that meeting that bothered me. First, there seemed to be a lack of enthusiasm by its attendees. The members spoke quietly if at all, with long pauses between speakers. Frankly, everyone sounded tired. Are they tired of trying to make a risky idea make sense? Does it make them tired to think of the amount of work and financial responsibility they have ahead of them to implement their plan?
 I'm sure it's fun and exciting to think of ideas to make Reservoir Hill profitable. Once I had fun designing a cabin in the woods — but running the permit and getting the thing actually built was a whole different ball game. After a year and half of very hard work to obtain my building permit, I realized that conditions beyond my control had changed for the worse and that the cabin would never come to fruition.
The second thing that bothered me about the meeting was a statement made by Town manager David Mitchem when the group was discussing varying funding options for their project:
“I think, if you focus on all of them [funding options] you probably have, oh, 80-90 percent chance of success that we’re actually going to build it, because one of them is going to hit. The pro forma is too good for one of them not to hit.
“Now, if the whole national economy goes in the dumper, then we got another issue. But barring that... (12 second pause)... I would recommend that we do the hard work chasing after all of them.”
I commend Mr. Mitchem for realizing that all bets are off regarding the financial success of a developed Reservoir Hill if the national economy “goes in the dumper”. But isn’t our national economy already dumpster diving? It sure seems that way to me. We are so far in the dumper at this point — Fed-inflicted band aid fixes and all — that I think the best course of action is to hunker down and find ways to make more out of what we have — not more out of more public funding and indebtedness.
This whole amusements-in-the-park idea for making money off of Reservoir Hill, it seems to me, was initiated by the rushed acquisition of a free used chairlift that cost the Town $41,000 to disassemble and ship to Pagosa. After further scrutiny, it was discovered that the chairlift was not long enough to be used for winter sports, and was too slow to be useful transportation for FolkWest. It was also discovered that it would take $500,000 to get the thing up and running.
Not to be discouraged, the Reservoir Hill Task Force turned in their skis for a new $4.3 million summer Fantasyland which includes the chairlift, a zipline, an alpine coaster, a tethered balloon, an observation tower, and a new amphitheater.
Although David Mitchem has repeatedly stated that the new amusement park and amenities must be privately funded, that is not what the published business plan says:
“We believe that we can minimize certain risk factors to potential recreational concessionaires by: Initial capitalization of the Town to sustain operations through year one…”
Under Funding Options, Funding Option 1 and 2 are:
“Town owns amenities and Concessionaire manages and operates all amenities...
"Town owns amenities and Management team with multiple concessionaires handling different amenities.”
It’s a tricky business combining private and public enterprises. As of this date, there are no private funding options secured for this grandiose amusement park on our little Reservoir Hill — a small hill that cannot compare to, for example, Breckenridge Peak 8 that hosts a “Fun Center”.
It sounds like Death by Town Debt to me, and certain death to the peaceful Reservoir Hill I hiked on just yesterday.
You can download the Reservoir Hill Recreation Park business plan here.
Here are some other things I thought about as I read the above business plan.
The plan is for the $500,000 (estimated final cost) chairlift to offer free rides up and down the hill. Will it be used as a babysitter by tourist parents? Or will it be an attractive nuisance to our local kids? What exactly will kids with no money do up on the hill? Will it become a hangout place, like a shopping mall is in the city? Will that be attractive to tourists?
The original motivation for the theme park was to increase tourism and specifically increase the number of "nights stayed" in Pagosa by one night per family. The big money-maker in the proposed plan is a "zipline" that will charge $89 per ride. If a family of four decides to ride the zip line, the price they will pay will be the equivalent to 4 nights lodging in many of our lodging choices. So perhaps our typical tourists, who probably are not as well-heeled as Breckenridge’s tourists, will stay fewer nights in Pagosa in order to afford the zipline adventure ride on Reservoir Hill.
Talk about a plan gone bad.
Reservoir Hill is a jewel in downtown Pagosa because of its serenity and feeling of remoteness. That is its beauty. But is it being marketed to our tourists as such? Is it being marketed at all?
If one goes to the Visitor Center, practically at the bottom of Reservoir Hill, one would find a glossy tri-fold brochure in the local section titled “Hiking Trails in the San Juan National Forest”. It’s a nice brochure, but has no mention of the wilderness hiking area a couple hundred feet away — Reservoir Hill. There are no brochures at all about Reservoir Hill. There is a rudimentary copy of a map that is hidden behind the counter, given out to visitors by request.
I might suggest a brochure about the hiking and biking trails available on Reservoir Hill be prominently displayed next to the current “Hiking Trails in the San Juan National Forest” brochure, as well as prominently displayed at all of our lodging facilities, stores, restaurants, etc.
Bill Hudson and I will be happy to design the brochure for free. Mr. Hudson is an excellent graphic artist.
Furthermore, there is no mention of Reservoir Hill hiking in the “official” summer visitors guide (that I could find) and only a mention of a Nordic skiing trail in the winter guide — a trail that is not currently in service due to lack of snow.
Bottom line, why is the Reservoir Hill Task Force proposing an expensive amusement park that will put our Town further in debt and rob Reservoir Hill of its most precious asset — wilderness serenity right in the middle of town — in the dubious name of more tourism money, when they haven’t even bothered to market it as it is? Let’s start there. |
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