The Town of Pagosa Springs is putting the finishing touches on its Downtown Master Plan, a guide to development and "re-development" of the historic core of Pagosa Springs. That plan focuses on the area of downtown along Highway 160, otherwise known as "Main Street." But what about the 'other half' of the downtown core — Hot Springs Boulevard?
Back in the 1800s, the U.S. Government platted the area surrounding the Great Pagosa Hot Springs, one of the largest and deepest hot springs in the world, with vague plans to one day build a convalescent hospital for Civil War veterans. That plan was shelved, and the area around the hot springs sprouted a couple of hotels — but not much else. Today, the Hot Springs Boulevard neighborhood is still mainly vacant land — an untapped resource, to put it into developers terms.
If we are aiming to “spruce up” the Main Street neighborhoods with a new Master Plan, why stop there?
The old township of Pagosa Springs is one square mile, and the area from Main Street, south down 6th street to Apache and over to Hot Springs Boulevard and back north up to Main, sports expansive views, preserved wetlands, and the Hot Springs itself. It is a veritable pot of gold for developing — hopefully, with intelligent design. Continued...
This reporter found the planning drawings for the Hot Springs area to show intelligent design — a beautiful future addition to Hot Springs Boulevard, and Pagosa. This picture shows only a small detail of the overall plans.
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In 1999, the town of Pagosa Springs contracted with Albert Moore & Partners, via Resolution 99-26, to draw up plans for a development guide, in association with the Hot Springs Boulevard Neighborhood Plan. On September 14, 1999 the contract planner completed a draft plan including owner comments and, along with property owners, presented the proposed plan to the Town.
On October 19, 1999 there was a public hearing in front of the Planning Commission, along with public and property owner comments. The planning commission recommended approval of the Hot Springs Boulevard Neighborhood Plan. It became the development guideline, with the intent of creating an urban setting with emphasis on pedestrian friendly byways and reduced traffic problems. The plan featured various streetscapes, which include sidewalks, landscaping, on-street parking, four 12’ lanes where applicable, landscaped medians, building frontage alignments with tiered or offset upper stories and pedestrian scale lighting. The design aimed to frame the mountain views with attractive buildings and beautiful landscaping. Included was a new river walk, with breathtaking views, around the wetlands preservation area, connecting to the rest of the neighborhood.
 Some of the plans I perused had even more amenities, such as gazebos, out-door cafés, bandstands, public art features, seating amongst the landscaping, a landscaped walkway connection to Reservoir Hill named "Spring Street", a gazebo with a water feature and seating. The scaled building designs showed solar exposures for the roofs and terraces, and combined commercial, office and residential spaces above the retail. Entry to all of this, as conceived in the plan, was a gateway and covered pedestrian entry with banners (a little much for me, I admit) and to top it all off there was indicated a "Brew Pub Property" down from the Post Office — whose, I have no idea, but sounds good to me.
The landscaping would be canopy shade trees, and would be the majority of street tree planting, with plant materials adaptable to local conditions, and native plant materials in a ‘mountain character’ theme. Lawns would be kept to a minimum. The plans show signage, lighting, drainage, view corridors, and architectural styles, with consideration of the publics interest in preserving Pagosa’s unique architectural flavor.
This comprehensive treatment of Pagosa's possible future core area was adopted on November 16, 1999 by the Town Board of Trustees of Pagosa Springs, by a vote of 6 — 0. The plans are ready, and the Town is ready for a new outfit, so, where’s the beef?
It is a matter of pride. We have drop dead-gorgeous scenery, great people, great weather, and so many possibilities, to attract more business, so we can all (finally) make a decent living here. We could be the Village at Wolf Creek, right here in Pagosa Springs!
I find it terribly exciting, knowing these developments, of intelligent design, could possibly be in the works. I love Pagosa with or without the dress-up — that’s why I moved here. Seeing these plans and those of the ‘other’ Master Plan, aimed at beautifying Pagosa, increases my civic pride even more. |