Big Problems with the City of Fort Collins’ Outreach on “The Future of Hughes” Open Space
PLEASE sign up for our newsletter and donate if you are able so we can conduct the next steps in our tireless effort to protect Hughes open space for the solitude and serenity of ALL community members, and for the protection of our local wildlife. Together, we can stop the destructive development of an 80-acre BMX/MTB bike skills park at Hughes Open Space, near ecologically sensitive foothills-to-plains wildlife habitat, and find another more appropriate location for a giant bike skills park. Thank you.
Update, March 13, 2023:
It will come at no surprise that the City of Fort Collins’ community outreach regarding the 164-acre Hughes Open Space has been abysmal at best. But, what most Fort Collins voters and residents don’t know is that the City's outreach process has been heavily biased toward a small, aggressive lobby focused on HIGH-impact recreation and a specific HIGH-intensity land use at Hughes. Over the last few months, this recreation lobby has been intent on usurping Hughes Open Space, and the years-long hard work of the Fort Collins community and organizers (PATHS), for an 80-acre “large-scale”, “destination”, and woefully niche, BMX/MTB dirt bike skills park that only few will be able to enjoy. Sadly, if a niche BMX/MTB bike skills park is constructed at Hughes, it will irrevocably destroy the ecological integrity of the surrounding protected Natural Areas, and ruin the potential of Hughes to itself become a protected Natural Area contiguous with the existing Natural Areas, Maxwell and Pineridge.
The City is dead set on ignoring five years of community outreach and public input about Hughes, where open space and preservation of the land was overwhelmingly favored by the community. The large-scale BMX/MTB bike park lobbying group is also shamelessly running roughshod over fellow community members and the well-established legislative intent of the citizens’ ballot measure. For those who may not be aware, the citizens’ initiative to protect Hughes passed in April 2021 with nearly 70% of the vote, following a grassroots citizen-driven petition effort that saw more than 8300 voters signatures collected to put the protection of Hughes on the ballot. The grueling petition effort took place in 2020 during the peak of COVID-19 and the amid ash and smoke raining down from the Cameron Peak conflagration. PATHS canvassed well over ten thousand residents and voters about their vision for Hughes, and the grand majority overwhelming supported the conservation of land and wildlife at Hughes and the extension of the natural habitat corridor, with ONLY LOW-impact recreational uses permitted, specifically a multiuse connector trail for all abilities, retaining the existing, decades-old low-impact disc golf course and the sledding hill, and the leasing of a small wildlife rehabilitation and rescue center to the NoCo Wildlife Center where the old stadium once stood. A recreation-destination bike skills park was NEVER an intended development at Hughes.
Predetermined outreach and land use scenarios, including the large-scale bike skills park (60-80 acres), will be presented to council on Tuesday, March 14th, by the City staff and Outreach Consultant. There are better places to put a HIGHLY-intensive land use, like a BMX/MTB bike skills park. Please attend or watch online via FCTV, and please support our hard work with a donation to our legal and public outreach fund now. Time is of the essence. Thank you for your continued and undying support, Fort Collins.
UPDATE, February 2023:
Urgent: The City of Fort Collins, via a Consultant, is conducting outreach on the redevelopment of Hughes. Possible uses and activities range from LOW-IMPACT Natural Area with a trail, TO very HIGH-IMPACT type recreational uses. PATHS is advocating for uses that align with the citizens ballot measure: LOW IMPACT ACTIVITY, explicitly a protected City Natural Area (like the adjacent Maxwell and Pineridge NAs), with LOW IMPACT recreation.
LOW IMPACT USES (specifically, a designated City Natural Area) will help ensure that the legislative intent of the citizen ballot measure is honored. Even more importantly, a City Natural Area at Hughes would ensure that the land will be PROTECTED open space to be enjoyed by ALL members of our community, not just a wealthy subset, while also preserving our dark night skies and restoring/conserving habitat for our local urban wildlife and sensitive vegetation that are increasingly being damaged and encroached upon by high levels of visitation, recreation, and development.
Very high-impact recreational uses, like the large-scale bike skills park (similar to Valmont) that some small but vocal groups are lobbying for near our foothills, will cause severe habitat fragmentation and will be devastating to the already fragile and overused ecosystem and wildlife that forage, nest, mate, and migrate in the sensitive and transitional Foothills-to-Prairie ecotone where Hughes, Maxwell, and Pineridge are located. Again, we wholeheartedly support LIGHT-IMPACT recreational activities and uses (i.e., a multiuse trail, existing disc golf and sledding hill) that are EQUITABLE and PROTECTIVE of the foothills habitat while also providing public access.
PLEASE EMAIL CITY COUNCIL NOW and advocate for a City-designated Natural Area at Hughes and LOW-IMPACT USES ONLY to PROTECT Hughes in perpetuity and allow the parcel to be contiguous protected open space with the existing Natural Areas at Maxwell and Pineridge!
Read our statement about HOW the City can and should honor the legislative intent of the citizen ballot measure.
PLEASE SHARE WIDELY! THANK YOU FORT COLLINS!
Read the City’s “Foothills Management Plan - Update 2019” regarding the importance of reducing habitat fragmentation to create interconnectivity between patches of habitat for the conservation of our local animal and plant wildlife.
