Residents of West St. Vrain Street gathered in April to protest a barricade the city erected, turning their street into a dead-end.

This photo from www.FlashEarth.com shows how St. Vrain Street shrinks dramatically as it approaches 18th Street. It was deemed a traffic hazard and closed when a new couple in the neighborhood complained. Blow-back from the rest of the neighborhood forced the city to reopen the intersection as a one-way only. Now, the city has restored it to full two-way traffic after widening was deemed too expensive.

Below is a photo of the Old Colorado City branch of the Pikes Peak Library. Phase two of a $1.2 million renovation project is complete and the library reopened after being closed six months for construction. The project involved significant structural and cosmetic work including rebuilding the foundation, replacing the furnace, windows and doors, installing a lift to give access to disabled patrons to basement meeting space and such innovations as new computers and wireless Internet access. Go to the library’s Web site at www.PPLD.org for photos and details.

Here is a map to the library.

Finally, Lee Nicholos has agreed to remove trees from the parkway outside his home at Logan and Platte avenues, east of downtown near Memorial Hospital. The trees obstructed the vision of motorists turning onto Platte. But the city is honoring Nicholos and his magnolia trees by asking him to create a planting area at a new entryway to downtown near the recently completed Bijou Street bridge. Below is a photo of the trees he had planted near a stop sign outside his home.

Below is a map of the unincorporated area between Monument and the Air Force Academy. The High Meadow at Fox Run neighborhood is south of Baptist Road, about a mile east of Interstate 25.

The photo below, taken from www.GoogleEarth.com, measures the distance between the two homes at 281 feet. James Kotsaftis lives in the house on the bottom left on Cloudcross Court. Roy Christman lives in the house in the upper right on Ridgefield Lane.

Here is a view of their homes from www.FlashEarth.com with the two houses highlighted. Three dots show the approximate location of Christman’s lights on his garage.

This is a closeup of one of Roy Christman’s light fixtures outside his garage.

Below is a wider view of his lights along his garage. The lights appear somewhat brighter in person, but the photo offers a fair idea of how they look. James Kotsaftis says the lights shine in his upstairs bedroom window about 280 feet down the street, making it impossible for him to sleep with his windows and blinds open.

A new web site, www.RottenNeighbor.com, invites users to evaluate their neighborhoods. Often, they are not very flattering. Below is a screen capture from the site showing Colorado Springs. The little “Monopoly” houses indicate a posting. Plug in a ZIP code to search for your neighborhood.

A few typical posts are shows below from the site. For every positive posting, such as “These neighbors Rock!” there seem to be about three nasty posts.

The posting below is an example of problems with the site. The anonymous author apparently got the wrong house with this dart about weeds. Even worse, the intended target might have a good reason for being slow to mow. She is the wife of a soldier deployed to Iraq, according to her next-door neighbor.

Below is a photo of the intersection of East Platte and Logan avenues, looking south. Lee Nicholos, aka Mr. Magnolia, planted the trees leading up to the stop sign in both directions. The city says those trees are too close to the corner and planted too close together.

Nicholos lives on the northwest corner of Platte and Logan, west of Union Boulevard, as seen on the map below from the El Paso County Assessor’s Office web site.

A photo of the house taken from the assessor’s site shows it before Nicholos planted nearly 60 trees and shrubs around it, effectively hiding the house.

Here is a copy of the letter Nicholos received notifying him of his improper planting on the public right-of-way. Note the “Tree City USA” logo in the upper right-hand corner.

Permits for planting trees in parkways are available from the Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services Department at 1401 Recreation Way, north of Uintah Street, just east of Interstate 25. Call the Forestry office at 385-5942 for more information. Or visit www.springsgov.com where you’ll find a cool history of trees in Colorado Springs, a tree planting guide and a “tree matrix brochure.”

Below is an aerial photo, from www.FlashEarth.com, of Garden Hill Drive, Fontmore Road and Fontanero Street where mail was stopped for more than a week because of vicious dogs.

Dan Wurdemann lives on Fontanero in the highlighted house with Buddy, a black Labrador postal officials say is dangerous. Wurdemann said he can’t fence his yard or keep the dog chained up. The other highlighted house, owned by David and Diane Wright, is on Garden Hill. Neighbors say it is home to a pit bull that sometimes wanders loose.

Below is a map of the area — west of Interstate 25 and north of U.S. Highway 24.

Generally, dogs must be leashed in Colorado Springs, except for areas designated as “off leash.” According to the Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region, there are fines for pet owners who let their dogs roam unrestrained.

The law doesn’t apply in some parts of El Paso County, although some unincorporated neighborhoods close to the city have leash laws.

Owners can be fined $50 for a first offense in the city and $45 in the county. Fines climb to $500 in the city and $100 in the county for third offenses. And a municipal court appearance is mandatory. Owners can receive 90 days in jail, although that is rare.

Animal Control receives thousands of complaints each year about unleashed dogs, and has written hundreds of tickets.

For more information, visit the society’s Web site at http://www.hsppr.org.

Below is a map from the El Paso County Assessor’s Web site showing Ken and Ann Garrison’s lot on Regency Drive. The lots on either side of the highlighted property are city open space. Both had homes that were wrecked by landslides in 1995. Garrison would like the city to take his lot, too.

In the aerial photo below, taken from www.FlashEarth.com , the concrete slab foundation of Garrison’s house is visible at the end of his old asphalt driveway. Neighbors have used the driveway and foundation for storage and to dump building materials, Garrison said.

Ken Garrison balanced at the split in his basement floor in the 1996 file photo below. A landslide wrecked his home, valued at $235,000 in 1995. Garrison sued the original property owner, Gates Land Co., alleging the company knew the hillside was a geological hazard and unfit for traditional construction methods. The company settled the lawsuit and the Garrisons moved away.

Below is a photo of construction of the Garden of the Gods Club in May 1950, taken from the club’s Web site, http://gardenofthegodsclub.com, showing developer Al Hill, third from left, overseeing work on his project. He conceived it as a luxury summertime-only tennis and social club with guest rooms.

The Kissing Camels Estates housing development began at the same time but, according to the Web site, it was years before Hill was convinced to include a golf course. The original 18-hole course opened in 1961, 10 years after the club.

The map, below, shows Sunrise Co.’s plans for adding 700 homes to the community. Most will be south of the Garden of the Gods Club, west of Mesa Road, along the eastern perimeter of the golf course and south of Fillmore Street.

Sunrise Co. reportedly has backed off plans for bridges, including the one over Mesa shown in the blueprint below. The bridges were part of a plan to enhance security by installing “dramatic gates and privacy walls,” according to a July 9 letter to residents from William Bone, founder and chairman of Sunrise.

  Below is a map of the Woodmen Valley area.

  The large highlighted area on the left, along Cedar Valley Lane on the south side of Woodmen Road, is the approximate boundary of the 40-acre parcel to be annexed and developed into a new subdivision. The smaller area on the right, north of Woodmen Road, is the location of eight acres owned by Academy School District 20. The property includes the former school administration building. 

  The public meeting on the annexation question is scheduled for 6 p.m.-8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 9, at the Woodmen Roberts Elementary School cafeteria. The school is at 8365 Orchard Path Road, just west on Woodmen Road. To get more information, you can call city planner David Litzelman at 385-5392.

  The City Planning Commission takes up the zoning question for the District 20 property at 8:30 a.m. on Nov. 8 at the Pikes Peak Regional Development Center, 2880 International Circle. 

Below is a photo of the old Bijou Street bridge taken by the Colorado Department of Transportation in June 1960 as CDOT unveiled the Monument Valley Highway, which would become Interstate 25. The highway squeezed under the small span on the left while Monument Creek and the railroad tracks run under the larger spans on the right.

The Boulder Crescent neighborhood is visible in the image below, taken from Google Earth, as it appeared about a year ago. The neighborhood is tucked in the middle with the formal gardens of Monument Valley Park to the left. Neighbors say drug dealers frequent the gardens. Bijou Street runs left-to-right along the bottom and Cascade Avenue runs top-to-bottom along the right side of the photo. The Marian House Soup Kitchen and its parking lot are in the center along Bijou Street.

The neighborhood along Walnut Street, where Arnold Blair played football as a kid in the 1930s, is seen in the Google Earth image below. Along the right of the photo is a sweeping curve of Interstate 25. The old Bijou Street bridge is in the upper right corner.

        Some Rockrimmon residents are applauding Charles Helenberg for making good on his promise of new sidewalks along Vindicator Drive adjacent to his Crown Hill at Rockrimmon development. A map of the subdivision, taken from the El Paso County Assessor’s web site, is shown below. Work started even as his crews battled a water main break. The sidewalk issue was featured in Side Streets on Monday, Sept. 27. Read it here

       And Rose Newman is happy that city crews poured a new curb and gutter outside her house Friday and inititated repairs on her sprinkler system. Her story ran today at www.gazette.com.

        Then there is the ongoing saga of Chaparral Road and neighbors’ efforts to stop Dana and Sheryl Glasgow from using their home to operate their Turf Master Industries, a landscaping and snow removal business.
        The Glasgows have been found in contempt of court and fined for not complying with court orders to move their business. In response, Sheryl Glasgow vowed to punish the neighbors who complained and “drive them crazy.”
        Apparently in that vein, she filed a complaint with the city against next-door neighbors Jean Susemihl and Michael Davis over their 30-year-old barn, which was built too close to the property line. Susemihl and Davis were granted a variance to allow their barn to stay and the City Planning Commission unanimously rejected Glasgow’s appeal. Now, she is taking the case to the Colorado Springs City Council.
         In her appeal, Glasgow says the commission “did not understand some of the facts I presented.” The case may be argued Oct. 9. Stay tuned.