A UH-60 Black Hawk takes off in Gypsum in this March 28, 2011, file photo by Christan Murdock.

 Last week, the Army warned that a helicopter brigade will arrive soon at Fort Carson to begin high altitude training before deploying to Afghanistan.

It’s routine for units to visit Fort Carson for two or three months to practice touch-and-go landings and other things with their choppers.

This alert, though, came with an invitation which caught my eye.

Anyone who encounters unreasonable noise was invited to call Fort Carson.

Army officials say they are serious about enforcing their “Fly Neighborly” program on visiting brigades and especially when a new combat aviation brigade is established next year at the post with 113 helicopters.

“Soldiers need to train,” said Dee McNutt, Fort Carson spokeswoman. “But we need to be good neighbors, too.”

That means keeping helicopters within established flight corridors as they zip up Ute Pass and Gold Camp Road area to train in the Pike National Forest, or as they fly down the Highway 115 corridor to visit a couple dozen recently approved Bureau of Land Management sites near Canon City, or as they head over to the Pinon Canon Maneuvering Site northeast of Trinidad.

It means keeping the choppers at minimum heights to avoid buzzing cattle or campgrounds or neighborhoods and unduly upsetting folks.

Follow this link to the Army’s environmental assessment of the Combat Aviation Brigade and the impact of locating it at Fort Carson. It discusses noise issues in chapter 4.4 beginning on page 67.

Longtime Colorado Springs peace activist Bill Sulzman

One skeptic is Bill Sulzman, a longtime Springs peace activist who opposes military expansion in the region and has campaigned against the permanent chopper bridge.

Sulzman doubts the Army’s sincerity, or their ability to control pilots, when it promises to mitigate noise.

“I think it’s lip service,” Sulzman said, noting that Fort Carson is under pressure to avoid upscale neighborhoods like the Broadmoor as well as Cheyenne Canyon State Park just west of the post.

UH-60 Black Hawk trains in Eagle in a March 28, 2011, gazette file photo by Christian Murdock.

But McNutt insists her community relations office works hard to reach out to neighbors to solve noise issues. And it stands ready to respond to future issues related to the helicopters.

“We have a lot of helicopter units come through,” she said. “Sometimes issues may arise. If we’re flying over people and it’s causing difficulties, we want to know about it.”

She said neighbors experiencing chronic noise often are invited to the post to meet with the unit to describe what they are hearing and try to solve the problem.

It’s especially important for neighbors to speak up as the permanent new aviation brigade settles in at Butts Army Airfield, McNutt said. Once pilots learn the region, she predicts a great relationship.

“They’ll know the flight corridors better and it will be easier to work with our neighbors,” she said.

In the meantime, jot down the number — 719-526-9849 — and don’t be shy about calling.

Fort Carson Butts Army Airfield

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CHOPPERS INCOMING BUT FORT CARSON PROMISES PEACE AND QUIET is a post from: Side Streets

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Ever danced the Hokey Pokey at a wedding reception?

You know . . . Put your left foot in, put your left foot out. Shake it all about.

Good. Then you’ll be ready for what Colorado Springs traffic engineers have in store when they rebuild the Interstate 25 interchange at Fillmore Street.

The reconfigured interchange, as planned, will introduce a whole new dance step for drivers and it’s not unlike the Hokey Pokey silliness.

The plans call for construction of a “diverging diamond” interchange.

This graphic shows traffic flow in a "diverging diamond" interchange. Traffic on the Fillmore Street Bridge would follow a similar pattern as shown here.

Interstate 25 and Fillmore Street as seen from GoogleEarth. Under the Diverging Diamond configuration, the interchange would be simplified because Chestnut Street will be realligned to the west and no longer intersecting with the southbound I-25 exit-entrance ramps.

Not a familiar driving term?

Don’t feel bad.

Most of the world’s driver are immune to it.

But just as the once-obscure “round-about” has become more common in our driving vocabulary (as in “these freaking round-abouts drive me freaking crazy”), so, too, will “diverging diamond.”

Soon, actually, if the city lands a $10 million federal grant to pay for a makeover of the interchange, says Kathleen Krager, senior city traffic engineer.

Rebuilding the interchange is too expensive. so the old bridge will remain. But that’s about all that will stay the same.

Ty Pennington of ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

What Krager described to me sounds like an extreme makeover. All that will be missing is the annoying guy with the spiked hair, soul patch and megaphone.

There will be, I fear, plenty of people shouting “Move that bus!” because the diverging diamond looks pretty confusing.

Here’s how it will work.

Motorists on Fillmore will criss-cross each other, just as they approach the bridge over I-25.

The manuever will look just like my kids’ electric slot car race track where the cars duck back and forth across the tracks. (Of course, this usually creates spectacular slot-car crashes.)

There will be traffic signals preventing spectacular crashes on Fillmore.

Hopefully.

This is a screen-capture from an animated fly-through created by Fisher Associates, a New York engineering firm.

For example, westbound traffic on Fillmore will cross onto the far left lanes, or south side, of the bridge. In other words, traffic will be traveling on the wrong side of the bridge.

Same for the eastbound cars. They will shift onto the north lanes to cross the bridge.

Krager said the beauty (huh?) of the diverging diamond is that it creates no-wait exits onto the interstate.

Westbound drivers, for example, will leave a traffic signal, move to the wrong side of the bridge and have a smooth left turn onto southbound I-25 before the traffic crosses back onto the normal side of the road.

“It removes the left turns that cause conflict,” Krager said. “Everything becomes right turns.”

This link takes you to an animated flyover that explains the diverging diamond.

Click here to see another more rudimentary animated interchange.

The diverging diamond is debated on this Minnesota website and includes actual video of a diverging diamond in action.

Like I said, it’s just like doing the Hokey Pokey where turn yourself around.

That’s what it’s all about.
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WARNING: ‘DIVERGING DIAMOND’ TO JOIN DRIVER VOCABULARY is a post from: Side Streets

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Colorado Springs Mayor Steve Bach

The Friends of Cheyenne Cañon nonprofit was surprised recently to learn Colorado Springs Mayor Steve Bach is giving the group the heave-ho.

In a brief Jan. 6 letter, Bach said the city will honor a $25,000 appropriation authorized by the City Council. But he warned the group to “seek replacement funding” in 2013.

The note shocked Ron Leasure and Lee Wolf and other Friends leaders.

The city doesn’t fund Friends of Cheyenne Cañon.

Reality is just the opposite.

“We contribute thousands to the city from our funds to keep the cañon alive,” said Leasure, the Friends president. “That letter hurt a little bit. He put some bruises in our organization.”

Leasure and Wolf feel Bach doesn’t appreciate how much their 500-member, all-volunteer group has given the city since its founding in 1992 to preserve the 1,600-acre park, which features miles of trails, Helen Hunt Falls, granite spires and cliffs making it popular for hikers, bikers and climbers.

Friends of Cheyenne Canon leaders Ron Leasure and Lee Wolf

Lee Wolf examines the deteriorating Helen Hunt Falls Visitors Center in this 2009 photo.

Wolf, treasurer and past president, said the group has been subsidizing the city for years. He calculates the group’s cash donations and volunteer hours at $1 million in the past six years.

The Friends build and maintain trails, remove graffiti, conduct major clean-up and maintenance campaigns in the park at the base of Cheyenne Mountain.

“When money got tight in 2009, they were going to close the visitors centers,” Wolf said. “We provided all the funding to pay for a full-time city employee plus the part-time people.”

In fact, the group is about to begin work on one of its single largest contributions to the park.

An artists rendering of the new visitors center.

Demolition is expected to begin this week on the Helen Hunt Falls Visitors Center.

The dilapidated log cabin structure will be replaced by an $80,000-plus log facility to be built with funds donated by the Friends of Cheyenne Cañon.

Then it will be staffed by city employees whose salaries are paid for by the Friends. You get the picture?

“It’s the perfect private-public partnership,” Wolf said. “We give money to the city and they hire people.”

A major source of funding, besides cash donations, comes from Bristol Brewery.

All proceeds from the sale of its Cheyenne Cañon Pinon Nut Ale are donated to the Friends group.

Bristol Brewing has dedicated all proceeds from its Cheyenne Canon Ale to pay for a new visitors center at Helen Hunt Falls.

“The new building is a gift from us to the city,” Wolf said. “And the mayor is throwing shots at us?”

So you can understand why Leasure and Wolf were upset to learn Bach announced the city was cutting off the Friends.

I’d say Bach better hope the Friends group doesn’t cut off the city!

The Friends won’t, though, because this group lives up to its name.

“We’ll sit down with the city,” Wolf said, describing how friends resolve misunderstandings. “We’ll straighten this all out.”

I hope so. This city needs all the “friends” it can get!

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MAYOR MIGHT OUGHTA APOLOGIZE TO FRIENDS is a post from: Side Streets

About 30 percent of the $104 million interchange at Woodmen Road and Academy Boulevard was paid for using PPRTA tax revenue.

Ever wonder when Centennial Boulevard will be finished south from Fillmore Street, linking it to Interstate 25 at Fontanero?

Maybe you’ve wanted Old Ranch Road widened at Kettle Creek. Or you want West Colorado Avenue and South 8th Street rebuilt with sidewalks, curbs, gutters and bike lanes.

Those projects, and dozens more, are on the city’s wish list and they will be prioritized by the Colorado Springs City Council at its Feb. 28 meeting.

You can check out the list . It is item 4-A-3 on the agenda and starts on page 26.

Make your priorities known by contacting your Council rep.

Then, in November, you’ll get more input when transportation officials ask voters to agree to pay for them all.

The list includes projects scattered around Colorado Springs and lumped in five categories: expansion/enhancement; modernization/safety; non-motorized; preservation/restoration; and transit.

Here's how the Proby Parkway interchange looks from GoogleEarth.

Each project is graded and divided into the “A” and “B” categories. There are about 50 projects on the “A” list.

Ranking the projects is a complicated process and required balancing lots of demands, safety questions and funding considerations.

Take Centennial’s expansion. It’s been planned since the 1980s as Mountain Shadows and Peregrine developed and the high-tech industry boomed along the Garden of the Gods Road corridor. Centennial was to be the shortcut that took pressure off I-25.

Of course, the high-tech corridor looks more like death row now. But plans for a Veteran’s Administration clinic at Centennial and Fillmore and other developments are putting new pressure on the city to finish the boulevard.

The city would like to coordinate it with the planned reconstruction of the Fillmore-I-25 interchange, which the state Department of Transportation hopes to complete using a $10 million federal grant.

“The problem is it needs to be completed with local money,” said Kathleen Krager, senior city traffic engineer. “We need $9 million. It’s on the A list of projects.”

The question is how to come up with the money.

Since 2004, a voter-approved one-cent sales tax has generated about $60 million a year for road construction, maintenance, sidewalks, curbs and gutters and bus service. The tax revenue is administered by the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority.

But that tax is expiring in 2014 and without a source of revenue, the wish list will remain just that — wishes.

“If we have funding, the Centennial project would be built, starting in 2015,” Krager said.

Faithful Side Streets readers — both of you — know the value of the tax. Often I’ve written about projects.

And when I studied the new list, I was amazed at the needs that still exist across the community.

Take a look and let the city know your priorities.

Then, in November, tell them again!

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‘PPRTA’ SPELLS NEW ROADS, BRIDGES, SIDEWALKS is a post from: Side Streets

                                             UPDATE . . . UPDATE . . . UPDATE

Gary Flakes, who was convicted of being an accessory to the grisly shotgun slayings of Scott Hawrysiak and Andy Westbay on Valentine’s Day 1997, has ended years of silence about his role in the thrill-killings.

Flakes was 16 when he confessed in 1997 to driving up along the boys, who were walking home after an evening of video games at a friends’ house. Flakes stopped, letting Jeron Grant get out the car with a 12-gauge shotgun to kill the boys.

Flakes, now 31, commented after reading my Feb. 13 Side Streets column about the killings.

In an email to my Side Streets blog, Flakes wrote:

I accept the reactions for my actions. The families of Scott and Andy have more right to Justice than anyone.This is the constitution in which we have been created by the Creator. I pray that there is healing and forgivness.

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Following is the blog as originally posted Feb. 13, 2012:

LAST OF THREE MUSKETEERS IS LOYAL FOREVER

Scott Hawrysiak, William Fortune and Andy Westbay, on the bed, were known to their families as the Three Musketeers.

William Fortune doesn’t much look forward to Valentine’s Day.

He’ll tell his girlfriend he loves her and all. But Feb. 14 doesn’t represent love and romance to William.

To him, it’s a terribly sad day. It represents the end of the Three Musketeers.

Fifteen years ago, late on Valentine’s Day 1997, his buddies _ 13-year-old Andy Westbay and 15-year-old Scott Hawrysiak _ were gunned down as they walked home from playing video games with a friend.

William was supposed to be with them. They did everything together. Their folks even called them the Three Musketeers.

Andy Westbay and Scott Hawrysiak

All for one.

“They were my two best friends,” William said last week. “I can’t think about Valentine’s Day as a day of love. I associate it with the deaths of my two best friends.

“It’s a day of mourning.”

And a day to wonder what might have been.

William knows that if his mother hadn’t been too sick to take him that night, he’d have been walking with Andy and Scott when Jeron Grant 17, and Gary Flakes, 16, drove up to them on Canoe Creek Drive in Cheyenne Meadows.

Andy Westbay and Scott Hawrysiak were shotgunned to death near the mailboxes on the right as they walked home along Canoe Creek Drive late on Feb. 14, 1997.

According to Flakes’ confession to police, he was driving Grant to their homes on Fort Carson when they saw Andy and Scott.

Grant told Flakes he wanted to kill someone “to get something off my chest.” He grabbed a 12-gauge shotgun out of the backseat, got out, said a few words to the boys and opened fire.

The first blast hit Andy in the neck. Scott ran as the shotgun erupted two more times, hitting Scott in the back of the head.

The killings caused outrage in Colorado Springs. Candle-light vigils were held for the boys. And the funeral at the First Baptist Church in Security drew an estimated 600 people. Many followed to attend graveside services as well.

Here’s an excerpt from the Feb. 21, 1997, Gazette:

“Hundreds of people huddled close in a bitter, driving snow Thursday at Evergreen Cemetery to say goodbye to lifelong buddies Scott Paul Hawrysiak, 15, and Andrew Michael Westbay, 13, brutally slain last Friday night by three shotgun blasts.

Jerome Grant in a 1995 photo when he was a high school freshman in El Paso, Texas.

“Andy’s uncle, Michael Westbay, acted as a surrogate dad while Andy’s father did a recent year’s tour in Korea for the Army. He told mourners:

 “It was only last week that I had the opportunity to hug both boys and tell them that I loved them. This week, next week or in the weeks to follow, I will not have that opportunity. This was not just a loss for two families. This was a loss for the entire community. I hope, as time heals, their love will not be forgotten. They touched many in life and many more lives in death. These boys will not be forgotten.”

But neither was convicted of first-degree murder. Jurors, instead, convicted them of the lesser charge of accessory to murder.

Grant was freed on parole in 2008. But a year later he was caught with crack cocaine and sent back to prison for six years.

Flakes went to a halfway house in 2010, was paroled in 2011 and is free now.

Gary Flakes, 16, from a 1997 Fountain-Fort Carson yearbook photo.

He volunteers for Colorado Juvenile Defenders Coalition’s effort to stop prosecution of juveniles as adults.

Flakes also testified before state lawmakers last spring about the evils of solitary confinement.

Such activity rankles William, now 29, a college graduate and personal trainer who twice went to Iraq as a civilian contractor.

The last Musketeer has never forgotten his pals.

“I think about them everyday,” said William, who has tattoos with Andy’s and Scott’s  initials on his arms, each with a star.

“They are my nautical stars for guidance,” he said. “I go to their graves every time I come home.”

William Fortune, 29

He’s glad Grant is back in prison. And he’s angry Flakes seems to protray himself as a victim in some way of unfair treatment.

“They ruthlessly murdered two kids,” William said, still loyal to his friends. “They should never be free.”

One for all. Forever.

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William Fortune has the initials of Andy Westbay and Scott Hawrysiak tattooed on his arms and thinks about his friends every day.

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Jeron Grant is back in prison for a drug conviction after his parole in 2008.

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Gary Flakes volunteers for the Colorado Juvenile Defenders Coalition working to stop juveniles from being tried as adults and housed in adult prisons.

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ACCUSED KILLER IN 1997 VALENTINE’S DAY SLAYINGS SPEAKS OUT is a post from: Side Streets

Door to crawl space under Pleasant Valley home where homeless druggies have been partying.

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Pleasant Valley is a neighborhood of about 800 homes mostly built in the 1950s-'60s on the west side of Colorado Springs, south of the Garden of the Gods.

Katie Hamilton had heard noises at night recently and assumed she had deer in the backyard of her Pleasant Valley home.

Then her dogs started going nuts in the dark.

Again, she assumed it was wildlife upsetting them.

She was thinking much differently Wednesday after her son went into the crawl space under her home of 22 years to fix a wiring issue.

What they discovered was scary and creepy and a warning to anyone with an unsecured crawl space.

“We went under the house and found an empty beer can which was very clean,” Katie said. “And we found three wooden stakes, each burned on the ends.”

Not your typical party room. The crawl space under Katie Hamilton's house appears to have been visited by intruders using drugs in the night.

This I had to see, so I drove over to her home.

We pushed open the plywood access door in her backyard and climbed under the house.

Sure enough, there was a clean Budweiser can in the gravel next to her furnace and wooden stakes, burned on their pointed ends.

She found other stuff, like an empty box of cigarettes and rags and even an odd square cut from packing material with a hole burned in it.

What the heck has been going on under her house?

Katie Hamilton displays some of the paraphrenalia she discovered in the crawl space under her home.

“It’s kind of creepy,” Katie said. “It looks like people have been coming and going.”

It all adds up . . . the noises in the night, the barking dogs, the paraphernalia under the house.

“I’m wondering if someone is going under my house to do drugs,” she said.

Katie said she goes under the house monthly to change her furnace filter.

“I would have seen it,” she said. “This stuff wasn’t here.”

Her home backs up to an alley and though the yard is fenced, access to the plywood door would be simple.

And given Katie’s observations in recent months, the idea of intruders seems plausible. The alley seems to have become a drifter highway. She often sees strangers walking back there, or on bikes, even pulling wagons with stuff in them.

Worse is the trend she perceives in her west side neighborhood of a wave of crime: home invasions and car break-ins.

“I hate to say it but it seems like things are getting worse,” she said.

Soon as she made her troubling discovery, Katie sounded an alarm.

She alerted the Pleasant Valley Neighborhood Association which posted a warning on its website.

Dawn Sandoval, a member of the association board, praised Katie for getting word out to the neighborhood.

“It’s very shocking,” Dawn said. “People need to know.”

Then, Katie got busy securing her home. She hired a contractor to install a security door on her crawl space so she no longer has to worry about intruders.

But, like a good neighbor, she’s worried about those around her.

“We have some older neighbors,” Katie said. “I wouldn’t want this happening to them.”

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CRAWL SPACE ISN’T SUPPOSED TO INCLUDE HOMELESS DRUGGIES is a post from: Side Streets

Chuck Leggett has lived in his little home on 14th Street, just off West Colorado Avenue, since 1972. He's been next door to a convenience store, a Planned Parenthood clinic and soon will welcome a dentist to the building behind him.

Chuck Leggett found out recently a dentist is moving her practice next door to his Westside home.

He expects traffic from patients might spill in front of his little home and take up his parking space. And he is prepared for other hassles associated with living next to a business.

And he’s thrilled.

That’s because of what he’s endured the past 40 years living just off West Colorado Avenue on 14th Street.

Chuck, 86, has had a front-row seat for utter nonsense.

For the first 10 years or so he lived there, he had to put up with round-the-clock lunacy generated by a 7-Eleven convenience store. Cars coming and going, night and day. Drunks hanging out in the little alley between his yard and the back of the store, smashing bottles, smoking pot and causing mayhem.

Then, about 1983, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains moved in. What ensued, until it relocated in 2010, was “a mess,” he said.

“It started with one lady and two little twins protesting,” Chuck recalled. “It escalated from that.”

Planned Parenthood’s reproductive health care, birth control and abortion services, attracted upwards of 20,000 clients each year and scores of protesters, turning the sidewalk and street outside into an ugly carnival of hate at times.

The Planned Parenthood clinic as it appeared before it relocated to Centennial Boulevard in August 2010.

There were 40-day, round-the-clock vigils on the sidewalks. Peaceful demonstrations overshadowed by angry protesters who carried graphic posters of late-term abortions and confronted everyone they saw, whether clients, simple passersby or innocent neighbors.

“The marchers were a mess,” Chuck said. “They had some real roughnecks out there.”

He described how some protesters would get hostile with neighbors at random.

“One day I was mowing my yard when one of them started yelling at me,” Chuck said. “I went down there with my ax handle.”

The building at 1330 W. Colorado Ave. is being remodeled into a dentist's office.

Chuck said there was an especially nasty pair of protesters — one carried a Bible and the other an 8-foot cross.

“They would attack anyone,” he said. “They’d get in the middle of the sidewalk and stop you. Get in your face. They thought they could take advantage of anyone who walked on the sidewalk. They were a really mean pair.”

Other neighbors echo Chuck’s assessment of the situation then.

The front porches on the homes of Chuck Leggett and Melba Bay can be seen barely peeking out behind the building.

“It wasn’t pleasant,” said Melba Bay, who lives across the alley from Chuck.

“Different church groups, they’d have parades in front of our house all the time,” she said. “We couldn’t park in front of our house. A lot of times they would get rude. They’d be down there shouting at people. I’m just glad they’re gone. It’s a lot more peaceful.”

Chuck also speaks for neighbors I met when he predicted the neighborhood’s future with a dentist in the building.

“We’ve got it made now,” he said. “The dentist will be the best yet.”

I enjoyed meeting Chuck, who worked as a woodcutter. Folks might remember his Leggett’s Firewood business up Ute Pass for years or recognize his Leggett’s RV Storage today.

He  still chops his own firewood. He also roofed his house last summer, he told me without an ounce of boast.

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AFTER SLURPEES AND ABORTION PROTESTERS, DENTIST GETS WELCOME WAGON is a post from: Side Streets

A deer trots along a new 150-foot guardrail installed along Rockrimmon Boulevard by the city behind the homes of Mitch Logue and Donald and Colleen Kunecke.

To most motorists flying through the intersection of Vindicator Drive and Rockrimmon Boulevard, the new guardrail along the east side is just a blur of black and brown steel.

And, to be honest, that’s why it was installed.

Most drivers are going way too fast around the corners of the T-shaped intersection to notice. (They are too busy texting their BFFs or eating a triple-cheeseburger or applying makeup.)

But to Mitch Logue and Donald and Colleen Kunecke, the sturdy new 150-foot barrier represents peace of mind and freedom to use their backyards without fear.

It’s something most people take for granted . . . the confidence they won’t get killed in their backyard by Danica Patrick impersonators.

But that’s been a very real threat for Logue and the Kuneckes, who have the misfortune of backing up to the busy intersection, kept hopping morning and night by people racing to the adjacent Safeway Center, or the large apartment complex, or to Eagleview Middle School or commuting to Mountain Shadows and Peregrine.

I drive it daily and routinely see cars accelerating down Vindicator toward its dead-end at Rockrimmon. They turn north, two abreast, tires squealing as the wild-eyed drivers — no doubt listening to 50 Cent on their earbuds  — charge to the next light.

Between the two properties, more than a dozen cars have plowed through their fences and into their yards over the years.

Just one example of the damage Mitch Logue has endured during his years backing up to Rockrimmon Boulevard and Vindicator Drive.

Mitch Logue told me he’s replaced sections of his fence a half-dozen times in 10 years. In July 2009, he spent $3,600 replacing the entire fence. Within days a small SUV smashed through and landed in his yard, taking out a post and slats.

Before the Kuneckes bought their home next-door in 2000, a soda delivery truck came crashing into the yard. Prior to that, a pickup destroyed the fence and slammed into the dining room.

Then, on June 3, 2009, a huge, white sport utility vehicle roared down Vindicator, slammed into two cars waiting at the stoplight, lurched through the intersection, jumped the curb and blasted into the Kunecke’s backyard.

This white SUV wrapped itself around a tree in the Kuneckes' backyard in June 2009 after ramming two cars at the stoplight, plowing through the intersection and exploding through the fence.

“We were getting ready to eat dinner,” Colleen Kunecke told me at the time. “It sounded like an explosion. It scared the hell out of me.”

The SUV ended up wrapped around a tree.

Prehistoric guardrails employed by the Kuneckes to protect themselves in their yard.

To protect themselves, the Kuneckes positioned huge rocks to deflect wayward vehicles.

Both families are happy to finally get some protection from the city.

“Now I’ve got some safe area to work with,” Mitch said last week. “I’m happy.”

And he’s making plans for his yard.

“I’m thinking about putting a greenhouse back there,” he said.

The Kuneckes echoed his satisfaction.

“We were quite surprised,” Donald said. “Now we’ll be protected.”

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BLACK AND BROWN BLUR LOOKS LIKE PEACE OF MIND is a post from: Side Streets

The Springs Ranch Community Association did everything right. And lost.

It organized a core group to draft convincing arguments to oppose plans to build a Kum & Go convenience store and gas station, fast food restaurants and shops on 5.6 acres of vacant land they believed was to become a YMCA.

Letters were written and neighbors showed up en masse at a public hearing. They made emotional appeals citing fears of traffic, crime, loitering, fumes and more that threatened the surrounding neighborhood.

But despite their best efforts — and some ugly confrontations — they were unable to derail the project.

What went wrong and what can they do now?

The concept plan for 5.6 acres at Peterson Road and North Circle Drive calls for a convenience store, fast food restaurant and shops.

City planner Steve Tuck said the neighbors raised valid concerns at Wednesday night’s angry meeting at Sand Creek High School. And, Tuck said, those concerns will be addressed as the project proceeds.

“But I didn’t hear anything that would cause me not to approve the project,” he said. “We listened. And we’ll address architectural issues and lighting and landscaping and traffic in the development plan.”

In fact, he invited the neighborhood to participate in the process.

“We’d love to have a small committee of neighbors sit down and work with us on the details,” Tuck said.

But that’s not what the 125 or so Springs Ranch residents wanted to hear.

Many felt deceived because they were told a YMCA would be built on the parcel near the corner of Peterson Road and North Carefree Circle, just across Pony Tracks Drive from Sand Creek High.

They are upset the YMCA wants to sell the land and use the proceeds to help finance a new facility on a larger parcel elsewhere.

Neighbor Rich Long walked out of the meeting after about 90 minutes, disappointed and resigned to the idea of the convenience store and gas station.

Here's a view of the vacant 5.6 acre parcel from FlashEarth.com

“Both the YMCA and the Kum & Go representatives were very indifferent to the views expressed,” Long said, explaining his early departure. “It became clear that no one involved cared what the residents had to say.”

Long said he understands that the property has been zoned commercial since the first master plan was filed in 1984.

And he said he realizes Tuck, the YMCA and Kum & Go aren’t doing anything wrong.

“I’m not feeling betrayed,” he said. “It’s their land and it’s zoned commercial.

“I just hate to see all the extra traffic it will generate. But I don’t know there’s a whole lot that can be done.”

Scott McKeever, president of SRCA, one of 18 homeowners associations in Springs Ranch, vowed to appeal to the Planning Commission and City Council, if needed, to stop the project.

And he promised his group would work with Tuck if it moves forward.

Sometimes working to refine a project and make it more palatable is the best a neighborhood can do.

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SPRINGS RANCH SAYS NO GO TO KUM & GO is a post from: Side Streets