The 116-acre ranch owned by Church for All Nations rises from Highway 115 at the base of Cheyenne Mountain. It has been the target of teens who drink, smoke dope and set buildings ablaze.

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Vandals seemingly covered every inch they could reach with graffiti.

A few weeks ago, emergency crews conducted a mock disaster drill on the premise a wildfire was ravaging Cheyenne Mountain in the Broadmoor Bluffs neighborhood near NORAD.

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Sadly, the next chaotic evacuation may be authentic if kids keep trespassing on a century-old ranch in the neighborhood, getting drunk and stoned and setting fires.

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That’s right.

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Idiot teens — yes, I know “idiot teens” is redundant — repeatedly have set fires amid parched scrub oak and crispy underbrush at the bottom of a hillside rimmed by their parents’ mini-mansions.

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An inferno capable to sweeping through all the Broadmoors — Glen, Oaks, Bluffs, Spires and Hills — seems inevitable, if someone doesn’t stop the kids.

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Trying his hardest is Stan Horton, who manages the 116-acre ranch on behalf of its owner, Church of All Nationson Templeton Gap Road.

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In recent weeks, Stan has caught 16 kids, many from Cheyenne Mountain High School, trespassing, partying and vandalizing the dozen or so old buildings, including the historic concrete house built around 1935 as a water tower but converted to a home.

Property manager Stan Horton put teens caught vandalizing the concrete house to work painting it. Today it looks much differently than just a few weeks ago.

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Already, two buildings have burned to the ground. Luckily the flames didn’t spread to the pump house or the dozens of surrounding homes.

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But Stan fears a tragedy.

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“It’s frustrating as can be,” Stan said as we toured the property. “We have fences. We’ve put up signs. But they keep coming in. They tag everything with spray paint. They destroy things.

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“I’m fed up.”

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Stan said the church was reluctant to press criminal charges as first. But as the vandalism and danger has escalated, Colorado Springs Police became involved.

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“We call the parents and they want to make excuses for their kids,” Stan said, shaking his head. “They just keep coming, no matter what we do.”

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The parents’ reaction is a mystery to Stan, a retired field artillery gunnery sergeant from Fort Carson.

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This building is one of two burned to the ground by vandals.

He can understand that kids are going to make poor choices. But parents’ shouldn’t reinforce those choices, he said.

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Sadly, the arson and vandalism has been going on for decades, according to Don Failing, who has pastured horses on the property since 1980 or so. He said kids from Fort Carson used to come and play on the property, before the Broadmoor Bluffs neighborhood existed.

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But in 1981, he said kids burned down a hay shed he had built for his horses. And then another small structure was burned repeatedly until it was destroyed.

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“The kids from Broadmoor Bluffs started running wild on the place,” Don told me. “It’s been horrible the past 10 years.”

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He described how the kids will cut entire sections of fence from a horse pasture, allowing the animals to run free in the neighborhood.

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“They have a mean streak,” Don said. “That bunch from Broadmoor Bluffs is totally destructive.”

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If the church can ever get the vandalism under control, it has big plans for the property.

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“We want to developer a Christian retreat center here,” Stan said. “Kind of like ‘Praise Mountain’ where people can come.”

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Already, the property hosts paintball tournaments for its youth ministry. Stan had hung a movie screen from one of the pump house balconies and hosted nearly 70 people for a “flashlight theater” movie night. He has plans for winter sledding, maybe motocross and horseback riding and more.

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That is if the place isn’t burned to the ground by neighbors’ kids first.

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Charred earth is all that remains of the building.Stan Horton, manager of the property, describes the damage done by vandals to the pump house as he stands inside the main level.

The ranch was owned from 1920 to 2005 by the Bensberg family.

Jim Bensberg, former El Paso County Commissioner, tells me the concrete building was built by his father and uncle in 1935. He said it was called “the Tower” and though it was designed for water storage, it was never used to hold water.

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Bensberg told me a river running through the property was dammed above the Tower to provide water to the two residences, one of which to the north burned in a well-documented fire in 1950.

Stan Horton, property manager for Church for All Nations, scrambles below a small dam that provided water to homes on the ranch.

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Stan Horton, church property manager, describes the damage done by vandals to buildings on the ranch.

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Nothing is safe from taggers, not even the water trough used for baptisims!

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The view out of the concrete house.

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Despite fences, chained gates and multiple signs, teens continue to trespass and vandalize the property.

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IDIOT TEENS COULD TURN MOCK DISASTER INTO REAL THING is a post from: Side Streets

Neighborhoods in Colorado Springs will get no vacation from homes being used as short-term rental properties under new rules being proposed by city planning officials.

Since 2008, a few neighborhoods have complained about the growing trend of vacation home rentals. We’ve seen it for years in ski resort towns.

At the time, about 60 houses in the city were known vacation home rentals. Today, that number is 90 and growing.

Most vocal among the neighborhoods was the Organization of Westside Neighbors, the Cedar Heights Community Assocation and a group in the Broadmoor.

The took up the cause after chonic problems developed with vacation home rentals: neighbors upset having strangers around, coming and going late at night; loud and late parties; guests abusing wildlife; even a house in Cedar Heights being turned into an events center.

But three years of study — including two task forces to look into the problem —  has not changed the city planners’ opinion that sufficient codes exist to regulate the short-term rentals.

Welling Clark, OWN president, compiled extensive research on vacation home rentals and proposed a detailed code for regulating the properties.

But the city was not swayed and, on Friday, distributed this draft of its proposed short-term rental regulations.

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Essentially, the regulations make no changes to existing codes.

To read more, check out this July 2010 column and its blog on the subject.

And here’s a November 2009 column I wrote, as well as it’s accompanying blog.

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NEIGHBORHOODS TO GET NO VACATION FROM RENTALS is a post from: Side Streets

Fred Van Antwerp wants to walk his neighborhood in peace and out of the way of traffic.

In the Broadmoor area of Colorado Springs where he lives, that’s a trick because there are no sidewalks and few curbs and gutters.

Fred Van Antwerp stands on the spot where his property ends and the city's 9-foot public right-of-way begins outside his Broadmoor neighborhood home.

So Fred walks on the grass along the streets. Lots of people in his neighborhood do the same thing.

In many places, as on Oak Avenue in the photo above, folks respect the public 9-foot right-of-way that runs along every street in Colorado Springs. Their landscaping and fences set back from the road.

But more and more homeowners are laying claim to the right-of-way, Fred says.

It’s getting hard to stay out of the street because he encounters so many fences, or large boulders or hysterical homeowners all intent on shooing him off “their” property.

Some even erect walls and thick shrubs to keep people off the right-of-way.

Often, the landscaping looks very nice. But is it legal for homeowners to take control of the right-of-way?

No, says Ken Lewis, city code enforcement administrator.

He said the adjacent property owners are responsible for maintaining the adjacent right-of-way in what the city code calls an “aesthetically pleasing” manner. But they don’t own it and can’t keep people off it.

Some even try to control the street in front of their homes. They put up fences to discourage walkers from straying on the grass and motorists from parking on the streets.

Nice try. But definitely not legal.

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THE GRASS IS ALWAYS MEANER ON THE CITY RIGHT-OF-WAY is a post from: Side Streets

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Folks across Colorado Springs are complaining that properties in their neighborhoods are hotels masquerading as single-family homes.

I’ve heard the complaints from upscale areas like the Broadmoor and the Old North End to gated communities including  Cedar Heights and Kissing Camels.

And the complaints echo from more modest neighborhoods, too, like the Westside and Mountain Shadows.

They all ask the same question: how can it be legal to convert a single-family home  into a hotel?

Specifically they are talking about folks who rent their properties as vacation rental homes.

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Turns out dozens of people have discovered they can make serious cash — upwards of $4,000 a week at peak weeks — by renting their houses to vacationers.

Experts estimate there are 60 to 80 vacation home rental properties in the Springs. Cruise the web sites created to put renters in homes and you might think the number is far higher.

Vacation Rentals By Owner is a popular one. Another is VacationRentals.com. Folks can advertise their places and search for a house to rent on these sites and others.

Prices, according to a casual survey, seem to run in the $200 per day range.

Prices peak during Air Force Academy graduation week each spring and during popular summer months. In addition, owners can ask a premium when the Springs is host to big youth sports tournaments and festivals.

A city Vacation Home Rental Task Force was convened in the fall of 2009 but it produced nothing in terms of new rules to govern the practice as many other cities do.

 Manitou Springs, for example, requires folks who want to rent their homes on a daily or weekly basis to vacationers to apply for a conditional use permit. It goes through the planning commission and City Council. If approved, they must get a business license and pay sales and lodging taxes. Leases of 30 days or longer are exempt.

The task force did discover that many homeowners are not registered with the city or paying sales taxes, as required.

And many appear to be in violation of a city code that prohibits more than five unrelated adults from living in the same home.

Dick Anderwald, the chief city planner, said he may reconvene the task force if enough complaints surface. His planner, Larry Larsen, is researching the issue and taking complaints at llarsen@springsgov.com.

The only formal complaint this summer came from Cedar Heights where the Community Association president Lani Henneman asked about city codes. She said neighbors are upset about a house owned by Joanne Pearring being used exclusively as a vacation rental property.

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Henneman said Pearring advertises the house as “Manitou Villa” and it is available to groups of 18-20 for $400 to $500 a night or $2,000 to $3,300 a week.

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 She recently rented the house to a baseball team in town for a tournament, Henneman said.

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Pearring hung up on me when I tried to ask her about her house and business. Here’s a look from www.GoogleEarth.com.

Henneman said neighbors have complained about loud, late parties at the house. It has been blamed for traffic problems at the security gate. Guests have been seen feeding wildlife. And throwing rocks at deer.

She said Pearring, who lives in nearby Crystal Park and owns several other vacational rental houses, has “destroyed the whole purpose of a gated community” by introducing streams of strangers.

 But the homeowners association can’t do anything about it because covenants governing life in Cedar Heights never contamplated the issue.

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IS IT A HOME OR A HOTEL? is a post from: Side Streets

Colorado Springs has appointed a task force to determine whether it should license, regulate and tax vacation rental homes.

Turns out there are 60-80 homes sprinkled around the city that are advertised around the world in Web sites as vacation rental properties.

They are favored by parents of Air Force Academy cadets when they come for parents’ weekend or graduation.

Many families looking for a reunion site prefer vacation homes over hotels or bed-and-breakfast inns.

Folks with special needs, like sterilized kitchens or quiet places for elderly or children, often choose vacation rental homes over hotels.

Problem is, they bring a parade of strangers into neighborhoods. Strangers who soak up parking spaces and sometimes hold late parties. A few people living near vacation rental houses have begun complaining to the city about the situation.

So Dick Anderwald, the city’s land use and planning chief, created the Vacation Home Rental Task Force Committee to study the issue. He appointed neighborhood activists, vacation rental home owners and city planning staff to the task force.

Here’s the agenda for the initial meeting in September:  vacationrentals. Please note that the roster of task force members changed after this was printed. Michael Clark and Autumn Hyser dropped out.

One of the task force members, Jackie Ayers, owns the “Old Colorado Springs” 1902 Downtown House W/ Private Hot Tub - Colorado Springs  Here’s a look at her house from the Web site:

She also manages a vacation rental for another owner. Ayers said the task force is an over-reaction to the complaints of a few people, including two task force members who live near vacation rental homes — one on the Westside and one in the Broadmoor.

Anderwald apparently agreees. He said the issue appears to be confined to a small area of the city and the task force likely won’t produce new rules and regulations.

However, owners of vacation rental homes likely will start getting tax bills from the city for sales taxes they have not been paying.

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LIFE’S A VACATION, unless you live near a rental is a post from: Side Streets