Glenwood Springs – Gary Lacy, Colorado’s pre-eminent whitewater play-park designer, remembers standing in front of the Golden City Council in 1996, trying to persuade the reluctant officials to pony up $170,000 for a kayak park on Clear Creek.
“I told them I thought it would be a nice little amenity for a little community,” he said.
Lacy, whose Boulder-based Recreation Engineering and Planning firm has designed more parks in the U.S. than any other firm, was wrong about the “little” role he envisioned.
Kayak play-parks – stretches of foaming whitewater that enthrall both boaters and spectators – have become the cherished attractions in more than a dozen Colorado towns. Two professional paddlers in Buena Vista are building an entire community around a planned play-park.
But the jumbles of boulders in rural waterways are now more than the proverbial golden egg for communities fighting for a sliver of Colorado’s $8.5 billion tourism economy. They embody a New West vs. Old West fight over water and how evolving economies and communities grow.
Buoyed by studies showing annual economic impacts of at least $1 million from parks in Golden, Vail, Salida and Steamboat Springs, more and more rural municipalities are getting in line for recreational water rights.
The water-for-fun push pits places such as Gunnison, Chaffee County, Silverthorne and Steamboat against traditional water users such as ranchers, farmers and thirsty, growing urban communities.
And the winners in the increasingly volatile fight are lawyers. Gunnison, for example, has spent $500,000 in its legal fight against the Colorado Water Conservation Board over how much, or little, water it’s entitled to use for its $300,000 park, which this summer drew 2,000 visitors for a one-weekend festival. Nearly $1 million into the play-park arena, Gunnison remains in the same place it was when it began the legal skirmish several years ago.
“When a small community like Salida or Buena Vista or Gunnison spends $500,000 to fight the state and gets nothing out of it, something is broken,” said state Rep. Kathleen Curry, a Democrat from Gunnison who once headed the Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District. “I need you to think about how you can start working with traditional water watchers who say water should go to the Front Range to feed growth and go to farms,” she said.
Curry was a guest speaker last week at a first-ever whitewater- park symposium in Glenwood Springs. The Whitewater Courses and Parks conference drew more than 100 play-park planners, designers and community leaders from across the country.
Amid the massive plans like that of a $25 million hydraulic- pumped “superpark” in Charlotte, N.C., and modest retrofits of existing parks, one message rang clear.
“These are not just for kayakers anymore. Kayakers get you to build them, but 99 percent of the people who benefit from them never get wet,” said Scott Shipley, a park engineer with Lacy’s firm and a three-time Olympic paddler.
In much the same way, whitewater parks have become the hope of the paddling industry.
“These are the future of whitewater,” said Rick McLaughlin, whose Denver-based whitewater design group built Confluence Park on the South Platte River. “We can accomplish many objectives with these parks.”
Staff writer Jason Blevins can be reached at 303-820-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com.
