Oil spawned the town of Rangely in the 1940s, and that up-and-down industry eventually turned it into a tattered burg where contaminated Main Street eyesores made visitors wince and residents apologetic.
That was before Rangely became the state’s – and now a nation’s – shining example of a voluntary program for the cleanup and revitalization of contaminated properties called brownfields.
In an effort that began 17 years ago, Rangely has been shedding its ramshackle image.
The Western Slope town turned a vacant lot that Rangely Town Manager Lance Stewart called “an oily, gucky mess” into a mini-mall. An oil company had left unsightly rig parts and contaminated soil there before the cleanup.
More recently, the town did away with two abandoned gas stations that for years had been an eyesore in the heart of the town of about 2,000 people.
The cleanup sparked new development on the mile-long Main Street and spurred neighboring businesses to take pride in and beautify their properties.
“The brownfields activity has really been a catalyst for us,” Stewart said. “Before the feeling was, ‘This whole block looks (bad), so let’s just leave it that way.”‘
Now, a made-over Rangely sports a video store, hair salon, pottery business, a chiropractic office, several restaurants and oil-company office space. A private developer has a contract to double the space in the 6,000- square-foot mall. Trees grow in front of businesses. And signs at each end of town proclaim with new pride, “Welcome to Rangely: A Great Place to Live.”
Rangely’s success was touted recently at a National Brownfields Conference in Denver and is highlighted in “The Colorado Brownfields Handbook,” a guide for local governments on how to do away with and redevelop contaminated eyesores.
“For a small town, what Rangely did is especially impressive,” said Eric Bergman with the Colorado Department of Local Affairs’ Office of Smart Growth and one of those instrumental in putting the handbook together.
Rangely’s efforts didn’t come easily. Town officials created the Rangely Development Association when they realized that they couldn’t lure any private entities into cleaning up the contaminant-laced properties for development.
“We decided we would have to bite the bullet and do it ourselves,” Stewart said.
That meant dealing with a snarl of owners and wading through layers of tax liens, kicking in local funds to round out grants and being ready to tackle unforeseen underground contaminants.
As a sidelight, the town’s association created a local program for business-facade improvements that split the cost of those improvements with other business owners. It also knocked down half a dozen dilapidated structures and has plans to do away with several more.
Rangely’s makeover caps about 400 such cleanups around the state since the voluntary program was established in 1994.
Staff writer Nancy Lofholm can be reached at 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com.
