Homes and stores may someday be built where the military once practiced bombing raids southeast of Denver, but some environmental groups claim the planning has been rushed and the public hasn’t had enough say.
The State Land Board is considering three proposals to build houses and businesses on roughly 3,000 acres of the former Lowry Bombing and Gunnery Range about 30 miles southeast of Denver. The plans include preserving open space.
A fourth proposal would preserve another 23,000 acres as open space. The Land Board manages 37 square miles of the 92-square-mile site.
Pam Kiely of Environment Colorado said the Land Board’s planning process has been too quick and the comment period, which ends Friday, was too short for meaningful public input. Scheduling developer presentations on two days that included Election Day likely created conflicts for people, she said.
The online versions of the proposals were difficult to download and didn’t contain the complete numbers of homes and other buildings planned, she said.
“This has been largely a very closed-door, in-the-boardroom type of process,” Kiely said.
“For a project of this magnitude, with all its regional implications, there has been a profound lack of public involvement in this decision making,” she said.
Melissa Yoder, the Land Board’s manager for the project, disputed that characterization.
“We’ve been studying what the future uses of the property would be for over six years now,” she said, and board members are under no deadline to choose a proposal.
The comment period isn’t the public’s only opportunity to have input, Yoder said.
“There are a lot of meetings that still have to take place. There’s still a process we have to keep working through,” she said.
Conservation groups have also questioned whether the board has adequately studied whether enough water is available for the hundreds of homes and businesses.
The development presents significant “economic, environmental and quality-of-life consequences” for the entire metro area, said Gregg Cassarini of the Colorado Environmental Coalition.
Questions have also been raised from within the Land Board. Former board member Pat Teegarden told The Denver Post in July he was forced off the panel because he criticized the way the agency was considering bids to develop Lowry.
Gov. Bill Owens’ administration said Teegarden was asked to resign because of poor attendance and potential conflicts of interest posed by his work with a real estate development company.
Teegarden did not return calls.
The land in question is part of what started as an Army airfield, bombing and firing range in the late 1930s. Other branches of the military, including the Air Force, used the site for training until it was turned over to Denver in the 1960s for a landfill.
Portions of the landfill, in the northwest part of the site, were placed on a priority list of the country’s most contaminated toxic waste sites in 1984. The Justice Department and Environmental Protection Agency approved an agreement on cleanup costs last year with Denver and companies that used the landfill.
Various state and federal agencies monitor health and environmental issues at Lowry. The Aurora Reservoir, some housing divisions and a conservation center are in the area. The Land Board leases some of its acreage for sand and gravel mining and oil and gas production.
The land is among about 3 million acres managed by the state board, whose members are appointed by the governor. As other states did, Colorado received the trust lands from the federal government upon statehood. Most of the money raised from sale or lease of the land goes to the public schools.
A law approved by voters in 1996 requires that some trust land be preserved as open space and that the board consider environmental values as well as profits when selling land.
Kiely said the land board should consider the value of keeping development off most of the Lowry range.
“This is kind of a last vestige of what the east metro area used to have, which is an expansive prairie beyond,” she said.
On the Net:
Colorado State Land Board:
Environment Colorado:
