GOLDEN — A controversial Catholic retreat center planned for 247 acres near Conifer that some mountain residents worry will be a wildfire disaster waiting to happen got a critical boost Tuesday when all three Jefferson County commissioners approved a rezoning allowing the project to move forward.
The Emmaus Catholic Retreat & Conference Center, which would feature a three-story, 80,000-square-foot main building that could host thousands of visitors every year, has who say the foothills communities along U.S. 285 are some of the most fire-prone in Colorado.
The rezoning hearing for the property has been continued twice this fall as neighbors have sparred with the Archdiocese of Denver — which bought the property last year and wants to build a retreat center — over the proposed facility’s fire-proofing plans.
Adding to the standoff has been the over how to best provide fire protection to the religious campus.
“You develop a sensitivity and fear of seeing (a wildfire) on the news,” said Valerie Amburn, whose family has owned a cabin in the Glenelk neighborhood for decades. “This location is simply too risky for a structure of this size.”
She and her neighbors have asked that the Emmaus center not be allowed to have wood-burning fire pits on site, but instead use gas-powered pits.
“Life safety is not a negotiable standard,” Amburn said Tuesday.
But the commissioners said the archdiocese had included a sufficient number of fire mitigation measures in its plans — an on-site water storage facility, non-flammable materials for its buildings and fire breaks throughout the property — to proceed with the project.
Commissioner Casey Tighe asked how the county could ask the archdiocese to forgo wood burning fire pits on its property when that is an allowed use under county code. Tighe noted that the parcel was zoned to accommodate up to 28 homes — and each of those homes could have a wood-burning outdoor fireplace if the homeowner so chose.
“Are you suggesting we hold this applicant to a different standard than someone building a home there?” he asked attorney James Silvestro, who was representing two homeowners associations in the area.
Silvestro said a destination resort, where hundreds of people who have no vested interest in the Jefferson County foothills or familiarity with the fire risk there, is “qualitatively different” from individual homeowners who have sunk their life savings into their residences. He said every visitor to the Emmaus center represents a “potential ignition source,” whether that’s through a carelessly tossed cigarette or a campfire not properly extinguished.
Elk Creek fire chief Bill McLaughlin said it was his “strong preference” that Emmaus not have wood-burning fire pits and he told the commissioners that the facility would put further strain on an already overstretched and underfunded volunteer fire department.
“We’re behind the eight ball and we have been since I’ve been up there,” he said.
McLaughlin said after 40 years of turning down mill levy increases, voters in 2013 had passed an increase to provide additional funding for the Elk Creek Fire Protection District. But he said it wasn’t enough. Commissioner Libby Szabo asked why voters around Conifer were so reticent to pay for better fire protection service if wildfire danger was so acute in the area.
The archdiocese has offered to contribute $10,000 a year to Elk Creek for fire services, but the department has said the necessary annual funding is more on the order of $20,000. A formal cost-sharing agreement has not yet been finalized.
Denver Archdiocese vicar general Randy Dollins, who is heading up the project for the archdiocese, said after the hearing that “the process works.” And he said the church will continue to keep the lines of communication open with the community as it aims for a 2018 opening.
“We want to be great neighbors,” he said.
Because of a reporter’s error, this story incorrectly characterized the number of stories in the proposed Emmaus Catholic retreat center. It will be 55 feet tall with three stories and a basement.