We are four days into the new year, and have some thoughts about the shape and form of what could be in store locally for 2025.
The year begins with Durango’s April election that could continue the half-cent sales tax that, since 2005, has funded natural lands preservation, acquisition and maintenance and capital improvement projects. One half-cent each raised $6 million in 2023. It was expected to raise $3.5 million in 2006, its first year.
The capital portion has paid for building the public library and rebuilding Florida Road, and the ball fields at Fort Lewis College, for example. Proposed ballot language will have the capital half go to extensively overhaul the former Durango High School/9-R administration building into a new city hall – a community vision since the 1980s that may finally come to fruition – and to add a police department alongside.
The other half would continue to fund natural lands – think the acquisition of Dalla Mountain Park and land in Horse Gulch, and the development of Durango Mesa Park as a few more examples.
Comfortable with that? A new city hall is badly needed, so yes for that half, but do we still need funds for parks, open space and trails? Might those funds be needed elsewhere?
Which leads to the too-long delayed underpass under Camino del Rio at 12th Street. Linking the river trail with Main Avenue – linking, as opposed to the too-easy-to-ignore flashing red light, is likely to greatly increase core city pedestrian, bike travel and commerce. Underpass design has been underway and stalled because of the uncertainty of the former fire station site. Now that’s done, complete that engineering and begin construction with half the sales tax? Appealing, yes?
We also look forward in 2025 to what Mike French, who has that fascinating title of “Prosperity Officer” with (only!) tourism, economic development and housing under his wing, comes up with. French very competently grew the influence of the La Plata Economic Development Alliance where workforce housing was a focus.
(Durango will also have a new community development director later this month, Jayme Lopko, coming from Clearwater, Florida, and previously Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. As she learns Durango, we’ll see what ideas she has.)
Seventy percent of La Plata County’s lodgers tax ($636,000 in 2023) is going to child care and housing to support our local workforce thanks to November voters. The city has its housing division, and we’d like to see what partnerships can move the needle on child care and housing with relatively small amounts of additional funding.
The city has closed on the 1.6 acre former Weidman Sawmill tract below Highway 3 and across from Animas Surgical Hospital. An ideal location on the city’s edge for housing, which is intended, and development partnerships are underway, possibly with Fort Lewis College and Durango School District 9-R for educator housing. If successful, at least a portion could break ground by year’s end.
As we did a year ago this time, we look forward to more ground development on Ewing Mesa, also known as Durango Mountain Park. Seven miles of new trails opened in fall 2023 and there will be much more of that, for good reason. A very large, close-in, recreational future for that treasure, and an amenity for our community and visitors, many of whom, we hope, will get to experience new trails when Durango secures the bid to again host the Mountain Bike World Championships in August 2030. Fingers crossed, we’ll know in June.
The Durango Cowboy gathering in October was wildly successful, with many horse owners bringing their horses to town for the parade and for youth fan rides. Allowing trucks and trailers to park on 2nd Avenue was key. We hope to see that successful event and city partnership continue this fall.
Airport travel numbers continue to climb, and are expected to be half a million through the end of the year, also seeing the need for expanded parking (who would have thought that a shuttle to the terminal might be needed?). An enlarged terminal has been taking place, funded by revenues not taxes. Well done.
Durango, and by expansion La Plata County, looks to be on a very strong trajectory. No lower elevation snow so far, and not much higher up, but that will come.
Happy New Year.
