During a long career in advertising, I had a lot of experience with developers paving over immense ranch lands.
Which is to say, the audience had every right to be skeptical of the developer who lives and is headquartered in Arizona. If lawsuits against the developer emerge, it’ll be a very expensive, protracted and convoluted legal quagmire.
As for wildlife, we already are seeing residential development pushing visiting elk herds further north.
At least those homeowners are paying property taxes that support the city, including our public schools. Those “luxury RVs” – most likely from out of state – will not be paying property taxes given their impermanence.
The location is also too close to the river. We could also expect a form of urban runoff from the nitrates used for irrigated lawns. Rain events can send those nitrates into the river. That causes grasses to grow in the riverbed robbing the fish of oxygen.
Will Durango taxpayers foot the bill for the infrastructure of that RV park? Electrical? Water? Sewage? Trash pickup? Road repairs from extremely heavy RV traffic in and out of that RV park? What do we get out of it? This is not a mobile home park with stationary abodes with full-time residents.
Finally, this project is planned in an area that has experienced flooding from excessive rain events.
So what’s in it for Durango? The only beneficiary will be the developer based in Arizona while leaving residual problems for Durango taxpayers to resolve.
Dave Ohman
Durango
