TURNING THE CRYSTAL BALL ON GROWTH
Colorado Springs Considers its Future According to the Numbers
By Headwaters News, 2-15-07
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Using numerical data to predict the future is an art form practiced by many to forecast weather, sports scores, planetary movement and financial markets. And now, a new report produced by the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments attempts to foretell the future of growth in Colorado Springs.
The Colorado Springs Gazette reports that the study predicts that by 2035, the wealthiest people in the Pikes Peak Area will have moved north while the poorer will settle in the south, and that the whole city will expand outward into the prairie. The populations of El Paso and Teller counties will balloon to nearly 1 million people, an increase of 66 percent, while the number of jobs will double.
Further review of the report by the Gazette shows that an increase of 25,000 military personnel and their families will fuel much of the economic shifts, which could include a dramatic increase in the number of families making $20,000 per year or less, since starting salaries for soldiers are so low.
Some in the area doubt the findings or dismiss them as inconsequential. Yesterday’s Aspen Times included another story that might shed some light on the indifferent reception the report is getting in some quarters.
At a town hall meeting Basalt, land use planners tried to predict how many more homes and residents the growing mountain town could handle, based on numbers, data and predictions. But area residents at the meeting said they were less concerned about numbers and more concerned about preserving the community they lived in and loved.
Basalt residents said they wanted security and protection for their homes, especially those in low-income housing. Others said the city and county also need to focus on finding ways for people who work in the town to be able to afford to live there.
Playing by the numbers may not always get the results planners, and community members, want.
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Comments
You can't build schools, sewage systems, water supply systems, roads, bridge expansions, libraries, or branch offices of county governments overnight. The year 2035 may seem like a long time from now, but the amount of lead time needed for a major public works project is significant.
Hmmmmm ... just think how many good lookin' guys who could buy their own lunch a gal could find with one of those!!!
I do often have to wonder just how many major public works projects could have been completed with all the money the City, the County and the State spends on all the so-called-"studies" done, year after year after year, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent each roll of the dice.
All one would have to do, were they prone to exercise even a tad of that apparently-long-deceased characteristic AKA "common sense", is to look at the land availability within the Pikes Peak Region to know that there are almost no remaining privately owned large parcels of land available for development West of I-25. Most of that "open space" one sees traveling the I-25 corridor is publicly owned property, most of it Federally-owned with a spattering of State-owned land hither and yond.
Most of the land South of Douglas and Elbert Counties anywhere near the I-25 corridor has already been developed or is planned/approved for development.
So one might think that it would not take hundreds of thousands of dollars for the powers-that-be to figure out that almost all of any future development is headed across the prairie to Kansas!
Trying to forecast the number of jobs coming into the Region by 2035 or what price homes will be most in demand within the marketplace by then is somewhat similar to betting on how far a frog will jump. The biggest trade-off between "North" and "South" is the weather zone within El Paso County. North and East has much more severe weather due to the Palmer Divide weather pattern that cuts with a vengeance there; South, SE and SW is much milder climate year-round. The SW quadrant harbors some of the most expensive homes in the entire Region. And the military community buys and occupies homes and apartments throughout the Region, not just locations near Fort Carson.
So when "Some in the area doubt the findings or dismiss them as inconsequential" it is with good cause me-thinks!