Raptors get ready to roost in new digs

FORT COLLINS – By the end of the year, the Rocky Mountain Raptor Program will be fully fledged, out on its own with a new facility and a new identity separate from Colorado State University.

Volunteers for the nonprofit corporation have worked over the summer to remodel an 8,000-square-foot building for staff and build three flight cages for 130 rescued birds of prey in various stages of rehabilitation. The temporary building sits on donated land adjacent to the 27-acre parcel on East Vine Drive at Lemay Avenue destined to become the program’s permanent home.

When completed, the Rocky Mountain Raptor Center for Avian Research, Conservation and Education will be a living museum open to the public as well as a working rehabilitation center. Both the Fort Collins chapter of the Audubon Society and the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory have verbally agreed to partner with RMRP in the center.

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“The center could become a major tourist attraction for the city of Fort Collins, the kind of ecotourism the city needs,´ said Fort Collins real estate developer Mickey Willis, who helped facilitate the $1.2 million sale of the land to RMRP by a private owner in May 2005.

To help make the deal financially viable, Willis plans to develop 40 New Urbanist-style residential units on 3.6 acres of the parcel closest to the intersection of Vine and Lemay. He originally wanted to develop half the parcel, but recently told the Business Report that traffic considerations required the project to be scaled back.

Willis said he expects the custom-built units to be between 850 and 1,800 square feet and lots to sell for between $75,000 and $95,000, with a portion of the proceeds donated to the Raptor Center.

Design team on board

RMRP has hired a high-powered design team that includes world-renowned habitat designer Jim Brighton of Seattle to begin planning the new center, which could cost as much as $15 million at final build-out.

Brighton’s resume includes work for the San Diego Zoo, Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Orlando and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson. Other members of the team include Denver’s Condit Exhibits, Kubala Washatko Architects Inc. of Cedarburg, Wis., and the Fort Collins office of EDAW as landscape architects.

“The design phase (for the center) will take at least six months to complete, maybe longer,´ said Judy Scherpelz, RMRP executive director. Actual construction could take another three to five years.

Preliminary information gathering has been done, including a field trip by Willis, raptor program staffers, city and Poudre School district officials and Downtown Development Authority executive director Chip Steiner to the Sonora museum and other similar operations, led by staff of Fort Collins-based National Association for Interpretation. The Sonora zoo, natural history museum and botanical garden attracts more than a half-million Tucson visitors a year, while conducting studies of desert wildlife and educational programs.

A month before the sale, the DDA annexed the parcel, increasing the size of the district by 24 percent and making the Center eligible to receive DDA funding assistance.

The land is also part of a Larimer County Enterprise Zone, which provides cash donors to RMRP a 25 percent credit on state income taxes in addition to standard federal and state charitable deductions.

Before development of the permanent Raptor Center site can begin, the Federal Emergency Management Agency must give final approval of new floodplain maps. The year-long city of Fort Collins Dry Creek Drainage Improvement Project removed the RMNP property as well as surrounding areas from the 100-year FEMA floodplain.

From club to rehab center

The raptor program started in 1979 as a club for CSU veterinary students involved in caring for the occasional injured bird. Under the direction of Scherpelz since 1988, the program has grown from student club to major rescue and rehab facility, dedicated to returning raptors to the wild whenever possible.

Although the program now cares for 260 hawks, eagles, owls, kestrels and vultures each year, the raptor hospital remained housed in 800 sq. ft. on the grounds of the vet school on West Drake Road. Birds at the publicly accessible CSU Environmental Learning Center on East Drake Road will remain there until all the flight cages are built.

Until the permanent site is ready, the new facility will remain closed to visitors except during special open house events. The first one is scheduled for Dec. 10.

Fund raising priority

Fund raising has become a much higher priority since the announcement in 2002 by CSU that its expansion and reorganization of the vet school left no room – physically or financially – for RMRP after Dec. 31 of this year. Director of Communication and Outreach Bob Francella joined RMRP 15 months ago from his position at North Colorado Medical Center Foundation. He has been concentrating on getting the word out to individuals, foundations and other potential donors.

To date, the program has received overwhelming support from the community, according to Francella, who has implemented a number of innovative fund-raising events around the move. The half-dozen Sneak-a-Peek tours of the renovation project conducted over the summer helped raised awareness and brought in new volunteers and donations.

 “I don’t think we’ve paid for anything but the lumber to build the flight cages,” he said. “Wayne and Phyllis Schrader donated the temporary building, we’ve borrowed heavy equipment when we’ve needed it, and at the end of September, Home Depot sent Team Depot – 30 employees from its Fort Collins and Loveland stores – to work on the site.

“On any given weekend, we have between 10 and 20 volunteers working on the cages, which are a higher priority than the offices,” Francella said.