Environmental assessment backs Estes Park Loop

ESTES PARK — A controversial $17 million plan to turn three downtown Estes Park streets into a one-way loop remains the best way to aid visitor access to Rocky Mountain National Park and solve floodplain issues, according to the long-awaited federal environmental assessment of the proposed project that was released Tuesday.

Now it’s up to the public and town officials to read the voluminous document and weigh in.

There were “no show-stoppers on any of the criteria they use,” said Estes Park Town Administrator Frank Lancaster, “but there is some mitigation needed — adding some park land somewhere else to offset land lost in Baldwin Park and also trying to replace some parking spaces. But it still comes out for the Loop as the preferred alternative.”

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The project team will brief the Estes Park Town Board at its July 12 meeting, and team members will be available for one-on-one questions and answers with the public from noon to 4 p.m. July 14 in Rooms 202 and 203 at the Town Hall, 170 MacGregor Ave.

A public hearing will follow on July 20 at the Estes Park Event Center, 1125 Rooftop Way. Team members will answer questions from 4:30 to 5 p.m. and give a presentation from 5 to 5:30. Members of the public who wish to make brief verbal public comments before their peers and a court reporter must register on a sign-up sheet and will be heard from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.  An open-house format will follow from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. Public comments also can be received in writing at the hearing or at any time during the 30-day comment period, which will end Aug. 5.

The environmental assessment is online.  In addition, hard copies of the EA and comment forms will be available at the town clerk’s office in Room 130 at Town Hall; at the Estes Valley Library, 335 E. Elkhorn Ave.; and the Estes Park Visitor Center, 500 Big Thompson Ave.; as well as the Colorado Department of Transportation’s Region 4 office at 10601 W. 10th St. in Greeley.

At the end of the 30-day comment period, comments and proposed changes to the assessment will be evaluated and the Town Board will likely make a decision at its September meeting, Lancaster said. The board has several possible courses of action, he said.

“They could accept the EA as it is, they could decide they don’t want to participate, or they also could just vote to affirm support and submit it to a public referendum. A couple people on the board would like to do that,” Lancaster said, noting that Mayor Todd Jirsa campaigned to put the Loop to a public vote when he ran for office in the April municipal election.

“I’m positive he will ask for that,” Lancaster said. “I don’t know whether there’s a majority on the board that would support that or not. It’s not eligible for a citizen initiative because it’s an administrative matter, so it has to be referred to the ballot by the town board.”

The idea to turn downtown Estes Park streets into a one-way couplet to ease summer traffic jams has triggered fierce debate and division among residents, business owners and town officials. Besides easing tourist-traffic gridlock, Loop proponents have said federal money for the project would pay for replacement of three of five bridges damaged during the flooding of 2013. If the bridges aren’t replaced, they said, the next federal floodplain designation could be expanded to include much of the downtown area, raising property owners’ insurance rates.

Loop opponents have countered that the plan would hurt their businesses by steering eastbound traffic away from the shops along East Elkhorn Avenue, the main downtown commercial street, and disturbing the peace of homes and rental cottages along a parallel street to the south that would become eastbound U.S. Highway 36 under the Loop plan. Some opponents say improving parking options and crosswalks downtown are better solutions, and have posted signs in their businesses to enlist tourists in their anti-Loop campaign.

The town in 2013 applied for $13 million in Federal Lands Access Program (FLAP) funding for the project because the project was seen as a way to improve access to Rocky Mountain National Park, which has entrances just west of Estes Park on U.S. Highways 36 and 34, and federal officials had said the Loop option was the only acceptable alternative to receive the FLAP money.

The town already has $4.2 million in hand through a grant from CDOT’s Responsible Acceleration of Maintenance and Partnerships (RAMP) program.

The FLAP grant tentatively has been awarded as well, but acceptance by the town was pending the final environmental assessment as part of a National Environmental Policy Act study, a process that’s triggered when a federal agency develops a proposal such as the Loop to fund. The assessment was to study the impacts to the community if the one-way couplet plan were to move forward or if no action is taken.

If the town board or Estes Park voters decide against going ahead with the Loop, Lancaster said, the town would lose out on the FLAP grant and also have to reimburse the feds for the costs associated with studying the project thus far — probably around $600,000.