$68 million Mason corridor project nearer reality

FORT COLLINS – Before Fort Collins spends $68 million on the biggest transit project in its history, it would pay to know where the money is going.

Just to be clear: There is no Mason Street Corridor. There is only the Mason Corridor.

“There was confusion caused by calling the corridor the Mason Street Corridor,´ said Anne Aspen, planner in the Fort Collins Current Planning Department. “Some people thought the street would be going away.  It’s not. The (Burlington Northern Santa Fe) railroad is granting an easement for bus travel, and the existing Mason Street will become two-way.”

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The corridor runs just west of College Avenue from a new transit center to be built south of Harmony Road to the existing Downtown Transit Center north of Laporte Street. The MAX bus rapid transit service follows the railroad right-of-way, in some places where there is no Mason Street at all. Auto traffic will continue to be allowed on Mason and McClelland streets, and cars will share the road north of Laurel Street with the MAX, which promises high-frequency service every 10 minutes.

The city sees the corridor plan as a framework for future economic development, and has just about secured all the funds needed to make it a reality after voters rejected two previous requests for funding.

According to Aspen, the total price tag for the MAX bus rapid transit system is about $68 million. If the city’s application to the Federal Transit Administration is successful, the U.S. government will pay 80 percent or about $54 million. That leaves about $13.5 million the FTA requires to be matched from local funding sources.  

Between two state grants totaling $8.5 million and the value of the land the city purchased for the south transit center – about $1 million – the local match has been whittled down to about $3 million.  

This amount is all of the funding needed to complete the entire bus rapid transit line from the Downtown Transit Center to the South Transit Center, and is small enough that it will not need to go to voters as a tax. The Downtown Development Authority has recently kicked in $600,000, and Fort Collins has committed to finding the remaining amount from various funding sources.  

“And why not?” Aspen said. “Raising $3 million in order to leverage $54 million is a no-brainer.”

The first phase of the project – a 3 1/2-mile bike-pedestrian trail system connecting Spring Creek Trail to the new Fossil Creek Trail – was completed last summer, and design work to extend that trail north across Prospect Street to Laurel Street through the Colorado State University campus is under way.

Catalyst for development

During the election campaigns in 2002 and 2003, discussion of the corridor tended to produce more heat than light. Car dealers with showrooms along College Avenue were particularly concerned by early maps outlining areas for “transit-oriented development” along the corridor. They took the emphasis on buses and mass transit as a veiled message that cars and urban living were somehow incompatible.

“We hope that misconception has been cleared up,” Aspen said. “Auto dealerships are very desirable businesses to have along the corridor. The employees are well paid, and the corridor will give them convenient places to shop. People who need to have their cars serviced can drop them off then hop on the bus and go to work.”

The relationship between transit and work is one of the primary selling points for the corridor. According to a brochure produced by the city of Fort Collins, 60 percent of jobs in the city are located “within one mile of the Mason Corridor, along with many neighborhoods and commercial shopping centers.”

Planners hope that increasing mass-transit ridership will serve as a catalyst for new development as well as for the redevelopment and revitalizing of older retail centers along the route. The long-term vision is that the kind of new office/retail/residential development under way in the downtown end of the corridor will repeat itself further south.

That vision has its skeptics, however. Larry Stroud, a broker with Realtec Commercial Real Estate Service in Fort Collins, wondered if the densities on the southern end of the corridor are sufficient to persuade developers to speculate.

“The south seems good for the development of multi-family residential, but in and of itself, I don’t see the corridor as a catalyst for development. It will help what is already started,” he said. “My take is that the northern part will be good for CSU.”

Linking town and gown

Planners see the corridor having a positive impact on both the city and the university, from improving options for faculty and student housing to facilitating the exchange of information between research centers and the university’s core.

“City initiatives such as enforcing the ‘three-unrelated’ rule have left the university in a bind for housing,” Aspen said. “A transit facility opens up a world of new housing possibilities for students as it makes the broader community available to absorb a growing student population.”

She noted that with a sharp rise in on-campus parking permit fees slated for the near future, students could keep money in their pockets by riding the MAX into town.  

“Once the corridor is operating, one of the big changes will be that regular bus routes will change to a grid pattern that will create feeder routes,” she said. “So someone living east or west of a station would take the bus then transfer.”

While the corridor addresses the transportation needs of the university community, it also provides the physical link between the university and private and federal research facilities.

Tom Livingston of Livingston Real Estate and Development shares with other developers the belief that the university is the most important economic resource in Fort Collins. In his view, the impact of the corridor on CSU’s reputation as a first-tier research institution is clearly positive, perhaps a model for future transit-oriented development.

“The fundamental source of economic development is research. The Natural Resources Research Center, the five-building campus just north of the Hilton on Prospect, has a big connection with CSU,´ said Livingston, who co-developed three of those buildings. “It’s right there on the corridor. People move back and forth to campus. They can park their cars once, and then use the MAX as a shuttle. Faculty at the CSU vet school can do the same thing.”

With access to the MAX bus line and associated improvements such as underpasses, some 1,500 employees from the NRRC and the vet school can commute to work, shuttle to campus and go to Whole Foods Market or the University Mall shopping center without walking across the railroad track.