Divided Fort Collins council OKs stadium pact with CSU

FORT COLLINS — A sharply divided Fort Collins City Council – reflecting the heated debate that has gripped the city and the campus of Colorado State University it surrounds – voted 4-3 on Tuesday night to approve an amended intergovernmental agreement between the city and school about the impacts of CSU’s planned on-campus football stadium.

The vote – with council members Ross Cunniff, Bob Overbeck and Lisa Poppaw opposed – came after 37 people trooped to the public microphones to plead with the council to delay, rethink or flat-out reject an agreement that they blasted as “nonbinding,” “wishy-washy” and full of “wiggle worms.” The opponents were old and new Fort Collins residents, CSU students including present and past members of the student senate, and candidates for mayor and council in the April 7 municipal election.

Not one member of the public spoke in favor of the pact, in which CSU committed to pay for all “immediate” costs, estimated at up to $8 million, to mitigate impacts of the $242 million, 36,000-seat stadium such as traffic flow, public transit, lighting and noise, adequate parking and off-campus utility upgrades that meet city standards and would be needed to support the football facility.

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The question of who pays for future off-campus needs – CSU or the city – was left unanswered. Deputy City Manager Jeff Mihelich, who was part of the city team who negotiated the IGA with CSU, said that “we’ll come back in six months” when the IGA is up for review to determine that, but that “some of those improvements will likely be shared.”

It will be an important determination, said Wade Troxell, a city councilman who is a candidate to replace outgoing Mayor Karen Weitkunat. Even though Troxell – a former CSU football captain and 30-year member of the school’s faculty – ultimately voted to support the IGA, he repeated his contention that, based on his visits to other university towns where stadiums were built near existing neighborhoods, the cost of those off-campus needs likely would range from $30 million to $50 million.

However, Troxell and Weitkunat said CSU’s commitment to pay for some improvements to city streets leading to the stadium such as Prospect Road and Shields Street should be viewed as a gift.

The agreement “does get us volunteer contributions to our infrastructure that will benefit us greatly,” Troxell said.

“Look at Prospect. Look at Shields,” Weitkunat added. “Do we not have issues right now, whether or not the stadium’s built? Something has to be done.” The IGA will bring enhancements such as plans for pedestrian, bicycle and vehicular traffic flow, she said, and will work to accommodate neighbors and their concerns. “We are getting a commitment from CSU to pick up the tab on this. The value that’s here is a value to the community, whether or not the stadium is built.”

She drew some derisive laughter from the packed council chamber, however, when she concluded, “The IGA does no harm.”

Mihelich said some changes were made to the agreement based on comments and suggestions city and CSU staff received at a March 6 Planning and Zoning Board study session and a March 11 public open house. Changes included adding a stadium-area business representative to the Stadium Advisory Group called for in the IGA, an emergency-response plan that recognizes potential congestion caused by game traffic as well as trains on the Mason Corridor, and a commitment from CSU that any non-football events at the stadium must meet city noise standards.

As for the impacts of noise and light on surrounding neighborhoods during football games, Mihelich admitted that “it’s very difficult. CSU has agreed to use the best technology available. The goal is to concentrate it onto the playing surface as much as possible. Will there be noise? Absolutely.”

The IGA “does not take a stand for or against the stadium,” Mihelich said. “It’s really to protect the neighborhood and do as much mitigative work as possible if – and I stress if – the stadium is constructed.”

Mihelich said CSU had committed to build a 900-space parking lot on Centre Street and a 400-space lot at Pitkin Street and College Avenue. Noting that he believed 55 percent of football attendees would drive to the game – accounting for about 22,000 people in a standing-room-only crowd of 40,000 – Mihelich said “parking should be adequate, and it’s good that the lots are dispersed so there’s not a concentration of traffic” into one area.

He said CSU had identified on-campus areas that could be used for tailgating. That activity will be part of the game-day events plan and directed to campus, he said. “The goal is to keep it outside of neighborhoods.”

He said CSU also had agreed to a litter-abatement program including taking responsibility for canvassing public rights-of-way after games to pick up trash.

The Stadium Advisory Group called for in the pact – which would be made up of two representatives from CSU, one from the city, plus city residents and business owners – would meet “at least twice annually” and have input on how the IGA-specified “Good Neighbor Fund” is spent, Mihelich said. CSU committed to raise $750,000 in donations for the fund, supporting it with an annual $37,000 annual contribution until the endowment is fully funded.

Construction of the stadium would likely begin in August, Mihelich said. Responding to the audience’s calls to send the IGA back to the drawing board, he added that “if we slow down the mitigation plan, then we won’t have improvements in place when the stadium opens, and I think that’s the worst-case scenario. If we wait, those mitigation plans won’t be in place.”

But waiting is exactly what members of the public who spoke during the comment period demanded.

Citing a clause near the end which said either side could terminate the IGA within 30 days if it felt the other side had not lived up to its commitments, Jim Michala declared, “This is not a binding agreement. This is a memorandum of understanding. … Is the city of Fort Collins going to become responsible?” Speakers expressed concerns about the stadium’s carbon footprint and seized on the words “striving” and “seeks” in the pact to claim it held no enforcement mechanism.

Others targeted their ire at CSU President Tony Frank, who has been pushing the idea of an on-campus stadium at CSU for nearly three years. “He’s the president of CSU but he’s not the president of Fort Collins. Nobody voted for him,” Liz Pruesner said. “Our systems have failed us.”

Mayoral candidate Mike Pruznick charged that “Frank’s not giving us an $8 million gift. He’s buying our silence.” He alleged that the IGA contained no stipulation that SAG meetings be public, no way to keep the group’s membership from being “stacked” by stadium supporters and no requirement for the school or city to follow its recommendations.

City Council District 2 candidate Nancy Tellez noted the strong opposition to the stadium from residents and students alike. And Bob Vangermeersch, founder of Save Our Stadium Hughes, contested many city officials’ contention that the city is powerless to stop the on-campus stadium because CSU’s land-grant status gives it autonomy to do what it wants on its campus without seeking city approval or conforming to city codes.

Noting that the CSU Board of Governors in February approved Frank’s plan to finance construction of the new stadium through sale of $242 million in revenue bonds, Vangermeersch told the council that because CSU needs the IGA to float its bonds, “you do have power. I urge you to stand tall for the citizens.”

Clayton King, a senator at the Associated Students of CSU, and Kwon Yearby, a former ASCSU senator, complained that no student input had been sought on the IGA and added that they worried about conflicts between football fans and students for on-campus parking.  King questioned the new provision that non-football events must meet city noise codes, pointing out that CSU would need loud events such as concerts at the new stadium to generate enough revenue to cover the bonds it floated to pay for the stadium.

A tearful Waydene Pixler, a 38-year resident, said “I’ve never seen this town so divided.” and demanded that city officials “grow a spine” and “tell Tony no.”

“You’re being silent and not sticking up for the people who have stuck up for you,” another woman said. “We’ve been loyal to you. Be loyal to us in return. We will be voting in April.”

In the council comments that followed and preceded the final vote, Troxell acknowledged that the division caused by the three-year debate over the stadium “hurts me greatly” as a Fort Collins native, especially because “This was presented as a done deal three years ago.”

However, he said, “pursuing a lawsuit is not the right thing to do, but what we have been pursuing with regard to this IGA, I believe, is.”

“We hired the best attorneys we can possibly hire,” noted Councilman Gino Campana. “We discussed this collectively. If we thought we could get stronger language, we’d all go for that. To come in late and read this agreement, you might want the language to be stronger – but we are where we are.”

Campana said council members “requested meetings with the Board of Governors a number of times. We couldn’t get ‘em.”

Cunniff, whose district includes neighborhoods that would be most impacted by the new stadium, couldn’t get a commitment about who would cover those future costs. Amy Parsons, CSU’s vice president for university operations, told him, “We’re not permitted to bind the Legislature to any future action.”

In opposing the IGA, Cunniff said, “the staff did what we asked them to do, but we asked the wrong questions. Any private business goes through ordinances, zoning codes, neighbor and community input. I think that we have unconsciously fallen into the urban legend of CSU’s complete impenetrability.

“What more can we do to enforce ordinances and protect neighborhoods,” he asked. Hughes Stadium, three miles west of the main campus, “was there first. People knew what they were getting. This is different – taking the existing character of neighborhoods and impacting them in ways money cannot compensate.”

The IGA is not a binding contract, Cunniff said, and “will not do what our citizens are asking us to do.”

Troxell said the stadium debate has opened some more general questions about CSU’s continued growth and acquisition of off-campus properties. What power does the school have to go beyond annexation agreements reached with the city in the 1950s and ‘60s, he asked. What are its powers of eminent domain?

“The stadium is just one issue of others. What we need to do is think more comprehensively,” Troxell said. The IGA, he said, “is where we start, not where we end.”