Larimer County officials derail Estes Park coaster expansion plan

FORT COLLINS — The Mustang Mountain Coaster in Estes Park got a bumpy ride from Larimer County commissioners Monday night when the panel voted 2-1 to derail the Estes Park tourist attraction’s plan for a one-time expansion.

The owners of the 1,960-foot gravity-driven ride, located on 186.75 acres off Dry Gulch Road north of U.S. Highway 34 on the eastern edge of the tourism-dependent mountain village, had sought to expand the attraction’s parking lot from 19 to 69 spaces and to get a permit for a 20-by-20-foot observation deck which had already been constructed.

The county’s development services team and the Estes Valley Planning Advisory Committee had recommended conditional approval of the plan.

The coaster’s operations manager, Gregg Hecker of Longmont-based Yakutat Land Co., said that the company had been running a shuttle system to the site from a 38-space offsite parking lot that could accommodate recreational vehicles. Hecker said that he wanted it to continue even with the parking-lot expansion and noted that a traffic study predicted it and the larger lot would decrease traffic on Dry Gulch Road. However, the county’s staff advised commissioners that they should require the applicant to discontinue the shuttle service after the new onsite lot was opened.

However, commissioners expressed discomfort with the parking-lot expansion, partly because Michael Whitley, the county’s senior planner, said it would require an amendment to the land-use code, which requires that a one-time expansion can’t be greater than 50%.

Whitley also cited the property’s history of code-compliance issues, but both he and assistant county attorney Christine Luckasen reminded commissioners that it couldn’t use that history as a basis to approve or deny the application, although it could use it to add additional conditions.

Those complications, coupled with more complaints about noise and traffic from members of the public who attended the hearing, echoing neighbors’ concerns when the coaster was first proposed in 2018, ended up being a deal breaker for Larimer County commissioner Jody Shadduck-McNally.

“Those coded conditions were the same then or now,” she said, predicting that the expansion would bring “more parking, more cars, more people and more screaming” — referring to the cries of riders as they zoomed down the track.

“To hear the neighbors talking about not being able to enjoy yardwork or being outside without having headphones on, I can only imagine with more cars, more parking, it would only be increasing that,” she said.

“I can’t imagine having this in my neighborhood,” agreed Commissioner Kristin Stephens, However, she added, the neighbors’ complaints “are not fixable at this hearing. That’s hard for us because, as your representatives, we would love to be able to make things better for you and your neighborhood.

“We can’t consider some of the things we’ve been asked to consider,” she said. “We’re left with a code and guidance from our legal staff and planning staff that tells us we can’t penalize an applicant for any past transgressions. So we’re really obligated to look at our land-use code and the criteria for this specific situation, which is a one-time expansion in the character of the Mustang Mountain Coaster for this parking lot.”

Commission chairman John Kefalas admitted he was “a bit conflicted with all of this,” but ended up casting the three-member panel’s deciding vote against the request because “this is an expansion of more than 50% based on the size of the parking lot, and I don’t think all of the criteria have been met.”

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