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Creekwalk 106 Lawsuit Filed.
ReToolCOS Blocks Citizens.
Below is the downloadable 106 lawsuit filed against the City for the Creekwalk Lawsuit. Mr. Robert J. Bruce is has filed a 106 complaint to stop the Creekwalk Apartment developments. We will also be using Mr. Bruce for the Launchpad 106 lawsuit which is in in-progress. In addition to objecting to the process that ReToolCOS which we lobbied against enabled allowing only 250 homes within 1,000 feet of the location to be notified, the approval ON CONSENT for the first reading on 7/11/2023 which one has to be watching closely to catch, we were stunned at the 7/25/2023 City Council testimony to learn from a question Councilmember Donelson raised asking where the traffic study was for this development. It is standard practice to disclose traffic studies in land use decisions, especially development so large in a densely populated area adjacent to one of the busiest roads in Colorado Springs. Once we got a copy of the study, we understood why: they did the study in the dead of winter just like the traffic study was done for the Broadmoor attempt to close W. Cheyenne Mtn. Blvd in 2013. That study, by the way, under-represented the traffic by a factor of 6x which we showed with our own study held in peak tourism summer months. By the way, we have asked the City repeatedly to add a feature to automatically send an email to residents/neighborhood groups who sign up for land use notifications which costs nothing so we are aware of these filing as more are coming. As we dug further into the documents, we also learned that the required geohazard study was not included and erroneously waived. Most importantly, as we testified before City Council (presentation below), all of the residents west of Nevada/115 and I-25 were trapped in 2010 as the 2010 evacuation study showed. Since then, we have added development after development further worsening the evacuation times for all of the residents west of I-25 and Nevada and south of Highway 24.
Thanks to the generosity of Cheyenne are resident Mr. Tim Hoiles who is funding this suit. We are so grateful for his steadfast support of evacuation modeling, reporting of times and implementing evacuation standards for development. Sadly, this is not an isolated problem, and we are engaged in helping neighborhoods across the city who face similar evacuation concerns. As a result, we have started a
COS Neighborhoods Legal Defense Fund to which you can donate here.
The more we raise, the more we can help. Please do share. We are working on legislation at the local and state level that will hopefully implment standards and procedures that will stop this egregious developer control of our leadership and egregious abuse of citizens. Until then, the courts are our only hope to literally save lives.
Thank you for being a great neighbor!
Many residents and we had been working since the 7/25/2023 Council meeting on updated presentations which included numerous objections to the materials, or lack thereof, presented to sell this development which is too large for the area and and worsens our already non-survivable evacuation routes. On August 3rd, as we looked for the agenda which are posted the Thursday before the Tuesday meeting, we were surprised to not see it. We had requested because of the items delineated below, that it be paused. For a fleeting moment, we were hopeful that our new mayor was a politician of a different kind who would take action when clear and present danger to the people was presented. Horrifyingly, it was far worse. We learned that Creekwalk was done. We communicated with several leaders some of whom were also confused and have finally learned (we think though we haven't yet gotten confirmation), the ReToolCOS (which we opposed and is truly awful for the people) now allows Rezones/Developments to be put on the consent calendar for the 7/11 meeting. The consent calendar groups many items together to be approved. The only way to know an item is on the consent calendar is to monitor the agendas which are not published, again, until the Thursday prior to the Tuesday giving residents and neighborhood groups little notice to analyze data and/or notify other neighbors to organize. This is why they made these changes. So, in addition to only 250 homes being notified within the 1000 foot limit, this makes it incredibly hard for the people to know when there's a new filing. Additionally, we hear from our friends at Integrity Matters who have been helping the Pine Creek citizens who faced an administrative approval for a $40 million bond/taxpayer funded project that had they not learned about it and complained, it would have just gone through.
As a reminder, though this is too high for the area, what we most object to is the insufficient road network especially as they start to narrow Cheyenne Road and Cheyenne Blvd with those insane bike lane poles which will be a distraction to drivers at a critical school crossing. As soon as we know if legal actions is going forward on the Creekwalk Apartments, we will let you know. In the interim, we encourage everyone to email Mayor Mobolade and ask they remove these administrative approvals, and putting rezones/developments on consent. We have also asked that they allow citizens to sign up for development filings so that we can be notified and have time to review/analyze data and make sure as many neighbors as possible are informed. Please cc us and the media (the To: and Cc: lists in the sample email below would be appropriate groups for this.)
On 7/25/2023, City Council approved the 1st Reading 7-1-1 with Dave Donelson being the only councilmember supporting citizens. Mike O'Malley left as the meeting went very late into the evening. Of note, D3 representative Michelle Talarico and D3 resident David Leinweber strongly supported it. Here is the presentation we gave:
No traffic study was submitted which is customary. Rather, a glossy summary was given. We got a copy of the study and udnerstand why. No GeoHazard study was submitted. A GeoTechnical Study, a much lower bar, for the adjacent commercial lot was presented which showed problems. We summarized our concerns in the pdf viewer above. The Traffic Study was conducted on 12/15 for all roads included except Nevada/Southgate which was done on 1/31 -- dead of winter when traffic is much lower. This same tactic was used in the 2013 Broadmoor attempt to close W Cheyenne Mtn Blvd. Former Save Cheyenne founder and Westside Watch founder Dana Duggan ,with her neighbor Kathy Meing, conducted their own traffic study videoing the intersection in summer -- the results were SIX TIMES HIGHER than the City/Broadmoor study. So, this traffic study grossly undercounts traffic and would fail if done in Spring/Summer/Fall when people are actually out on the roads. There was also no evacuation modeling to show the further trapping of residents west of the development (Broadmmor/Cheyenne/Skyway). We tried to reach out to the Ivywild Improvement Society as we have heard from many Ivywild residents they are already facing backup west of the beanabout on Cheyenne Blvd -- in daily traffic which backs up from S Tejon/Ramona to almost 8th street. Unfortunately, they did not want to meet with us to hear these concerns. Not surprisingly, the woman we spoke with is on the CONO board which likely explains it. CONO is a neighborhood organiaiton we have discussed before - they reached out to us as a first call, so they said, at Richard Skorman's suggestion. We declined to be involved because they are funded by the City and have "university" (i.e. indoctrination) program to identify residents the City thinks would be good for the CONO board to have input into PlanCOS. When one of our founders asked if they will advocate for neighborhoods, they replied they would not and they operate as an "agent of the City". We find this to be very disturbing if not unconstitutional to mandate citizens attend a City funded program to be eligible to have input into the plans for their city. We know that many residents are concerned about the already non-survivable evacuation routes that exist in the Broadmoor-Cheyenne area about which the Denver Gazette and the world evacuation experts we brought to testify warned. So, we want to share the information we have and provide, at a minimum, an email you can easily copy/paste and send registering your objection to the Rezone and Development.
Local builder and Cheyenne area resident Danny Mientka is the developer proposing the Rezone to build a SEVEN STORY, UP TO 85 FEET, 400 unit apartment complex and 500 car parking garage west of the new Sprouts at the Creekwalk shopping center between Nevada and Cheyenne Road. You may recall that world experts in evacuation times presented data to our City Council which shows that our evacuation times are already around 8 hours 20 minutes with 36 intersections (chokepoints) that have evacuation clearance times of 10-16 minutes for one car to clear the intersection. You will see an active fire truck stuck in traffic at the infamous Beanabout below.
Add to this the new "Mini-downtown" being proposed at Gold Hill Mesa and the narrowing of Cheyenne Road and Cheyenne Blvd installing "pop-outs" which caused major evacuation delays in the Paradise Fire along with a lawsuit, and it is crystal clear that this is a grossly irresponsible plan that places tens of thousands of resident lives at risk. While we do not object to development, it must be done using data and science which protect public safety first. Fix our chokepoints first.
