Attendees at the April 5 community meeting,
coordinated by City Parks staff, were seated at tables to allow small-group
brainstorming of ideas for Bancroft Park. The location was the meeting hall of the
Westside Community Center. Standing at right is David Deitemeyer, a City Parks
planner who coordinated the discussion effort.
Westside Pioneer photo
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Brainstorming for Bancroft: City Parks sets 2nd community meeting April 18
Dave Hughes (right), a long-time Westside civic
leader who helped organize past improvements in Old Colorado City and
Bancroft Park, talks with three City Parks staffers at the April 5 meeting (from
left), Michelle Bies, Jon Carlson and Carly Kobasiar.
Westside Pioneer photo
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After a brainstorming session attended by 70-some citizens April 5, City Parks has
set a second community meeting Tuesday, April 18 on the Bancroft Park issue.
The time will be 6 to 7:30 p.m. The location will again be the Westside
Community Center, 1628 W. Bijou St.
It's part of the citizens outreach element in developing an “action plan” - as Parks
staff are calling it - to repair/upgrade the fire-damaged Bancroft bandshell and
possibly upgrade other aspects of the 1.2-acre public space in Old Colorado City.
In late March, City Council allocated $250,000 toward the project, including
roughly $100,000 from the city's bandshell insurance policy, while leaving open
the potential for additional funds, depending on how the action plan take shape.
With the scope of work still being crafted, a time frame for construction has not
yet
been specified, but the city has deemed the bandshell unsafe, so upcoming events
such as Taste of OCC (April 30) and Territory Days (May 27-29) are still
scrambling for temporary stages for their live bands.
Parks does have a schedule for getting the action plan together. Staff intends to
update the council-appointed Parks Advisory Board at its monthly meeting April
13. The April 18 community meeting could be followed by “additional meetings
to be scheduled as needed,” states a slide that Parks staff projected on a screen for
attendees at the April 5 meeting.
The idea is to have a “proposed action plan” ready to present to the Advisory
Board at its May 11 meeting, the slide states. Board approval would allow the
work to go forward.
Sarah Bryarly and Kurt Schroeder of City Parks
prepare to hand out colored markers for Bancroft Park community meeting
attendees to use during the small-group discussion period at the April 5 meeting.
On the screen behind them is the
last of their department's project slides, summarizing the "group exercise."
Westside Pioneer photo
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The staff's “project goals” for the action plan, as defined at the start of the April 5
meeting, showed a desire to maintain a reasonable balance between the park's
historical heritage, the surrounding neighborhood (which is both residential and
commercial) and the park's role as a public locale.
About two weeks before the meeting, staff posted an online survey about park
issues. Going into the meeting, parks planner David Deitemeyer said that more
than 220 people had responded.
A staff slide titled “What we've heard to date” [from the public] listed the
following: bandshell repair, better security lighting, children's play equipment and
“concerns over homeless.”
The survey can still be accessed at
this link.
At the meeting, citizens were seated around a dozen tables, each of which was
identified by a “group” number and asked to spend about a half-hour considering
staff questions related to the park. A spokesperson from each group then
addressed the meeting as a whole.
A consensus appeared to favor improved security, upgraded amenities (such as
the electrical system and public restrooms) and a general desire to enhance
Bancroft's “town square feel,” as one group phrased it.
A few groups also talked about how city fees to use the park have increased in
recent years, thus reducing the number of local events; and about more transients
using Bancroft as a hangout and illegal activities in the vicinity.
Deitemeyer's presentation also included a timeline for the one-block site,
including
its service as a Colorado City school (going back to 1889) and Colorado Springs
making it a neighborhood park in the late 1920s (after annexing Colorado City in
A slide presented at the April 5 meeting shows
what City Parks staffers refer to as Bancroft Park's half-mile "service radius."
Westside Pioneer photo
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1917). City research has also found that the bandshell was built in 1935, the
concrete dancers' pad in front of it poured in 1948, the cabin relocated to the
park's
southwest corner in 1961, the pavilion in the middle dedicated in 1976 and the
park contributing to Old Colorado City's designation on the National Register of
Historic Places in 1982.
Regarding the bandshell fire, the City Fire Department has defined it as
“purposely set” by one or more people lighting trash on the stage on a cold night
in late January. No arrests have been made.
For about two months after the incident, concerns were raised by Westside
business and neighborhood leaders about slow city reaction, lack of
communication and insensitivity to a heart-felt Westside locale.
In early March, City Council took on the matter, led by Keith King (whose
District
3 includes the Old Colorado City area), Don Knight and Tom Strand. This led to
the $250,000 allocation.
All three of them were at the April 5 meeting, along with Richard Skorman, who
was elected the day before to the D-3 seat. King had not sought a second term.
King, who had initially been critical of the Parks response, said at the outset of the
April 5 meeting that he likes the way staff has responded and now the Bancroft
effort has become “kind of a fun way to end my service.”
Skorman made it clear that he shares King's interest in the project. “I'm behind
this 100 percent,” he told the meeting attendees.
Westside Pioneer article
(Posted 4/6/17;
Outdoors:
Bancroft Park)
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