Great Outdoors Colorado is developing a new long-term strategic plan, and its representatives are coming to Durango on Wednesday to listen to what Southwest Colorado has to say.
Great Outdoors Colorado, better known as GOCO, is visiting 14 Colorado cities on a “Listening Tour” that begins Tuesday in Alamosa and will end Aug. 28 in Golden.
The goal is to identify funding priorities and initiatives to guide its board. The new strategic plan would serve for five to 10 years.
La Plata County has been the beneficiary of $8.9 million in GOCO funding for outdoor recreation and land conservation, the majority of which has gone to city of Durango projects, said Cathy Metz, director of Durango Parks and Recreation.
Among the largest GOCO grants was $1.2 million for land in the Horse Gulch area that was owned by the Fort Lewis College Foundation.
The meeting from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Durango Community Recreation Center is a chance for locals to provide feedback to GOCO on what’s important to our community and to emphasize how much the funds already have increased the quality of life here, Metz said.
Every major parcel of open space the city has purchased – including Overend Mountain Park, Dalla Mountain Park and Horse Gulch – as well as several major Animas River Trail projects, has been done only with GOCO’s help, Metz said.
Mary Monroe, executive director of Trails 2000, a local trails advocacy group created just before GOCO came into existence, said her group has seen how GOCO money has aided the development of local trails. The extensive Horse Gulch trail system, which includes trails on easements through private property as well as city-purchased land, “has created a great place for people to recreate,” Monroe said.
The city has identified in its Parks, Open Space and Trails plan projects for the next 10 to 20 years, many of which could use a shot of GOCO funding, Monroe said.
“It’s a great opportunity for people of Durango to talk to GOCO and express some of the needs we have,” Monroe said.
Those needs, she said, include more open space to further aid trail connectivity, a bike park such as that proposed at Chapman Hill and other amenities.
GOCO was created in the early 1990s after a governor’s committee recommended establishing a trust fund to invest in the state’s outdoors. A state constitutional amendment redirected lottery funds to the Great Outdoors Colorado Trust Fund.
johnp@durangoherald.com
If you go
Great Outdoors Colorado representatives will hear ideas from the Durango-area community from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Durango Community Recreation Center, 2700 Main Ave.
For more information and to RSVP, visit www.goco.org.
