Durango Mesa Park will continue to take shape this year with an improved intersection at Highway 3 and Ewing Mesa Road, along with a connector trail for the highly anticipated bike park on the mesa.
About 40 residents turned out to an Engage Durango forum last week at the Durango Community Recreation Center, where officials shared plans and future possibilities for the park.
In addition to intersection upgrades, about 1 mile of Ewing Mesa Road will be reconstructed, requiring a temporary closure, according to the city. The Horse Gulch parking lot is also closed for equipment staging and waterline work.
Program Management Director Hogan Koesis of the Durango Mesa Park Foundation said the access road to the proposed bike park will be regraded from 12% to 8%, improving truck access and bidirectional traffic flow.
A surface road leading to a parking lot is expected to be completed by November, which is required before bike park construction can begin.
The bike park site, formerly a gravel mine and preextraction area, is terraced and stepped; revitalization work is planned for the area.
“It'll feel like a park. It'll look like a park. It'll be an intimate setting, post mass grading,” Koesis said.
A 1.4-mile connector trail is under construction and expected to be completed by mid-April. It will link Crites Connect Trail to Telegraph Trail and Telegraph Connect, where a new enduro zone will be built – the first element of the bike park. The park will include four zones: upper, middle, lower and base. The upper zone will be the least restrictive and most cost-effective to build.
The upper zone is expected to be completed by around July 4. Mass grading will begin in the fall, followed by construction of an asphalt pump track and a perimeter trail around the bike park.
The planned bike park will be one of the largest in the U.S., Koesis said, offering high-altitude training and serving events like the Colorado High School Cycling League, U.S. Pro Cup, cyclo-cross and Fort Lewis College races.
A world-class bike park and community amenities have the potential to be a major economic driver, said Shane Fernandez, USA BMX president and a forum guest.
About 40 residents attended the forum to hear updates on the park and ask questions of Durango Mesa Park Foundation and city staff.
Fernandez, who is also the incoming chair of the National Parks and Recreation Committee for Innovation, told attendees Durango Mesa Park “will end up being the most advanced facility on the planet” and said the opportunities are endless.
He said the proposal is for a Tier 1 facility, meaning it could host BMX world championships, state and regional events, and adapt to mountain biking and other competitions.
Fernandez noted the USA BMX facility in Tulsa drew more than 150,000 visitors in its first two years and generated a $45 million economic impact.
One resident, who identified herself as Caroline, asked whether the city has conducted a market study to assess if enough hotel rooms are available to handle the influx of visitors for large events.
Moira Compton, executive director of the Durango Mesa Park Foundation, said the city has studied the economic impact of large events and found benefits. She noted that park development is phased over many years.
Barbara Bowman, interim executive director of Visit Durango, said the city has more than 2,000 hotel rooms and there are 1,282 vacation rentals in La Plata County, citing data from AirDNA.
Compton said the park master plan includes a sports complex with up to 11 fields and significant space for concerts, including an amphitheater with 20,000-person capacity, which drew gasps from the audience.
She said concert promoters are among the most enthusiastic stakeholders, but the amphitheater is not expected to be built within the next five years and would require significant funding.
She added her phone blew up after the master plan was released, with many surprised by the scale of the proposed venue.
“I'm going to tell you what I told the person that called me, I said, ‘We may both be dead by the time that is done. So you can just take a big, deep sigh of relief,’” she said.
The amphitheater, she said, is an example of how Durango Mesa Park can grow alongside the region’s population.
“I understand that that sounds like a big number,” she said. “Everything we're planning initially is nowhere near that capacity.”
cburney@durangoherald.com
