A group of Colorado Springs residents are organizing in favor of a move to limit the construction of high-rise structures in the city.

With a petition bearing the words “We Don’t Want to be Denver,” the group is gathering signatures endorsing the proposition that residents should be able to vote to restrict the height of proposed building projects.

The movement is fired by a project announced late last year by the O’Neil Group, an investment and development company based in Colorado Springs, that said it wanted to build a 36-story in the city’s downtown section.

That project, slated to go up on Costilla Street, just to the east of the Olympic and Paralympic Museum, will also feature nearly 500 residential units. In 2021, the O’Neil Group proposed a 25-story structure with 316 units, but ultimately decided that a smaller building would not prove financially feasible.

Opponents of the project have said that what particularly bothers them is that the structure could block views of the nearby Pikes Peak and connecting mountains. Last year the publication CPR News noted that many residents in Colorado Springs embrace the city’s “classic, almost ‘anti-urban’ identity.”

The petition, which is posted on the site Change.org and has so far generated more than 4,900 signatures, also asks that no new building in Colorado Springs should be taller than the 16-floor Wells Fargo building. That structure, at 90 S. Cascade Avenue, was built in 1990 and is to date the tallest building in Colorado Springs.

A decision to put the proposition on this fall’s ballot will have to first be approved by the Colorado Springs City Council. A decision by that body may be made sometime next month.

​By Garry Boulard

Image Credit: Courtesy of Unsplash

The nation’s newly built, single-family market continues to face challenges, with the most recent figures showing a nearly 5% sales drop in that sector.

According to just-released figures from both the Census Bureau and Department of Housing and Urban Development, single-family home sales in April had declined to around 634,000. That figure is down from March’s 665,000, and substantially off from where things stood a year ago at 687,000.

Continues the report: “The median sales price of new houses sold in April 2024 was $433,500.”

Sales activity, in fact, is now at its lowest level since the Covid 19 onset in April of 2020.

Industry experts say that the continued persistence of higher mortgage rates is proving an ongoing downer for the market. “In the last four weeks mortgage rates have been above 7%, and this is clearly causing many potential home buyers to sit on the fence,” remarked Carl Harris, the chairman of the National Association of Home Builders.

In a statement, Harris continued: “However, in the weeks and months ahead, we expect mortgage rates to fall below 7%.”

The influence of “moderating rates, along with a dearth of existing inventory, should help new home sales recover as new construction will be needed to meet the demand for homes, especially during this crucial spring/summer season,” added Harris.

Similarly, Lawrence Yun, chief economist with the National Association of Realtors, remarked: “Home prices are hitting record highs, but the pace of gains should decelerate with more supply.”

Yun, however, noted that the “Federal Reserve’s anticipated rate cut later this year should lead to better conditions, with improved affordability and more supply.”

The consensus for a drop is widespread, notes the publication Forbes: “Many housing market experts expect mortgage rates to recede over 2024, but that largely depends on when the Federal Reserve decides to cut interest rates.”

The Fed has largely been keeping rates to their highest levels in more than 20 years in the hopes of “grinding down on the economy enough to get high inflation fully under control,” says the Boston Herald.

Prospects for a rate cut aren’t likely, continues the publication, until the Fed “has greater confidence that price increases are slowing to its 2% target.”

​By Garry Boulard

Image Credit: Courtesy of Pixabay ​

One of the classic hotels from the days when Bisbee, Arizona was a nationally known copper mining hotspot, is now on the market with an asking price of $12.5 million.

Located at 11 Howell Avenue in the center of the city, the 5-story Copper Queen Hotel is regarded as an architectural treasure, designed in the Italiante style by the New York architectural firm of Van Vleck and Goldsmith.

According to the Society of Architectural Historians, the structure, built in 1902, is unique for its "central pavilion terminated by hipped-roof towers clad in red tiles." The building also features a wooden balcony "above a terrace defined by a tripled arched opening."

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the 48-room hotel is nestled within the city's Historic District, a section of Bisbee known for its Spanish Revival and Italiante buildings.

Designated as a Class B structure, the structure has for decades served as one of the most popular and classic hotels in southern Arizona and has hosted everyone from the actors Julia Roberts and Keifer Sutherland to the Arizona Senator John McCain and former First Lady Nancy Reagan.

The structure is being listed by the Long Realty agency, which has offices in Sierra Vista. 
​
While copper mining in Bisbee was gradually phased out by the 1970s, the city became a tourist mecca largely owing to the preservation of its historic structures. According to a website essay published by the Arizona Commerce Authority, the city found a new life for self-described bohemians attracted to an "environment that continues to inspire creativity and imagination."

​By Garry Boulard

The City of Santa Fe is expected to see increased spending on affordable housing projects as well as temporary shelters and improved roads.

Some $36 million in new funding is coming as a result of “years of consistent budgeting,” said Mayor Allan Webber in announcing a series of one-time investments.

The funding, moreover, said the Mayor, will go to "dozens of important one-time projects in every part of the city."

“These are all investments that city councilors, city workers, and the people of Santa Fe are eager to see move ahead,” Webber declared in his annual State of the City speech. He additionally noted that nearly $18 million in funds will go for utility system upgrades and improvements.

The Mayor's spending priorities were released after members of the Santa Fe City Council gave their unanimous approval to a $440.1 million budget for fiscal year 2024-2025.

According to city documents, at least $3 million may be moved from the city's general fund to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. That nearly 20-year-old entity serves as a mechanism to fund affordable housing projects in Santa Fe.

Improvements to the Municipal Recreation Complex at 205 Caja Del Rio Road are additionally expected to receive around $1.4 million in city funds.
​
The proposed spending is currently in the talking stage, with the City Council expected to vote on funding for specific projects later.

By Garry Boulard

Image Credit: Courtesy of City of Santa Fe 

Despite stories suggesting otherwise, Louis DeJoy, the U.S. Posmaster General, has announced his agency's intention to maintain as many currently operating post offices nationally as possible.

In a public letter, DeJoy, in noting an ongoing facility review process, said, "Contrary to past facility reviews, where the intention was to close the mail processing facility when we moved out mail processing operations, the current facility review process has no such intention."

On the contrary, continued DeJoy, "The review process we are undertaking also includes substantial investments in the facilities we are studying."

DeJoy said that, as currently planned, "hundreds of millions of dollars will be invested in these facilities to refurbish and equip them to transform this organization, to ensure that we can serve our communities far into the future."

The letter, which was sent to Michigan Democrat Senator Gary Peters, chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, stated that substantial investments are being committed to modernizing postal facilities nationally, as well as addressing deferred maintenance issues.

DeJoy also made note of his agency's move to build new regional processing and distribution centers, with one such facility in Phoenix measuring 500,000 square feet scheduled to open this fall.

In the West, Houston is also seeing the upgrading of an existing 850,000-square-foot processing facility; while work will soon be completed on a 300,000-square-foot facility in Boise, Idaho.

Some 200,000 square feet will be added by 2026 to an existing 650,000-square-foot center in Santa Clarita, California.

DeJoy has come under criticism for the Delivering for America program, an effort launched in 2021 designed to reduce some $160 billion in Postal Service costs by the end of the decade.

That program has seen the agency aggregating packages and mail in fewer facilities, reducing processing and distribution costs, and shifting air volume to ground transportation.
​
The Washington Examiner earlier this year noted that under the Delivery For America program, the Postal Service lost $6.4 billion in fiscal 2023, and "projects a $6.3 billion loss in 2024."

By Garry Boulard

Plans remain in the works for the building of a new water park in northern Colorado.

The project, called Glacier Beach, has been in the talking stage since around early 2022, and may include what has been billed as the "longest water slide in the world."

Last month a website for the project announced that a new ride concept called "Soarin' Over the Rockies," would be a part of the larger park, an immersive ride that will provide breathtaking views of the nearby Rocky Mountains.

In a press release, the new attraction is said to combine "cutting edge technology, stunning visuals, and thrilling special effects." The news site What Now Denver has earlier reported that the project might also have a "360-degree circular wave pool," with rapid, deep. and lazy rivers.

Exactly where the park will be built has still not been announced. It was previously thought that the project would go up near the city of Golden, with construction beginning sometime this coming summer.

Now the site glacierbeachcolorado.com says simply that a development team is "hard at work" doing the preliminary work on a new location. 

If the Glacier Beach project becomes reality, it will join a growing marketplace nationally for waterparks. According to the Statista.com, such parks regularly attract up to 8 million visitors annually, representing a $3.5 billion industry in 2023.
​
New water park projects have been announced in recent months for Massanutten, Virginia; Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; Bellevue, Nebraska; and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

​By Garry Boulard

Image Credit: Courtesy of Pixabay 

Plans are moving along on a project that will see the construction of a new fire station in south central Colorado.

The Peyton Fire Protection District serves the unincorporated town of Peyton, a place of around 200 people, as well as residents of several nearby towns in eastern El Paso County in a coverage area that encompasses around 110 square miles.

Altogether, the district currently serves an estimated 1,400 households.

With a four-bay station located at 13665 Railroad Street that is operated by a full-time deputy chief and supported by a staff of 17 volunteers, the district has long contemplated the need for a new station.

That project has now taken a step forward with a vote by the El Paso County Commission approving a zoning exemption for the site of the new station. According to published sources, the planned facility will be built to house an underground cistern with a 30,000-gallon capacity.

The station will go up on a 2.5-acre site near the intersection of Bradshaw Road and Sweet Road in Peyton, in an area that is made up of vacant parcels of land as well as some single-family housing.

According to county documents, the new facility will be built in order to “decrease emergency response times in the area.”

The facility, note those documents, will take the form of a pole barn that will house a fire truck as well as the cistern.

An exact construction schedule for the new station has not yet been announced.

The Peyton Fire Protection District was formed in 1954 after the town’s only schoolhouse burned to the ground.

​By Garry Boulard

Image Credit: Courtesy of Pixabay ​

Twenty states are now taking part in a lawsuit objecting to new regulations announced by the federal Council on Environmental Quality that impact the construction industry.

Those regulations, according to the White House, are supposed to simplify and modernize the federal environmental review process as it is enforced under the National Environmental Policy Act.

In a late April announcement, the White House said the new regulations include “setting clear deadlines for agencies to complete environmental reviews, requiring a lead agency, and setting specific expectations for lead and cooperating agencies,” while additionally “creating a unified and coordinated federal review process.”

But the lawsuit, with plaintiffs including the states of Texas, Florida, and Georgia, contends that the new regulations "insert many arbitrary mandates into the environmental review system with the foreseeable effect of delaying and foreclosing disfavored types of projects.”

At particular issue is a complaint against what is called a “government-wide approach to advancing environmental justice” that the lawsuit argues is “untethered to any federal statutory basis.”

The lawsuit has won the support of several industry groups, including the Associated Builders and Contractors, which has said that the regulations fail to "meaningfully improve environmental protections, and actually expands and lengthens environmental reviews that already take years.”

In a statement, Ben Brubeck, vice-president of regulatory, labor, and state affairs with the ABC, remarked: “Instead of moving forward with this burdensome final rule, the Biden Administration should work to streamline and modernize permitting processes while maintaining important environmental safeguards.”

Other voices, however, have argued that the Council on Environmental Quality’s implementing rule not only clarifies the environmental review process, but does so in a particularly timely manner.

“We are at a pivotal moment for climate action,” said Delaware Democrat Tom Carper, the chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “To bring more clean energy onto the grid, there’s no question that we need a more effective and efficient environmental review process.”
​
The lawsuit on the part of the twenty states has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota.

​By Garry Boulard

Four years after completing its business development plan, officials with the growing County of El Paso Airport in the city of Fabens are hoping to see facility upgrades that could include the construction of a new runway.

The 400-acre airport, located roughly 32 miles to the southeast of downtown El Paso at 1611 North Fabens Road, was built in 1959 after the Texas State Legislature passed a bill allowing El Paso County to acquire the land needed for the facility.

The airport has long been utilized by U.S. Customs, Border Patrol, and Texas Transportation Department aircraft. In 2016, it was announced that El Paso County and the University of Texas at El Paso had entered into an agreement allowing for the building of the school's Aerospace Center test facilities at the airport.

That agreement, the El Paso Times has since noted, is transforming the Fabens airport into a "premiere aerospace research and testing facility."

Recent work has also seen an upgrade to the airport's main operations building, the repaving of an existing runway, and the ongoing UTEP construction for what is officially called the Tech One Campus/Alpha Site.

New county work at the airport, unrelated to the UTEP project, may well include not only the building of a new runway, but the lengthening of an existing runway.

The runway work will require El Paso County to purchase additional land for a project that was originally outlined in the facility's 2021 business development plan.

​By Garry Boulard

Image Credit: Courtesy of Unsplash

Work could begin later this year on a project that will see the building of a 14,00-square-foot educational facility in Albuquerque's Old Town neighborhood.

The project is being undertaken jointly by Central New Mexico Community College and the Explora Science Center & Children's Museum, and will include early education learning space for science, technology, engineering, arts, and math.

Uniquely, there will also be space for childcare facilities, a service designed to assist students with children. Officials with both CNM and Explora have pointed out that often students have to forego their dream of securing a college degree or professional certificate because of the demands of parenthood.

In a statement, Tracy Hartzier, the president of CNM, remarked: "We all know the critical importance of providing high-quality education and care during the formative year for children up to age 5."

What is being called the Brillante Early Learning Center is expected to cost around $14 million to build, with funding coming from a combination of CNM, Explora, and state, city, and county support.
As planned, the center will not only include a variety of classrooms, but also a kitchen, art studio, and plaza.

The project has been in the planning and talking stage for close to a decade and draws upon studies that have explored the challenges of trying to go to school while raising a child.
​
This particular demographic is larger than is perhaps popularly known: According to the National Center for Education Statistics, roughly four million, or 20%, of all enrolled college students nationally are parents.

​By Garry Boulard