The Fort Collins City Council discussed the issues of eminent domain for intersection construction, transportation and stream water easments Tuesday evening.
Prospect and College intersection road construction
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The council determined the plan for the Prospect Road and College Avenue intersection road construction improvements. This plan authorizes the use of eminent domain, only if necessary.
The city has been meeting with the property owners in order to agree on a compromise for the road construction. The owner of the property voiced their opinion on preferring option three which was only a single left turn lane.
The council members continued to go back and forth between the three options for about an hour and a half. Ray Martinez was a strong supporter of the first option while Ross Cunniff supported option three. Kristin Stephens brought up the compromise of option two.
The council decided on option two which was the modified dual left turn lane.
“At the end of the day we have to represent the city, not a homeowner,” councilmember Gino Campana said.
Stormwater easement
Another agenda item that was discussed was the construction of a permanent storm water easement on city property at the Gardens on Spring Creek. Colorado State University is to construct a pond in order to handle the water flow from the new stadium construction in order to improve water quality treatment.
The estimated cost of this project is between $400,000 and $500,000. The city will reimburse CSU for 48 percent of the construction costs. A majority of the pond will be on CSU property. A design team also constructed a landscape design with specific topography alterations.
There will be a neighborhood meeting on November 3, which will be held at The Gardens at Spring Creek.
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The councilmembers voted unanimously to approve plans to construct the easement.
Transportation
Plans for the West Elizabeth Street Enhanced Travel Corridor (ETC) were also discussed in order to improve multi-modal transportation between CSU’s Foothills Campus on the west and CSUs Main Campus.
There are minimal residential properties that would impact the project. This project will complete the bicycle and pedestrian networks and even provide safety improvements for motorists.
Patty Jeffreys, a Fort Collins resident, spoke about many issues on West Elizabeth Street such as speeding, crashes and the amount of dangerous situations.
“What we are upset about is you’re going to bring all of this transport and everything down to little simple Elizabeth and we have two viable streets, Drake and Prospect, to the south,” Jeffreys said.
The motion was passed for the West Elizabeth Enhanced Travel Corridor.
Many citizens of Fort Collins were also in attendance at the meeting in order to speak about their opinions on the plan of operating bus routes on Sundays. Councilmember Gerry Horak talked about various bus stops for citizens, such as the senior center bus stop which Transfort does not enter.
Collegian reporter Hailey Deaver can be reached at news@collegian.com or on Twitter @autumn_hail.
