Town residents plan trail system

By Steven Olson
Correspondent

About 30 people gathered in Wellington's Leeper Center May 16 to talk about expanding and linking the town's now small trail system.

Currently, Wellington has roughly one-half mile of trail running near the new Rice Elementary School in The Knolls subdivision, and residents are now talking about expansion.

The town has grown substantially in the last few years. In 2000, Wellington's population was 2,700. Seven years later, the population is close to 5,600. Town officials are projecting 5 percent growth next year, or 280 new people.

"Wellington's always been a bedroom community for Fort Collins," said Town Administrator Larry Lorentzen.

Olsson Associates, a consulting firm in Lakewood that builds trail and park systems, hosted the May meeting. The town hired the company to help it develop a parks and trails master plan. The ultimate aim, said Jerry Adamson, a landscape architect for Olsson Associates, is to develop a plan the city can scrutinize. The firm will also determine what amenities are needed in the town.

"They could look at this and then figure out what they could afford," Adamson said. "Ultimately they want to join with the Larimer County and Fort Collins trail systems, but obviously you need a trail system in Wellington first."

The city also hired Olsson Associates to develop a plan to link two nearby reservoirs - Smith Reservoir and North Poudre Reservoir #4 - to the trail system. Both reservoirs are roughly two miles northwest of town.

The meeting was kind of a wish list in character. Adamson said his company was most interested in finding out what Wellington residents want in a parks and trails system. Adamson said four park sites are being considered, but none are set in stone. They are simply sites where the city already owns land.

The entire process is still in its infancy. Adamson received suggestions for a swimming pool, a hockey rink, baseball fields, dog parks, playgrounds and a park skewed toward motorized vehicles like ATVs.

"You have to have a master plan and it has to be flexible," Adamson said. "We can fix any hiccups along the way."

Wendell Nelson, chairman of the Wellington Area Chamber of Commerce, said in a later interview that a system of bike trails would help Wellington as the town grows. Nelson, who owns The Chocolate Rose coffee shop, said that recreational cyclists usually stop there on weekends. "We have a couple of bike racks outside," he said. "I'd say they make up about 5 percent of the business. The competitive cyclists, the people who enter races and stuff, they go right through and keep on going. But the recreational people like to stop for some food or something."

A good deal of the interest at the May meeting was centered on the opening of Rice Elementary School this fall.

One of the priorities, Adamson said, is some type of crossing over Interstate 25, which separates developments like The Meadows from Rice Elementary.The school is several blocks south of the Interstate 25 interchange that feeds into Cleveland Avenue.

"I have kids myself, "Adamson said. "They'll miss a bus one day and do you really think they are going to go all the way up to Cleveland? You just know some of them are going to try and run across the Interstate."

Adamson said a pedestrian crossing would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $4.5 million. He held out a possible alternative of adapting one of the holes for the three-hole box culvert for Boxelder Creek beneath I-25 into a bicycle passageway. It would be a lot cheaper, Adamson said, but the possibility is fraught with obstacles. First, he noted, a third of the water is going to be drawn off for another purpose, which logically should free up one of the holes in the box culvert, "but that doesn't mean they won't need that third hole," he said. Second, it would have to be inspected to see if it was even feasible for such a use.

Lorentzen said a trail system in town also had to have destinations. Schools, the library or a future swimming pool or recreation center--should they be built--should all be linked.

Potential park sites include the following:

• Eight acres at the old sewer plant site at Boxelder Commons on the west side of Ronald Reagan Avenue.
• Twelve acres east of the Buffalo Creek subdivision.
• A parcel at the southeast corner of the Columbine Estates development.
• A parcel somewhere in the Park Meadows development east of I-25.

It is so early in the planning process that just what amenities they would have has not been determined. Wellington, said Lorentzen, presently has 19 acres of parkland.

Adamson also said construction materials for the trails have to be determined. The three most common options are soft-surface, asphalt or concrete. Of the three, Adamson said, concrete was the most expensive, coming in around $3 to $4 a square foot. It is also the most durable. Soft-surface trails are usually built with crushed rock and are less expensive, but, Adamson said, they are not very durable and have to be replaced almost every year. Asphalt trails, Adamson said, need to be used. Without use, he said, they tend to deteriorate.

"It would be up to the city to decide what it could afford," he said.

Adamson is coordinating Wellington's master plan with other agencies and also looking into what options Wellington has for acquiring grants from the federal government or matching funds from the state.

Lorentzen said the next meeting with Olsson Associates will likely be sometime at the end of July or early August.