FoCo in 15 Minutes | Airport Shake-Up, Pickleball Boom & Weekend Fun

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This is live. This is not so new. This is live in Fort Collins where we're gonna come to you each week for about 15 minutes. It used to be about 45 to 60 minutes, but we're gonna talk to you about things that are happening in Fort Collins, city council review, and things to do this weekend. So we will jump right into it. The Northern Colorado Regional Airport, which we actually had on the Fort Collins Fellows podcast not too long ago, and there are three major things that this airport needs to be successful. And that is a widened airport that's happening right now, a terminal that's already been built, and then a tower that is in the works. Whether that be virtual or in, you know, a physical tower, it's yet to be seen. But a big step in the success of this is the city council of both Fort Collins and Loveland disbanded the Intergovernmental Agreement, an IGA, to form the Fort Collins Regional, what is it, let's see here, the airport, to dissolve the airport commission to create a regional airport authority. This will allow them to quickly make decisions, not have to go kind of through so much obstacles and challenges. But regardless, that is a big first step for the Northern Colorado Regional Airport to become the economic hub that it has once projected to be.

Let's see here, Thompson School District, we've got elections coming up here November 4th, school board, mayor, city council, we've got four different sales taxes in the works for two in Larimer County, two in City Fort Collins, in different cities and communities. Timnath has got a 1.25% sales tax, pretty big for you residents in Timnath, to create a rec center, a very nice rec center. But it got me thinking of the school board about where people are coming from and how much involvement should parents have. And my sister being a teacher and educator in the Greeley Evans School District system, it is interesting about how much information schools can share with parents and how much they can't. It's disheartening that yeah, they are unable to share everything. But my personal take is that the relationship that you have with your kiddos, hopefully they are open and honest with you, which is easier said than done. I've only got a seven and six and three year old, so I haven't really gotten into that time of life that allows them to be a little bit more secretive. So that's interesting. I definitely don't want to have a forced communication or too much involvement, let the schools do what they're going to do, but also of course as a parent and a guardian being as much as involved in my kid's life as possible. In person ballots have opened as of October 27th, so you can go and do in person voting. Loveland Police and Courts, CSU Lory Student Center. And then the Estes Valley Community Center opens October 31st and the Front Range Community College opens November 3rd through the 4th. So get out, turn in your ballots, make sure to vote. Local elections that are really where we see the day to day changes of our votes and there's not that many people voting. Like in Fort Collins, I think we have less than 25,000 people vote on a non-presidential year generally. So get out there, your voice is absolutely going to make an impact. But moving on, that old Best Western Hotel across from CSU renovation has began on that. It's going to be a Buxton or I think it's a Ruckston or a Buxton. Let's see here, the Buxton, the Buxton. It's going to be, you know, a multimillion dollar renovation.

It's going to have a modern feel, which is very nice because that Best Western does look somewhat scary from the outside but it's right across from the Fieldhouse at CSU on College Avenue near Laurel. That's getting a major facelift so that's nice to see. DIA is scoring points, winning awards. It is an airport that always seemingly is under construction but it is a beautiful airport and a massive hub. One of the top 10 busiest airports in the world, let alone the United States. So lots of people coming in. I think it's like 70 million plus came through last year so it's good to see the updates, renovations, good restaurants. You know, we just got back from a vacation. Didn't necessarily have a sit-down by any means but quickly grabbed food and went on our way. Pickleballers, we have got our pickleball courts opening up here soon. The Pickler, which is going to be a 10-court, 27,000 square foot facility, is set to open November 7th and I think a soft opening November 8th through the 21st and a grand opening November 22nd. There are some introductory memberships available and then from there is 002, which is a 17-court indoor and outdoor facility located at Innovation Drive, which is repurposing a building on the southeast side, is opening up soon after, hoping to open up in 2025. So for all you pickleballers out there, it's perfect timing.

Weather is just about to turn south. You know, our sour on us, I should say, get a little bit colder today. It feels that way. Yesterday, it dropped 20 degrees within like an hour's time period. Some rain, not sleet by any means, but there is some frost on the windshields and that time is coming. So if you are looking to do something indoors, this is your chance. Chimney Hollow, you know, there was some levels of uranium found in the soils and rocks and northern water is doing some testing. They're adding a small amount of water to see kind of mitigation levels, monitoring that, making sure it's safe and we'll hopefully have full operations sooner than later, but construction is still full go. I need to get my drone out there honestly and do some videos of that. Just it's a pretty cool thing that's happening in Larimer County. So interestingly enough, you know, I'm extremely involved and in touch and engage with City of Fort Collins City Council, but you know, there are other councils around us, you know, town of Windsor, town of Timnath, city of Loveland, you know, they all have their own municipal governments that are dictating what they want to do with their tax revenue, property taxes, sales taxes, you know, you name it and we all play along pretty well, but when I first read this, I was kind of, you know, taking it back like, what does this mean? And it was Windsor Town Board to discuss terminating the Poudre River Trail Agreement, another IGA, intergovernmental agreement. You can imagine this as an agreement between two distinct separate cities, towns, and municipals coming together and making an agreement to move forward, but this agreement has been in place since 1994 and Windsor is saying, hey, hold up, we don't want a new director for this that's going to cost us $57,000 instead of $32,000. We want each city at this point, the 45 mile stretch, the last $2.3 million segment should be done by early next year and at that point, let each city manage their trail how they want, which is a little bit nerve-wracking because you know, you spend, if it's $2.3 million at this point per mile and it's a 45 mile trail system, we're talking over $100 million of the, you know, the Poudre Trail is a $100 million trail. So there is some benefits to having an intergovernmental agreement saying, hey, each city that's a part of this, that built this, that the trail runs through your town or city, you have to uphold a certain standard for this trail safety, all this kind of stuff. But at the same time, it's an amenity for these cities and towns and it's probably in their best interest to maintain it so that they continue to get those sales tax dollars, have the support of their town for, you know, council members and all that kind of stuff. So I could see where there's some give and take on that, but regardless, town of Windsor considering pulling out of that IGA. Now, city council. There's about four city council work sessions each week, the fifth Tuesday, and there are some times at the end of July, beginning of August, that there won't be a city council meeting so we won't have anything to report back on.

So it'll just be things that are happening and things to do. And we're going to try to keep it within 15 minutes. You know, I want this to be strong information, quick information that you can listen to on your way to work and hopefully it's extremely valuable for you. So city council this week, again, this is where they had the resolution to disband the IGA and with hopes to have an authority here sooner than later. The land use code part two, phase two went through its first reading. And if you remember the residential phase, land use code phase one, which was called land development code, you know, there was like three different phases, three different iterations of the land use code that ultimately got passed, but it was met with really a ton of pushback from the city members of Fort Collins saying, hey, we don't like this. Ultimately, the state of Colorado came in and made a lot of changes anyways, so they scaled back phase one. But this is phase two and it's really relating to how commercial corridors can be used. Types of buildings, design, heights of buildings. So like for some commercial zones, you can build it up to now to five stories. And if it's affordable housing, up to six stories in Fort Collins, which is huge. It also allows along the Harmony corridor for people to use the, there is like a main use and a secondary use. And when you were developing, you had to have 75% of the use be main and only 25% be a secondary. And the secondary use was like housing. Now they're saying, okay, nope, we want it to be 50-50. We want to have more housing, especially along these transit corridors, transit overlay developments, TODs. That's not the right thing. Transit, transportation, overlay, development, whatever.

A TOD, right along our transit lines. So max transit line, Harmony corridor. They want density, they want housing there and so that people get off the roads on a public transit and this is how they're going to go about it. So they're going to go through phase second reading, probably pass this commercial land use code update phase two. A big conversation was a capital and transportation expansion fees. And this was high level really quickly of how they come about this is when a developer wants to come in, they have to pay capital expansion fees, transportation expansion fees, utility fees, permit fees. It is just insane amount of how much fees they've got to pay. But a part of this is to provide the same level of service that those that currently live in Fort Collins enjoy. And essentially what that means is we're going to take our total amount of assets. So our parks, our police, fire, governmental services, and divide it by the amount of people that are in Fort Collins to get a cost of what it is for the next person to move in and enjoy that same level of services. Well, if you're building a 3,600 square foot home, these could add up to about $30,000 in just capital expansion fees and transportation expansion fees. That's a pretty big increase because with inflation, tariffs, lots of different things, the cost to rebuild these community parks, neighborhood parks, you know, add police fleets, curbs, gutters, streets, lights, all that kind of stuff is expensive. And it really did get, there was a conversation that was had with the city council that was, do we even want to provide the same level of service? Or is our focus more on lowering the fees, lowering the cost for developers so they can build more houses to make it more affordable to live here? So there is this kind of theoretical debate of how should we place fees on builders so that they can build, but also that the people that are living here get the same level of services throughout Fort Collins. That passed four to zero, there was four different options and essentially they went with option number three, which is a phased in approach and then by 2028 and then an inflationary adjustment from there.

Finally, our tree policy really relating around commercial established developments and how they deal with trees and also new developers. Because we have an amazing tree canopy here in Fort Collins, Northern Colorado and it's how do we maintain, protect and actually have some permits for tree removals if they're over a certain size. There was a really interesting point of conversation when Mayor Jenny Arnn goes, wait a second, there's a tree that's being removed from my house and are we going to be able to replace it? And the city staff says, no, we don't have it in our resources to replace the tree. And she goes, but we're asking private citizens of Fort Collins to do something that we can't as a city afford to do? And they're like, yes. I mean, just plain and simple, yes. And Mayor Jenny Arnn goes, and I was super proud of her. She goes, I am not for that. If we can't do what we as a city are requiring our citizens to do, we shouldn't have this as an ordinance.

So there is going to be some conversation to make sure that everything aligns, that if the city is asking the citizens to do it, the city themselves are doing it. So that was passed on first reading with some amendments to change, but there was five different specific ordinances that are in regards to how trees are dealt with in Fort Collins. Because if you've been through Fort Collins, if you drive through Fort Collins, it is an amazing tree canopy. There is, I think they have, um, thousands and thousands of trees as assets. I want to say like 57,000 trees that are theirs that are, you know, um, the ownership of the cities that they maintain pretty amazing. Um, don't quote me on that number. That number is give or take, but I know it's up there. It's a huge number already. Finally, some things to do this weekend. Weekend is Halloween, so happy Halloween. Drive safe, be safe. Don't drink and drive. Use an Uber, tiny tot Halloween. You know, this is really obviously for kids, kindergarten, pre-K, um, you know, it goes on Friday between 10 to 1 PM downtown Fort Collins. It is the cutest thing you're going to see. Um, so get your kiddos out there or, you know, uh, if you're a business owner support, make sure you open your doors, bring candy, CSU versus volleyball, CSU volleyball versus Fresno state, October 30th, 6 PM. And then versus San Jose state, November 1st at 1 PM and CSU basketball starting next week. So exciting year for coach Ali Farooq Namesh. I don't know if I butchered that last name, but it's his first year and CSU, I think has one of its strongest recruiting classes coming in. So that's exciting. Fifth annual Foco boo crawl at the exchange, October 31st, 7 PM to 11 59, uh, Colorado. If you're into running Colorado 24 hour run, November 1st and 2nd at the Colorado youth outdoors, swift ponds campus, 8 AM to 8 AM. Definitely won't see me there. Frankenstein, a living comic book at the Rialto theater in Loveland, Colorado, October 31st at 7 30 PM Halloween trick or trot 10 AM to 12 PM Ames community college, October 31st. A lot of people are going to be working, but if you're taken off October 31st, that is for you. Colorado Eagles against Bakersfield, October 24th. Oh, excuse me. Um, that is this week. I can't remember. Yes.

Against Bakersfield Condors at blue arena at the ranch this week. There's a couple of different games. So get out there and support your Eagles. And then also you do have the morning fresh dairy farm and that's a Halloween farm tour through November 2nd. So sign up for that and go enjoy yourself. That is Fort Collins and 15 minutes. We actually at 17 minutes and 19 seconds. We'll try to keep that right around 15 minutes every week, but I appreciate you listening. Um, until next time.