FoCo in 15 Minutes | Housing Crisis, $350M Venue, Flock Cameras & Memorial Day Weekend

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We are live in Fort Collins and it is May 19th and we have got a ton of rain coming our way and we've had a ton of rain which is absolutely wonderful. One interesting thing that I just looked up was like you know projections are that we're going to have like a super El Nino this year which could mean additional snow rainfall late spring rainfall and if we have a really one thing I'd never thought about if we have a really wet spring it could help our vegetation grow but then if we have a really dry summer and hot summer that's just more fuel to the fire of potential fire damage or fires in the you know late summer early fall and I'm just like well gosh you can't win them all or you can't win for nothing even if you get rain it's like oh maybe rain's not a great thing but the reality is I think the rain the moisture that we have is good and we're going to see some the rest of the week through Friday with 80s this weekend and then a little bit more rain again happening next week but or but next week but that being said the cool thing was is we had a pretty wonderful beautiful weekend this past weekend and county fair Larimer county fair is open we had our Fort Collins farmers market open on the south side of town definitely able to go get our produce we were able to get some of our morning fresh dairy milk that we love getting there they've got a booth there so the weather was able to hold up and it looks like it's going to be nice this weekend so over at Oak Street 200 West Oak Street that is where the Larimer county farmers market is and then if you're on the south side the Fort Collins farmers market is off of LeMay and Harmony Columbine they sold a lot of their comp you know a lot of their facilities last year and they are they finalized the remainder 150 more 54 million dollar sale of their senior living portfolio so I believe he has sold all of his remaining independent and assisted living communities to national health investors which is a publicly traded company so you know good for good for him you know super excited to see him Mr. Bob Wilson take something from nothing in the 1970s to sell it for hundreds of millions of dollars sad to see though that we are losing a little bit of that kind of private health care local touch rumor on the street is the care that individuals are getting isn't as nice as it was when Bob let it so that's definitely hopefully just kind of some turbulence while they're getting under new ownership and then it kind of the the seas calm and we're able to have a good operation because you know I will say Columbine Health is an institution and has been an institution here for the last 60 years essentially CSU named Lisa Young Blade as permanent provost after a national search that was announced May 5th and she will become the official provost and executive price vice president for academic affairs effective June 1st now she's been with CSU since 2006 so it's kind of keeping in house but she is going to oversee the eight colleges the libraries and graduate school student affairs and enrollment basically a running and the academic side of the university that has nearly 35,000 students so a big job and a big role and with Fort Collins backbone being Colorado State University all we can do is wish her the best at this point we talked about it a little bit last week but I still actually had somebody come up and talk to me about it recently about the venue holding corporation eyeing a northern Colorado facility of 350 million dollars now the article suggested that this could compete with red rocks fiddlers on the green and other front range anchors but potentially getting national major touring acts with about a 12,500 seat capacity now if they make it anything like a cool fiddlers on the green or red rocks that is a massive win for Fort Collins in northern Colorado no matter where it is and on top of that we have the ranch complex building out their amphitheater you know we've got a blue arena that's doing a re uh that's wanting to add capacity Martin Lin's Acadia development I can or Cascadia is no is not dead in the water I'm sure we are just seeing a little bit of a delay for that project so the entertainment side of things in Fort Collins in northern Colorado is is definitely uh punching even higher more above its weight if you guys have been waiting for Shake Shack you don't have to wait too much longer they are going to be opening up May 31st one interesting thing though that I just read was that the McQuinnies Realberry sold out their college avenue shops to a national investor all their college shops essentially some of their best performing assets sold those off so no longer in local hands either but from what I read in the article it's so that they can change their focus to the 600,000 closed in space mall and make it more open space open air decrease it from 600,000 to 400,000 make it more open air have a residential component so if that is the case it could be a really good thing because we've saw since they bought it a few years ago the stagnation of that mall and it's just like man when is this you know anchor point of Fort Collins gonna tear gonna make the turn and it could be sooner rather than later. City of Fort Collins had a work session last week and they again were discussing automatic license plate reader cameras and the flock and it seems like there's kind of a 50-50 split on the council of whether we should keep flock or abandon it and there's some kind of components to this of like hey listen we've actually already paid for flock through next year that's not to say that we can't remove it and do a new RFP request for proposal of a new ALPR but the majority was just suggesting like hey let's add more oversight so that we can kind of control this vendor a little bit better and chief Jeff Svoboda said now they can absolutely still do policing at a high level but will arrests and crime go or their ability to stop crime go down if we remove this flock yes emphatically it would and it seems like kind of the overwhelming majority are saying hey let's keep flock but put on some more oversight so we will watch that as it goes now moving from there vision zero is getting council prior priority between 2021 to 2025 40 people were killed and 358 were seriously injured on the Fort Collins roads now the city adopted its vision zero plan in 2023 with a goal of zero traffic deaths by 2032 and how they're looking at doing this is they're going to have some difficult trade-offs lower speed limits longer travel times and rebalancing infrastructure and resources towards active transportation and pedestrian safety key hot spots were flagged that include harmony and McMurray and late night activities areas like twin silo park so i will say if the streets can get safer in Fort Collins that's you know a win by me now i will uh it'll be interesting to watch i'm always interested to watch where technology comes waymu uh i was talking to gosh i can't remember who i was talking to just the other day and they're like i wouldn't i would never get into a waymu and i was like you know i've had a few friends that have gotten into them kind of at the phoenix airport um in austin and they said that it was amazing they felt safe and um you know there is a challenge i think there's a ton of policy challenges because of you know the uh the the if there's even one death it just gets national coverage but i mean people die every day and i'm like man if i can have a computer that gets better and better and uh not some teenage kid or even a my age person or a senior that is looking at reading text messages while they're driving you know i think that's gonna help i think uh you know as we get more people off the roads too with ride you know bikes uh scooters that are electrified and can get them around you know there's gonna be more opportunities so i think that's a really great goal 2032 decreasing speed times that's one thing uh making our you know uh it but i will say people don't want to go slower and the um what are they called they are there's two of them in fort collins i can't think of them but they are basically the speed readers in fort collins that are mobile and there's two of them and if you're driving you can absolutely watch people slow down as they as they approach it because it you know if they get the ticket and they get charged 50 75 bucks there's only a few times but you get to become pretty accustomed to that and once it's removed you kind of see people speed back up so vision zero a priority zero deaths or fatalities by 2032 one of the things they talked about too is like there was a community engagement policy that they're looking at like i think there's there's a there's a discrepancy of where how the city council gives information to be informative comparatively to suggesting you know you have a say in this policy um you know because community engagement is wonderful but i think misleading them thinking that they are going to make a difference in something unless they you know form a petition is something totally different and there is i i think we have some really good council members that are saying hey we want to make sure that there's an equity portion uh transparency making sure that everyone knows what we are doing but also to not confuse active participation um with the full voice of the community because uh you know it's kind of that that thought process of the active or the loud minority so we have to be cognizant of that that there is a loud minority but some of these people i will say i'm one of them i i don't know if flocks the right path forward but maybe having alprs and fort collins and allowing our our police um to have better technology to do better policing isn't a bad thing just having some over oversight and ability to maintain that um there's always going to be bad actors but if we can leverage technology to increase our policing abilities i'm all for it moving on things to do this uh this weekend an upcoming weekend it's memorial day weekend we do look like we're going to have some 70s and 80 degrees sunshine unless you know the rain decides to follow through all the way this weekend but odell brewing small batch weekend not this weekend but next weekend uh that is a three-day festival 50 plus beers um you know one of the bigger uh festivals for odell's memorial day ceremony may 24th 12 to 2 p.m at the veterans plaza that is at basically spring canyon park uh washington's tab bonoise live at washington's friday may 22nd last weekend i just i i had a friend pull up to my house we were working out as a working as a family and he goes hey listen we're going to a concert randomly a friend of mine's play a friend of mine a friend of mine's friend is playing in it do you want to come and i was like yeah sure so i jumped in we went to the magic rat and it was a mexican ska band los cheeses and it was an absolute blast so if you have the ability to get out go to washington's magic rat avogadro's number the agi uh you know so many different venues in and around fort collins and mishawaka you know get out and enjoy it it is an absolute hoot speaking of avogadro's number friday may 22nd 8 to 10 p.m delilah west a texas-born singer-songwriter some classic honky tonk um at cunt and country if you haven't yet my wife took the trolley for the first time with my daughter last week at a field trip and she said it was an it was a hoot it was a blast two dollars for adults one dollars for seniors and kids and kids under three get in free this usually goes on during the weekends saturday and sunday and they depart every 30 minutes from 12 p.m to 5 p.m so go ride the trolley downtown now fort collins pool specifically the city park pool is going to be opening up this next monday the 25th but you are going to find a lot of pools opening up this weekend memorial day weekend and specifically the greeley outdoor pool seasoning opening up may 23rd throughout the rest of the season up until labor day so if you're in and around uh greeley a lot of outdoor pools same thing with fort collins um loveland a lot of pools are going to be opening up so go and enjoy yourself there is a fort collins memorial day weekend bar crawl saturday may 23rd 4 to 7 p.m starting at the yeti bar and grill those are some things to do this weekend as well as things that have happened city council recap and this is live in fort collins i appreciate you guys listening and until next week have a great day