{"id":803721,"date":"2020-02-01T16:23:31","date_gmt":"2020-02-01T23:23:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=378375"},"modified":"2020-02-01T16:23:31","modified_gmt":"2020-02-01T23:23:31","slug":"fiester-preserve-dispute-continues-at-board-of-county-commissioners-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/fiester-preserve-dispute-continues-at-board-of-county-commissioners-meeting\/","title":{"rendered":"Fiester Preserve dispute continues at Board of County Commissioners\u2019 meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"
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While a legal dispute to condemn a conservation easement on a 2.3 acre parcel of open space makes its way to court, the political battle to conserve the Fiester Preserve continues to be waged in public. Residents and friends of the Bill\u2019s Ranch neighborhood in Frisco made a show of force at the Board of County Commissioners\u2019 regular meeting this past week on Tuesday, Jan. 28. <\/p>\n

The group gathered to convince the commissioners that there was enough local opposition to their planned development of Fiester that the board should change their mind and abandon the effort. The commissioners still seem undeterred in their effort to develop the plot to build much-needed senior and workforce housing.<\/p>\n

Nearly 30 Fiester supporters packed the commissioners\u2019 meeting chambers at the Old Courthouse in Breckenridge, with some forced to stand for lack of chairs in the gilded historic room. While Fiester wasn\u2019t on the agenda, about a dozen county residents and sympathizers stepped up to the podium during the public comment period to signal their opposition to the process.<\/p>\n

Among those speaking on Tuesday were Ben and Karen Little, the leaders of the neighborhood association\u2019s effort against the condemnation ; Andy Searls, president of senior housing non-profit Staying in Summit; Dave Bittner, former president of the Colorado Divide Land Trust (which has merged with Colorado Open Lands, owner of the easement); and Jeni Friedrich, a board member for the Summit Association of Realtors.<\/p>\n

Ben and Karen Little sidestepped their own interest in conserving the easement to the broader appeal integrating the legal argument: that condemning the conservation easement would diminish the integrity of conservation easements and open lands generally.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIf you are successful in extinguishing this commitment by Colorado Open Lands to be stewards of land trusts, you will be undermining the very essence of the land trust,\u201d Ben Little said. \u201cWhat do they have to stand on if they can\u2019t be relied on to steward the land?\u201d<\/p>\n

Karen Little then indicated that a petition was being passed around the county to gather proof of opposition to condemning the easement, and pointed to the geographical diversity of the audience as evidence that the issue was of concern countywide, not just of locally.<\/p>\n

Searls, used her time at the podium to make clear how she had no sides in the dispute.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am in a difficult position, as I have dear friends at Bill\u2019s Ranch,\u201d Searls told the commissioners. \u201cI\u2019m not here as pro or against on the issue. I just want [the commissioners] and Colorado Open Lands to try to find a compromise that could work.\u201d<\/p>\n

As they took their turns at the podium, Fiester Preserve allies insisted that they did not oppose the notion that senior and workforce housing was needed in Summit County; just that it shouldn\u2019t be built on this particular parcel, which was meant to be preserved permanently as open space according to the agreement made in 1997 between the board and Colorado Divide Land Trust.<\/p>\n

Bittner said that the easement was placed on the land for a reason: that it has conservation value that are prized by the community and state. He maintained that value still existed despite the beetle kill blight, and that new trees replanted there by fourth and fifth graders and others are growing well. He expressed his fears that condemnation would set a harmful precedent for open land conservation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like this property, I like the conservation easement that is on it, like I\u2019ve liked all the conservation easements that we\u2019ve protected over the past few decades,\u201d Bittner said. \u201cTo break a conservation easement like this won\u2019t go unnoticed by state and national observers. You are unleashing a tiger here, and I don\u2019t think you\u2019ve given enough thought to the whole process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Representing the Summit Association of Realtors, Friedrich read a letter from the trade association that was delivered to the board on Jan. 24. In the letter, the realtors expressed their opposition to the condemnation, citing the precedent that would be set with condemnation of an entire conservation easement for what appears to be the first time in Colorado\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy confiscating previously protected open space, this creates a new standard of development,\u201d Friedrich read. \u201cFaith in the county\u2019s commitment to protecting and managing open space to preserve and maintain Summit County\u2019s rural mountain character, unique pastoral experience and high quality of life for its residents and visitors can come into question every time the county expresses interest in condemning this open space in the County Commons.\u201d<\/p>\n

The commissioners did not provide any response to the comments at the meeting, aside from thanking the group for engaging with the board and being part of the public policy process. Commissioner Karn Stiegelmeier spoke to the Summit Daily afterward to express the board\u2019s view on Fiester.<\/p>\n

For one thing, the board doesn\u2019t believe the condemnation would set a precedent, citing projects such as the Iron Springs project on Highway 9 where the easement was amended in cooperation with the land trust back in 2016 to allow for new construction. That amendment was made through a trade where a more valuable and pristine piece of open space elsewhere was conserved in exchange.<\/p>\n

In the case of Fiester, Stiegelmeier denied it was a condemnation of the entire easement, and that the project would involve landscaping and berming to ensure a sufficient buffer between the County Commons and Bill\u2019s Ranch.<\/p>\n

Stiegelmeier said that other suggestions for locations for senior housing, such as along the hillside between St. Anthony Summit Medical Center and the County Commons, would be \u201cterrible\u201d and ill-situated for the kind of facilities seniors needed.<\/p>\n

She did concede that the conservation easement was meant to be \u201cin perpetuity,\u201d and how trying to develop the land goes against the permanent protection that was originally agreed to back in 1997.<\/p>\n

But to that point, Stiegelmeier appealed to pragmatism \u2014 that the word \u201cforever\u201d is not always realistic as times and people change. Stiegelmeier pointed out that Summit County was a much, much different place before the Eisenhower Tunnel was built, and how the open areas that used to be here have been developed as the community has grown, in many instances through land swaps with the U.S. Forest Service that allowed for conservation of land elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bottom line here is that \u2018perpetuity\u2019 is not a reasonable concept,\u201d Stiegelmeier said. \u201cWe can\u2019t see into the future, and there will be changes as time goes on. Perpetuity is the goal, but it\u2019s not reasonable to think that everything can really be saved in perpetuity, especially if there is a land trade and you get something better to preserve.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While a legal dispute to condemn a conservation easement on a 2.3 acre parcel of open space makes its way to court, the political battle to conserve the Fiester Preserve continues to be waged in public. Residents and friends of the Bill\u2019s Ranch neighborhood in Frisco made a show of force at the Board of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-803721","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-23 23:37:31","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803721\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}