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Front_Range_Guy

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Ah... so it is Grand Rapids.

I don't know anything about Grand Rapids, but according to a quick google search, Eastown is Grand Rapids hippest neighborhood... if you lived somewhere "hip", why the hell did you come here LOL?

My loyalty to Colorado Springs is by birth... I wouldn't have voluntarily come here!

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FRG there is nothing wrong with that! Hometown pride is a beautiful thing. CS has it's things that make you love it.

Grand Rapids has alot of similarities to CS believe it or not. Second city in the state, home to a very large, very conservative population. One Glaring difference is Grand Rapids very dense, very thriving core.

But over the last ten years GR has transformed into one of the coolest cities, those of us from there who have that hometown pride, have had the joy of watching it go from this burg known for it's bible bashing, to a hip, thriving entertainment center. Much in the way you're championing CS

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There's been some activity in the local media scene in Colorado Springs recently. The Gazette, which is the cities only daily, layed off about 25 people last week... and this week the NBC affiliate, KOAA-TV (based in Pueblo actually) announced it will be re-tooling it's 24-hour cable weather channel to include brand new newscasts at 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. and it will be re-branded "News First Now." KOAA's cable news expansion will bring about 6 new jobs to the station. Not shabby for an industry that is generally cutting jobs right now, and is the latest in a glutt of news expansions to hit the market in the last year, including, KKTV's (CBS) additions of a 6:30 p.m. and 9 p.m. newscast on it's HD MyNetworkTV affiliate, KXRM's (FOX) expansion of it's 9 p.m. newscast from 30 minutes to an hour, KRDO's (ABC) addition of a 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. newscast (cancelling it's 5:30 newscast), and KRDO's addition of a 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. newscast o Saturday and Sunday morning. I can't imagine there are enough advertising dollars to support this much news in this town, but I guess it's good for the viewer... they can pretty much watch the news whenever the hell they want now LOL.

Regarding The Gazette layoffs. It's no huge surprise, the newspaper industry is suffering right now... but it makes me think back to the late 80's when The Colorado Springs Gazette bought out The Colorado Springs Sun, making it a one paper town... The Gazette was so happy and jubilant then... and now... they never saw cable news and the internet coming.

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The March issue of Newspeak! came out today. It was dedicated to downtown, past, present, and future. It also had interviews with the movers and shakers in downtown Colorado Springs. Later tonight or tomorrow I may take the time to pull some interesting exceprts from the paper. I read it front to back at Coffee & Tea Exchange and overall it left me with a warm fuzzy feeling LOL. Some of the interesting points I took from it... maybe... just maybe The Downtown Partnership DOES have a clue, some of the specifics on the new arts district on the west side of downtown are freakin' cool, there is an effort to build a world class skate park in Memorial Park and a smaller effort to get one built at Acacia Park, Nor'woods Pikes Peak Place has not been cancelled, but probably is a year or more away from groundbreaking, Cooper Tower on the other hand is questionable at best, and plans are still in the works for another loft project similar to Giddings II on Bijou between Tejon and Nevada, facing Acacia Park. One project that was glaringly missing from mention in this months issue was Citygate. The old Metso warehouses at Cimarron and Sierra Madre are gone. They took those down FAST. Hopefully development there moves just as quickly...

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I don't know how, but I WILL get people from Colorado Springs to post here LOL.

I decided to check out bidclerk.com tonight, which I constantly see referenced on other Denver forums, and I actually found a few interesting things in just the short time I spent there... including a listing that could be a Costco on North Nevada... that would north-central. Colorado Springs doesn't have Costco yet. Costco will definately be opening a store out east on Powers Blvd. and is considering one as part of an urban renewal project along North Nevada... and even more interesting... a listing for a new retail development DOWNTOWN with "a "grocery store component." This is VERY interesting and will require further investigation at a time when I am not sleep deprived and buzzed on peach brandy. yum.

Yay for Friday, btw.

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Alright, this seems like a good time to share a few excerpts from this months downtown focused issue of Newspeak!. I don't think they will mind if I share a quote or two from the issue.

When asked about downtown projects currently underway or on the drawing board, Beth Kosley of the downtown partnership responded in part...

"A few new exciting projects. One is this Pueblo Bank building that's going up on Pikes Peak Avenue. The reason that's so important, in my opinion, is because Pikes Peak is starting to regain ground as a good corridor..."

"... It's starting to fill back in, and I think that's going to be a really important arm of downtown."

Kosley then addressed Nor'woods proposed Pikes Peak place project.

"Then, the green building, which is on the drawing board for the corner of Nevada and Pikes Peak. I just talked to Chris Jenkins about the state of the project, and he figures it's about a year out still..."

On Giddings II and a similar future project...

"Dan Robertson's new housing building where Couture moved in on the first floor. That, I think, really set the tone for how we can take every nook and cranny in downtown and start filling it in, just slowly but surely, maybe with these smaller-scale projects but fill these gaps back in with high-intensity use..."

"Then Dan is also going to work with Book Broker and try to keep them in the space and build over them, actually, to create an additional 17 units of housing, and that will be facing Acacia Park..."

On Cooper Tower...

"On the drawing boards, also, is the Cooper Tower, which is next door to Chris' project on Pikes Peak. That's supposed to be a hotel and office/condo kind of mixed-use building. That one also is still kind of winding through the pipeline. I'm going to put a question mark by that one until they announce that they have a deal with a hotel."

The other interview that really caught my attention was with Chuck Murphy, a local developer who is, in some circles, regarded as the man who will get it done if no one else can. I was particularly interested in his plans for a new, or really expanded and better unified, arts district on the western edge of downtown.

"Our intention is to make a mobile sculpture garden at the north end of the strip of land near the Bioju Street Bridge. It's our hope that it will include two or more Starr Kempf sculptures..."

"We want to build some funky, avant-garde studio/loft space along the riverfront between the sculpture park and the Colorado Avenue Bridge. You'll have a glass garage door and live upstairs. They'll be two stories, and three stories. I want the back edge to hang right over Monument Creek so you'll have this panoramic view of the Rampart Range of the Rockies and the creek right beneath you"

"So we're going to tear down the long barn and try and salvage and recycle the corrugated metal. We want to make these as green as possible. One of the other things I'd like to is to make the roof of the new buildings into a patio."

Anyway, there was tons of good stuff in this months print edition, but those are really the high points as far as I'm concerned.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yeah... we'll see... The Sprawlovingzette has been all gloom and doom about the sluggish housing market in El Paso County. Really they are just complaining because suburban housing starts have slowed. It's hard to get a clear picture of how the market for housing downtown is. I suspect the urban housing market is stronger because in a town like Colorado Springs, it's a much smaller market and unfortunately one dominated generally by higher income people, plus the housing stock is much smaller. I'm okay with a slow down in suburban sprawl... especially if the office and urban housing market in town stay relatively strong.

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Colorado Springs held municipal elections last night. Mayor Rivera was re-elected. The good news, well... in my opinion anyway, is that Democrat Jan Martin was elected to city council, she replaces Republican Berny Herpin who has been criticized for being too conservative. I'm really excited to see how Martin interacts with the current council.

Also, the March 23rd Business Journal had this interesting tidbit in it :

from The Colorado Springs Business Journal

Sam Cameron of CameronButcher Commercial Real Estate said the company
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Interesting. I would imagine they are prepping the site to pour asphalt for temporary parking.

Also, I haven't heard anything new (aside from the demo photos you posted timbucktuna), about Citygate... but in the original article, the developers indicated they would wait for the Cimarron Bridge replacement to be complete before really getting underway. That's scheduled to happen in the fall of 2008. The bottom line... we may have to wait a while before we see any of these big projects break ground.

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