Residents: Future for Eldorado Springs remains unclear

Jun. 25—Editor's note: This is the second part in a two-part story about plans that Eldorado Artesian Springs Inc. has for the tiny foothills community and the concerns that Eldorado Springs residents have for their future.

Eldorado Spring's current state of affairs is partly linked to the history of the town.

According to old clippings from the Daily Camera files in the Carnegie Library for Local History, the land, properties and roads in town have been privately owned ever since Frank Fowler and several business partners bought a swath of land in Eldorado Canyon in 1904. They paid roughly $5,000 for the land, which they were determined to develop into a summer resort. Construction began on the resort, which was originally called the Moffat Lakes Resort, that same year. In 1908, Fowler built a three-story hotel in the canyon, and the Denver and Interurban Electric Railway started making daily trips to the area from downtown Denver.

The Coney Island of Colorado

Fowler eventually assumed full ownership of the resort, and in 1923 his son, Jack Fowler, became its manager. Frank Fowler had renamed it the Eldorado Springs Resort, but unofficially, it came to be known as the "Coney Island of Colorado," with multiple dance halls, a swimming pool, a tennis court, summer cabins, gazebos and lookout points. Guests would hike to the top of the canyon to have picnics. A high-wire walker named Ivy Baldwin would make death-defying trips across a steel cable strung across the canyon, 685 feet above the ground. Even famous names like bandleader Glenn Miller, boxer Jack Dempsey and actor John Barrymore paid visits to the resort.

The 1920s and '30s brought challenging times for the resort. In 1929, one of the dance halls, the swimming pool and numerous cabins were destroyed in a fire. Although the resort was rebuilt, the canyon flooded in 1938, resulting in $500,000 worth of damage. The following year, another fire devoured the grand resort hotel.

Over the next several decades, growing numbers of visitors began coming to the resort to go rock climbing. By the 1970s, climbing and camping became mainstays of the resort's business. Gradually, the Fowlers sold off pieces of property to private buyers who wanted to live in Eldorado Springs. Tony Delany and his wife, originally from England, bought a house there in 1971 and have lived there ever since. He joined the Eldorado Springs-Marshall Volunteer Fire Department as a firefighter in 1972 and served there for roughly three decades.

According to Delany, the old resort pool still drew big crowds during the summer months.

"During the 1970s and '80s, the town used to fill up, as the pool was a major attraction for Front Range people," Delany said. "The fire department had a running issue with this problem, and we arranged a compromise with the resort."

At that time, the Fowler family still owned the resort. Jack Fowler handed down the business to his son, Bill Fowler, when he retired. But by the late 1970s, the Fowlers began to tire of running the resort and became interested in selling it. Eventually, they sold the 315-acre canyon to the state of Colorado, and the area became Eldorado Canyon State Park.

When Eldorado Artesian Springs Inc. was founded in 1983, the company bought what was left of the Fowlers' holdings: In addition to the swimming pool, the old ballroom and a number of homes and buildings, EASI gained ownership of an artesian spring in town, 40 acres of land, wells and water rights.

Today, EASI conducts many of its operations out of a bottling plant in Louisville, but residents say there are still water tankers passing through town from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day to fill up with water from the spring to take to the bottling plant. The trucks rattle and clank as they drive over the rough dirt roads. Cathy Proenza, one of the residents, said she asked the county to improve traffic management because residents have been forced to wait to access their properties. Some residents also filed complaints with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment about dust from the construction. And even on a portion of the road where work has been completed, traffic has been effectively reduced to one lane. But the noise, traffic delays and dust are all just parts of daily life there that residents must accept.

A community's 'paradise'

Despite all of these challenges, one clear trend emerges when talking with people who live in town: Residents love living there. They love the close-knit community. It's an eclectic assortment of people who have moved there from all over the world, and most residents know and are friendly with their neighbors.

Richard Luck, who is from South Africa, lived in Boulder for 25 years and moved to Eldorado Springs after his daughters moved out of the house. He's been here for about a decade.

"We were kind of looking for some change in our lives, (and) we found this little place," Luck said. "(There was a) really nice community, great, friendly people — all fantastic things to have."

"It's a pretty unique community," local resident Janet Robinson said. "That's why we care so much."

All of the open permits are required to be closed out, and all work finished, by the time the pool reopens. According to Eldorado Artesian Springs Inc.'s website, the company planned to reopen the pool July 1, but EASI CEO and Co-Founder Doug Larson said the opening date is delayed, and the siteis updated to show the resort is now expected to open in late summer. When the Daily Camera visited the town in late April, the pool appeared to be far from finished, with boards over some of the buildings' windows and piles of rubble around the construction site.

A stop work order was issued days ago, which Larson said was related to road improvements, but did not affect work on the pool or ballroom. According to Larson, Boulder County requested additional elevation measurements on the road before improvements can proceed.

Boulder County's Summer Frederick said the order was issued "due to some county staff observed differences between construction and the approved plans that raised some concerns." She added that county staff are working with EASI and the construction contractor "in attempts to resolve these issues as quickly as possible."

"It is the county's position that the roadwork must be completed prior to the final inspections (and) sign-off of the permits associated with the pool complex renovation work. This means that the final inspections needed for the use of the pool cannot be performed until the roadwork has been completed," she wrote in an email.

Proenza said she spoke with a Boulder County official Tuesday regarding the stop work order. Dale Case, director of Boulder County Community Planning and Permitting, reportedly told her his department had issued the stop work order because the county still had not received revised plans from EASI for the west end of Eldorado Springs Drive. A sign posted in town about the stop work order has been removed, Proenza said, and for safety reasons, EASI has been given permission to finish the parts of the road already under construction.

She was told the west end of the road would "entail substantial deviations from the previous plan," and the county did not plan to gather community feedback about the new plan. Case reportedly also said EASI hoped to finish the road construction as quickly as possible so the pool can be opened, and that the company has told the county it would like to finish the revised roadwork before addressing the parking plan. Case told Proenza he "considers it a balance between timely completion of the project and making sure it is done right."

Proenza replied, saying the drawn-out construction phase and delays in completing the work were "entirely due to EASI's lack of organization and planning," and she did not believe it was appropriate to rush reviewing the project to allow the pool to open. She said Case once again told her he "considers it a balance." She also noted in their conversation that if the west end of the road were completed without a parking plan, it would violate the condition of the special-use permit that a parking plan was required to be submitted at the time of the permit application. She said Case did not reply.

When contacted on Friday, Case confirmed that, to his knowledge, the county had not received a revised road plan, so the stop work order was still in effect. Because he hadn't seen the revised plans, though, he said he could not comment on whether the plans for the west end of the road would be a "substantial deviation" from the previous plan. Case also said he was not aware of whether EASI planned to prioritize the road construction to open the pool, and he didn't recall saying anything about striking a "balance" between timely and correct completion of the project.

Case and Frederick both independently said the pool will not be allowed to reopen until after the required road improvements have been done. There is no time frame for when the revised road plan must be submitted to the county, according to Case, but the county will not allow EASI to reopen the pool without that requirement.

Even if the renovation project were to be scrapped overnight and all construction equipment cleared out of the town, there would still be inherent risks for residents in continuing to live in Eldorado Springs. But a clear end to the construction work doesn't appear to be in sight yet.

Whether EASI will be held accountable to the conditions of its permits or will be allowed to open the pool without completing other required work has been an ongoing source of concern for residents, and remains to be seen. The future of the parking plan is also unclear. But despite a future potentially filled with uncertainty and challenges, for many residents, it seems the pull of remaining in Eldorado Springs is too strong to consider living anywhere else.

"I wouldn't change living here for anything," Luck said.