City of Boulder Short-term Open Space Trail Projects

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TO: Boulder City Open Space Board of Trustees

FROM: Boulder Area Trails Coalition Board of Directors

DATE: August 7, 2000

SUBJECT: Open Space Trail Projects

ATTACHMENT: BATCO Response to COBOS Analysis of BATCO Trail Project Recommendations

We appreciate the time and effort the COBOS staff put into their analysis of BATCO's trail recommendations. It was good to see that we agree on the importance of most of the connections and on the feasibility of many of the alignments. The new options the staff suggested were interesting. We hope to discuss them in detail with you in the future.

We have attached a set of our responses to the staff’s analysis. We welcome the opportunity to provide these comments. We believe there is more than enough material here for extensive discussion. Hopefully you will be able to find time to review the material and it may serve as a basis for future conversations.

In the mean time, we have submitted our candidates for the short-term discussions you suggested we pursue to the COBOS staff. We believe all the connections we are recommending can be constructed to have acceptable environmental impacts and have broad community support. We picked these particular candidates because we believe they are have at least one alignment that doesn't require new land acquisitions or trail easements, should be relatively straightforward to construct, and provide opportunities for BATCO and COBOS to work constructively together.

Our initial list includes:

C-93 underpass (Greenbelt Plateau to Doudy Draw & Community Ditch)

Multi-use trail from South Eldorado Canyon to Walker Ranch.

Marshall Mesa/Greenbelt Plateau east to Coalton Trail.

Marshall Mesa to South 66th Street.

South Boulder Creek Trail to Teller Farm (Stage 2:Teller Farm to 75th)

We support the following active OS trail projects, but feel they are already well defined and require less additional discussion:

Lookout Road north to Cottontail trail (Stage 1: Lookout Road to Niwot)

Boulder Feeder Canal to Lyons. (Stage 1: North from Boulder reservoir)

We support the following OS trail connections and encourage the staff to continue to vigorously pursue them, but feel they have been discussed in detail during the reviews of the North Boulder and South Boulder Creek Area Management plans and may present more logistical challenges in the near term:

North Foothills and/or Boulder Valley Ranch north to Heil Ranch

Axleson from North 55th Street to North Rim

South Boulder Creek Trail to Teller Farm (Stage 1: South Boulder Creek to Dry Creek)

We have a consensus that the C-93 underpass from Greenbelt Plateau to Doudy Draw and the Community Ditch would be the most productive to pursue if we were to select just one trail to on which to focus. We also believe that some discussion of the other trail connections listed would be of significant value.

Hopefully this is enough to get the process started. We look forward to working with you and the COBOS staff to help realize our goal of a countywide trail system.