Plans to build thousands of homes on opposite sides of Colorado Springs – one project requiring more than 3,200 acres of sprawling prairie to first be annexed into the city – are one step closer to fruition.
Arrowswest Apartments
The Colorado Springs Planning Commission voted Tuesday, April 16, 2024, to recommend approval of plans to build more than 220 apartments on about 9.5 acres at 4145 Arrowswest Drive on the city's west side, adjacent to North 30th Street and West Garden of the Gods Road.
The board voted 7-2 Tuesday to recommend the City Council approve a request to rezone a portion of an approximately 9.5-acre site at the corner of North 30th Street and West Garden of the Gods Road.
Along with the rezoning request, commissioners too recommended the City Council approve plans to build the Arrowswest Apartments, 222 units in seven three-story buildings at the site, in an area the City Council in 2021 deemed would be detrimentally affected by a previous high-density housing project.
If approved, the apartments will be located across the street from a previous controversial proposal, which the council denied 5-4 in August 2021, to build hundreds of apartments and commercial space at 2424 Garden of the Gods Road.
Mountain Shadows residents and other area neighbors, many who lived through the deadly 2012 Waldo Canyon fire, repeated concerns in front of the Planning Commission Tuesday that the proposed Arrowswest development could make emergency evacuations in this area more dangerous, among other concerns.
Many residents recalled how the City Council three years ago determined how the previous project proposed at 2424 Garden of the Gods would detrimentally affect public interest, health, safety, convenience and general welfare.
The Arrowswest Apartments will do the same, neighbors said this week as they urged planning commissioners to vote against the development. They said approving the new apartments would defy precedent the council set three years ago, as well as May 2022 and July 2023 decisions from an El Paso County district court judge and the Colorado Court of Appeals, respectively, which both upheld the City Council's decision to deny the 2424 Garden of the Gods proposal.
Commissioners who voted in favor of the Arrowswest project said the city's evacuation procedures have improved in the 12 years since the Waldo Canyon fire, as Colorado Springs Fire Department officials testified Tuesday.
Commissioners Scott Hente and Marty Rickett, who opposed the project, said they did not believe the Arrowswest project met criteria for public safety. Hente said he believed the apartments could compound traffic congestion during emergency evacuations.
The council will now decide both the Amara and Arrowswest proposals at future meetings.
Amara
A sign with information about a 3,200 acre parcel asking to join the city of Colorado Springs is pictured near the property on the eastern edge of Fountain during December 2022.Â
The Planning Commission voted 7-2 Tuesday to recommend the City Council annex thousands of acres of land southeast of current city boundaries, surrounded on three sides by the neighboring city of Fountain.
If approved by the council at a future date, the annexation would allow developer La Plata Communities to build a multi-phased master planned community called Amara.
The mixed-use community would have up to 9,500 single- and multi-family homes, as well as 2 million square feet of commercial, park, public facility and school spaces.
If annexed into Colorado Springs, Amara would be a "flagpole" annexation along Bradley Road that lies within city boundaries, which functions as the pole or connection to the city.
More about the April 16 Planning Commission approval and the Amara annex is available here:Â
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