Agenda - Parks and Recreation Commission - 08/15/2002

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notes. That kind of interaction is really positive." This interaction has fostered understanding and better communication among three very different styles of city man- agement. Denver is the big old cit); with the resulting sprawling bureaucracy. The parks department tends to be more spread out and different aspects of operations tend to work more independently. Aurora is a rebtwdy new city that has, in the last 20 years or so, grown to be www. sa ndcreekgreenway, org (303) 393-7700 x22 Coloradok second-largest city It§ housed in few buildings and tends to operate more efficiently and less formally, says Pulver. Commerce City, being the smallest of the three, has a small~town atmosphere that differs in style and function from its larger neighbors. "Having this particular mix has its built-in problems and politics, but because I'm not part of any of the cities we can take the best of-afl three and make tt work most efficiently for the whole project," says Pulver. '~We devised this way of using our organization as an agent - with respect to GOCO for the three cities and the grant - so that we can execute GOCO documents easily. My organization executes them with GOCO and I work with each of the cities to execute them in the way that it§ between us and'them, rather than the cities uTing to do some kind of multi-partydntergovern- mental-agreement-contract-memo-of- understanding thing. So we have three sim- plo contracts between them and me that look different but they all perform the same function." The Sand Creek Regional Greenway Partnership also has a board that includes one elected official from each city whose district the greenway runs through, an additional appointee from each city and six other people who are typically commu- nity leaders. These community leaders bring a private perspective to the table and, as Pulver says, have the ability to "push and prod from the private side... They've acted as three equal part- ners, rather than weighting tt toward Denver." P~,~ THE DENVER METRO AREA I~ one o~ the fastest-growing places in the nation. One of the primary reasons people flock to Denver is the unlimited outdoor recreational opportunities. It's the best of both worlds - a world-class city surrounded by the great outdoors. But it's still a city, and running what is essentially an urban trail and park system through it Created its fair share of environ- mental challenges. . In the master planning process, Amy Puiver, executive director of the Sand Creek Regional Greenway Partnership, says they did "a couple of smart things." '"They not only had the planning grant from GOCO (Great Outdo.ors Colorado) to do the master-planning process, but they also had an additional grant from the EPA. By combining those two pots of money they were able to do a complete ecological inventory of the whole corridor," says Pulver. "They mapped it in ~9 or 20 seg- ments and inventoried the vegetation and the wildlife. We're using this as a baseline for what was here as we develop the green- way. We'll have something to measure against, whether we've driven things away or created environments that have attract- ed more species." As the inventory was done, it pointed out places where damage had been done, and where restoration made sense and where it didn't. It also pointed out areas ,.The EconOmies of EcOlogy that hadn't been touched that needed to be built around "at all costs," says Pulver. The greenway goes through the old Stapleton airport, and Pulver says the resulting environmental challenges were already being handled out of the necessity of being a redevelopment site. "The airport authority has responsibili- ty for cleaning the site, and what's here is known because it was a constant use for 50 years. They're digging it up, hauling it away, and bringing in clean dirt," says Pulver. Pulver adds, "Our greenway is the backbone of the 1,200 acres of park and open space developing on Stapleton, increasing the Denver park system by almost a third. It's '~ wonderful opportunity in a land-locked city to add a huge amount of open space in a part of the city that hasn't had as much park and recreation facilities." Commerce City, where the trail ends ,Mt ~'p, is a mixed industrial-use area with businesses that existed well before anyone I I '1 knew they were creating dangerOus cOn- taminates, says Pulver. In this case, a lot of help has come from Conoco Jn partnership with the Colorado Refining CompanY (Valero Energy). The bulk of the cost for funding remediation comes from a suit the Sierra Club brought against Conoco that directed $t million toward cleaning up the area, says Pulver. ' "Conoco and Valero, in doing their remediation, have done amazing stuff and have gone above and beyond what the court orders required them to do,." says Pulver. "They could have channeled the creek.and made it a big pad of concrete. Instead, they have built a three-foot wide, 18-25 foot deep slurry wail of bentonite clay and polymers that has made a barrier wall that's more impermeable than the concrete. They buried that and are vegetat- ing on top of it." The Sand Creek Regional Greenway is building a wetlands park in Commerce City, which is less than 20 percent acces- sible. They'll build internal trails, decks and overlooks so it can be used for wet- lands education. "This is an urban trail and the opportu- nity of seeing the juxtaposition of the refin- ery and the eagle and fox - which I've actu- ally seen - says something about how for- giving nature can be, if you let it, and how wonderful it can be if you give it some help." }www. pr~rksandzeebusiness.com I Augusl 2002 } PAFIKS&SECBUSINESS ~