City looks at next decade of rec projects

Hockey players have hoped for a refrigerated outdoor ice rink at Jorgensen, while disc golf enthusiasts desire more courses. On the south side of town, skateboarders have advocated for a skate park expansion. Up for discussion is also a new lift at the Cranor Hill Ski Area, and additional trail connectors — such as a thruway between the I Bar Ranch and Hartman Rocks — and finding a way to sustainably manage the existing senior meals program.

“We hear from a lot of different people in the community as to what they’d like to see … This is an opportunity to vet a lot of these things,” said Parks and Rec Director Dan Vollendorf.

The city adopted its existing parks and recreation master plan in 2015, creating a clear set of goals for the future development of its park system, and recreation facilities and programming. Ten years later, the city has checked off most of the boxes on the list: a dog park, pickleball courts, a weights and cardio room at the Gunnison Rec Center and the renovation of IOOF Park, among others.

After solidifying a contract at a council meeting on April 2, the city began working with consultants on a new parks and rec master plan, which will stay in place through 2035. The planning process formally kicked off this week and is expected to wrap up by the end of the year. In the meantime, the city hopes to fill four vacancies on the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee (PRAC), as its members will help shape the master planning process, said City Manager Amanda Wilson.

Colorado-based consultant, Norris Design, is already quite familiar with the Gunnison Valley through its prior involvement with Crested Butte’s Whetstone housing project and the Lazy K neighborhood in Gunnison. The company also helped MetRec draft the area’s first regional recreation plan, released earlier this year. This document, built from the results of a community survey and extensive outreach, offers a comprehensive look at recreation amenities throughout the valley, while highlighting what residents believe is missing.

After two years of work on the regional plan, MetRec has already done a great deal of legwork that will help inform some of the city’s decisions in the future, Vollendorf said. For example, Gunnison residents have voiced an interest in indoor fitness areas, rec paths and trails. The plan will serve as a starting point, and the city’s planning team will build on existing data through its own series of public input sessions this summer.

“[Norris Design] has a jump start on their knowledge of what’s important to our community … The plan is less about the ‘what’ and more about the ‘how’ and our role as the city in delivering some of those [recreation] needs,” Wilson said.

The new parks and rec plan will continue to explore what a “phase 3” addition to the existing Gunnison Rec Center would look like. Loose plans encompass a 20,000 square-foot addition to the north of the building, an elevated indoor track and additional space for exercise rooms. According to Vollendorf, the city could not pursue this project until its debt is paid off in 2032.

As the city decides which projects it wants to take on over the next decade, it can do so more surefootedly after the recent passage of the “rec and roads” sales tax plan. In 2007, Gunnison voters passed a ballot measure that raised the city’s sales tax from 3% to 4%, an allocation that paid for the Gunnison Rec Center pool, the indoor Jorgensen Ice Rink and the construction of a trail system around the city. This 1% increase was set to decrease to a quarter of a percent in 2032 — when the debt was scheduled to be paid off.

Since then, city leaders said it became clear that the sunset would make existing rec center programs and operations unsustainable. The 2023 passage of ballot initiative 2B removed the looming parks and recreation tax decrease, or “sunset,” and distributed a portion of the money to road maintenance. Although the restructuring will result in a slight reduction in the department’s existing budget, it has created more clarity.
“I welcome it because we know exactly what we get,” Vollendorf said. “It’ll help us. The whole thing, for me, is how we align dollars to projects.”