On Tuesday, March 14th, the Fort Collins City Council will begin discussing what to do with the former Hughes Stadium property. They recently released their agenda packet for Tuesday’s  Work Session; it includes the results from a five-month study conducted by the consulting company Kearns and West. The 57-page packet includes the results from public surveys and focus group meetings. While there is strong support for a bike park, it isn’t the only purpose presented.

You can read the full  Kearns and West Hughes Engagement Report, the minutes from boards & commissions and the Kearns and West presentation via the link below.

The 3.3 million dollar demolition of the stadium took place in 2018. Photo by Grzegorz Tokarski

I have an email out to Sylvia Tatman-Burruss, the Sr. Project Manager, to find out the next steps in the process. I will also be at the Work Session on Tuesday. Stay tuned.

You can watch the March 14th work session live here. The public is not allowed to participate or comment during City Council Work Sessions.

If you haven’t emailed the mayor and city council yet, please do so via this cityleaders@fcgov.com

City Council Hughes Packet
The first round of digital engagement specific to this phase asked community members to share their desired potential uses for the former Hughes site. The survey was live from the launch of the website in late December 2022 until January 31, 2023. Duplicate responses were removed, and the data were summarized to understand the respondents’ priorities and desired activities for the site. The survey received 2,710 unique responses. Respondents supported an even distribution of community priorities for the site. Fifteen percent of respondents supported recreation, 16% open lands, 16% parks, 11% natural areas, and 18% wildlife rescue and restoration. The public was also given an opportunity to prioritize “other,” elaborating on the type of open lands or recreational activities they hoped to see on the site. High preferences were voiced for a bike park, open and natural space, mixed use recreation space, multi-use connected trails, an Indigenous Peoples community gathering area, and maintaining the disc golf course. The word cloud was populated from the question: “How would you like to see the space used?” Responses that were most popular are represented with larger font size, including trails, natural, area, wildlife, park, bike, open, and space.
The second round of digial engagment specific to this phase asked community members to share their preferences for level of activity on the Hughes site. The survey was live between February 10 – 24, 2023. Duplicate responses were removed, and the data were summarized to understand the community’s desired activities for the site. The survey received 1,896 unique responses. When asked about their desired level of impact/activity for the site on a scale of 1-5 (1 being low impact activities and 5 being high impact activities), about 50% of respondents supported high impact activities, 11% supported medium impact activities, and 20% supported low impact activities. Both levels “2” and “4” received support from 10% of respondents. Respondents could pick their top five preferred activities on the site. Figure 6 shows results of the question as a bar chart starting from highest to lowest. High preferences were voiced for trail connections and improvements, a bike park, a Nordic skiing course, land restoration, restrooms, and a cross country running course.

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Hughes Stadium