GATEWAY MOUNTAIN PARK FULFILLS A LONG-TIME DREAM

Courtesy the North Forty News June 2002

The first weekend in June the 16th annual RiverFest will once again honor the beauty and wildness of the Cache la Poudre River. This year, however, river lovers have a very special reason to celebrate: Gateway Mountain Park in the lower Poudre Canyon will finally open.

RiverFest, formerly called the Poudre River Festival, was born as a means of building community support for Gateway Mountain Park. Friends of the Poudre, a local grassroots group, hosted the festival and worked hard for more than a decade to find funding for the park, located at the confluence of the main stem of the river and the North Fork. Until 2000 the festival was held at the park site.

While this long-term project has required the efforts of many and funding from several government bodies, there is one individual whose dedication and perseverance made the project happen. The key to the Gateway has been Gary Kimsey, a Poudre Canyon resident with a dream

When Kimsey organized Friends of the Poudre in l986, one of his goals was to reopen Gateway Mountain Park. Formerly an area enjoyed by the public, with grassy lawns and picnic tables, it was closed in 1979 to protect the Fort Collins water filtration plant. That plant was moved in the 1980s, but the city continued to use a large water-settling tank at the site.

While there was much talk about reopening the park, a serious obstacle arose. The Colorado Department of Transportation would not allow public access to the area unless safety improvements were made to the entry road. The 1986 cost estimate for the project was $200,000, but the road eventually cost more than four times that amount.

"Over the years, many people thought we were dreamers because the cost of opening the park kept rising, and for a long time, Friends of the Poudre was the only champion for the project," Kimsey said.

Kimsey has a lot of childhood memories about the place now called Gateway Mountain Park. Although he grew up in the Midwest, he visited his grandparents at Poudre Park every summer. There was public access in those days to the spot where the North Fork joins the Cache la Poudre, and Kimsey loved to fish and hike in that rich environment, with mountain bluffs rising above the stream.

Kimsey describes the favorite haunt of his youth like this: "It was an outdoor paradise for boys, for any youngster. Trout seemed in endless supply and easily caught by worm or fly. There was an abundance of birds, deer and other wild game to watch. In the spring, the countryside was brightly colored by wild flowers, the delicate pink and yellow flowers of tiny barrel cactus and silvery green sagebrush." This month, Kimsey can finally lake his own children to the park, with a great deal of personal pride and a sense of accomplishment.

"It's a dream of my life," Kimsey said of the project. "It's something I started and carried through, and now we're going to experience the benefits." Kimsey worked on the project almost daily from 1986, when he founded FOP, to 1998, when all the funding for the park was finally in place.

In that time, Kimsey wrote dozens of grants, attended countless public meetings and lobbied local government officials for support of the park project. Fort Collins, which owns the property, was interested in creating a park at the site, but city officials did not want to pay for the whole project. It was clear early on, Kimsey said, that a partnership of several different entities would be necessary. In the end, 10 government agencies and community organizations worked together to plan and fund the park.

Partnerships require politics, and politics requires lots of talking and meeting. Kimsey did it all, in addition to working full time in public relations at Poudre Valley Hospital and, with his wife Connie, raising a family at Poudre Park.

Part of the overall plan was to build awareness and support in the larger community for the Gateway project, and that's where Friends of the Poudre came in. Besides hosting the Poudre River Festival since 1987, FOP members also held open houses in Fort Collins and helped with lobbying efforts to acquire funding. Members who were especially active through the years included David Lauer, Bill Sears and Tim Johnson.

Kimsey noted that government officials were also helpful in the effort. Advocates for the park included former mayor Ann Azari, former county commissioner Jim Disney and the retired director of cultural, library and recreation services, Mike Powers.

Combined efforts raised $1.29 million for the project. The largest chunks of money came from the City of Fort Collins, which committed $520,000; the Colorado Department of Transportation, $383,000; the Colorado Scenic and Historic Byway Commission, $182,000; and Great Outdoors Colorado, $100,000. Securing the CDOT grant, said Kimsey, was a four-year effort.

The remainder of the funds came from the Colorado Division of Wildlife, Larimer County and Friends of the Poudre.

In 1998, at the direction of the city council, the Fort Collins Park Planning and Development Office officially took over the Gateway Project, and those folks have endured their own share of challenges and delays. The mountainous, often unstable terrain made planning a new roadway difficult. After a design was finally approved by CDOT, construction work started in the spring of 2001, with plans to open the park in the fall. Crews encountered unstable soil conditions, however, and the roadway went back to the drawing board for redesign. The park opening was stalled for yet another season.

This year Gateway Mountain Park is finally open to the public once again. "I feel very fortunate;' said Kimsey. "A lot of people have goals in their lives, but many don't realize them. This is one goal I set about 20 years ago, and it feels great to have it realized."