Hi everyone – I hope 2023 has started off well for you all. Want to get an update on the Life Sciences development in Downtown Superior? How about the Office Max redevelopment in the Superior Marketplace? Is the Element Hotel coming back? Why is there a massive flower being installed in the community center? Click below to find out.
Fire recovery continues and remains the top priority for the town. As you’ll see as you drive around town, there’s a lot of construction activity going on in the fire affected areas. To date, of the 389 properties in Superior that were destroyed in the fire, almost 50% have received or have applied for a building permit to rebuild. More specifically, the town has approved 163 building permits (with another 27 permit applications pending) and has issued 4 Certificates of Occupancy (2 for residences and 2 for commercial buildings). That means that 2 families have already completed construction of their new homes and moved back home to Superior. Many more families will be moving back home in the coming months. Let’s celebrate them all! I couldn’t be more proud of the resiliency and strength of our community. If you’d like to follow along with the recovery, please see the Town’s Recovery Dashboard at https://www.superiorcolorado.gov/community/superior-recovers.
In addition to the town’s recovery from the efforts, Superior continues taking steps to make sure that we address and improve wildfire resilience in our community. This is an ongoing and iterative process. Some of the steps we’re taking include:
We also continue to have discussions with the Rock Creek HOA about fencing material in our community and how alternatives to wood fencing could be used to make our community safer from threats from future fires. Stay tuned for more discussions on these issues in the near future. Also, if you have suggestions on ways that the town can become more fire hardened and resilient, please send those suggestions to the Town Board at townboard@superiorcolorado.gov.
Ask and ye shall receive! The town has been hosting First Fridays for years… and it’s been an excellent event each and every month that allows residents to meet in person with Town Board members to ask questions or voice concerns about things going on around town — but one critique we’ve heard quite regularly has been that Friday mornings don’t necessarily work and aren’t convenient for those of us who need to get to work.
In order to make ourselves more available, the Town Board has created an additional come-and-go gathering called Thirsty Thursdays. This event will be a similar informal format like First Fridays, but will be held in the evening hours. Our inaugural Thirsty Thursday is this Thursday, February 16 from 7pm-9pm at Pat’s Tap (in the Safeway shopping center). We hope to see you there! (and don’t worry… if First Fridays still fits better with your schedule, we will continue to host those every month as well.) This Thursday, we’re looking forward to having Kyle Brown (our new State Representative for House District 12) in attendance. See you there!
If you’ve driven in Downtown Superior recently, you’ll notice that Main Street is really taking shape. According to the Town’s Economic Development Manager, the area is being actively marketed and there’s a lot of interest in the commercial storefronts that will face Main Street. We hope to be able to announce some new retail & restaurant tenants in the near future, with anticipated openings later this year.
Separately, the Town Board will also soon be discussing how to best use the civic space that the developer is developing just off of the Plaza area along Main Street. Perhaps it could be a Library, Event Space, Senior Center…? What do you think is the best use of this 10,000 square foot space? Send us your ideas!
Lastly, stay tuned and get ready for Superior’s first Summer Concert Series! During June through August the Town will host live concerts at the Superior Downtown stage in the Main Street Plaza area. Get ready for some outdoor live music!
There are tons of events going on in this Town, but I wanted to highlight some of the bigger events so you can mark them on your calendars. Save the Dates!
We’ve been hard at work constructing and naming some new parks, as well as reconstructing some of our beloved parks which were damaged during the Marshall Fire.
Last year, I wrote about two development applications that were proposed to redevelop portions of the Superior Marketplace. One proposal was submitted by Confluence Companies to request an amendment the Superior Marketplace PD to allow for multi-family residential uses in the area where the former OfficeMax & current PetSmart are located. The second was from Boulder County Housing Authority will to rezone an area near the Park & Ride along US-36 to allow a residential mixed use Transit-Oriented Development containing affordable housing.
Both applications have since been withdrawn — and now, with no development applications pending — the Board is free to meet with Brixmor and any other interested parties to discuss a conceptual plan for redevelopment of the Superior Marketplace to set it up for success in the future. I am hopeful that we’ll be able to meet with Brixmor, and potentially others, to host public meetings to discuss how the Superior Marketplace can and should be redeveloped so that it reflects how people live, work, and shop today — as opposed to how this area was originally envisioned in the 1990s. Stay tuned for more information and let us know how you’d like to see the Superior Marketplace change in the future.
Following a citizen-led petition to repeal the Town Board’s previous approval of a Life Sciences Campus in Downtown Superior, the Board repealed its previous approval on November 14, 2022 and the previously approved Life Sciences Campus will not be moving forward.
In the months that have followed, the developer has hosted a community meeting, has taken feedback from the community to formulate a changed proposal, and intends to submit a new application for a Final Development Plan (FDP) for a Life Sciences Campus sometime in the second quarter of 2023. Please keep an eye out for this revised proposal and be sure to participate in the public hearings at the Planning Commission and before the Town Board which will follow.
The Element Hotel was destroyed in the Marshall Fire and following months of back-and-forth with its insurance carrier, the owners have decided NOT to rebuild another hotel. We anticipate the property will be listed for sale in the near future for a different hotel operator. If, however, a different type of commercial user is interested in using this site, that would likely require additional action from the Town Board to approve a zoning change before any different use is permitted.
Artist Roger Reutimann has donated an 11-foot tall wood sculpture of an orchid to the Town of Superior’s public art collection. The artwork, titled Regenerato, reflects the artist’s response to the Marshall Fire and is a tribute to the resilience of Superior residents. The artwork will be installed at the Community Center on February 21. A picture of this art is above as this post’s cover photo.
In addition, our Cultural Arts and Public Spaces Committee (CAPS) will be assisting with the selection process for a new piece of public art to be installed at the pocket parks between 1st and 2nd Avenues in the Rogers Farm development currently under construction by Boulder Creek Neighborhoods (who has agreed to contribute $50,000 towards art for the project).
Please follow my Facebook page and sign up for blog updates from my website: www.marklacis.com. You can also send me an email at markl@superiorcolorado.gov. The next “Thirsty Thursdays” is February 16 and the next “First Fridays” will be on March 3.
Also, I’d love to hear your feedback on these blog posts. They take a long time to research and write and I’m thinking about discontinuing them if they aren’t being read. So, if these posts are valuable, please let me know.