Thursday, January 14, 2010

Signs

We're not quite done saving the world - we want to make sure that the yard signs are taken care of. Who knows, we may need to use them again in the future (sigh) so please return them to:

3511 Whitford Drive in Firelight

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

The Real Number of CCU Students

In CCU's proposals they and Shea Homes estimated a total of 1000-1500 students would live on the new Highlands Ranch campus. From the CCU press release that was published about withdrawing their interest in Highlands Ranch, CCU estimated their student housing would be expanded from approximately the nine hundred of today to a capacity nearly three times that after their new campus is completed.

Here is the pertinent part of the press release:

During fall 2009, CCU submitted a preliminary proposal to the Highlands Ranch Community Association to explore the purchase of a 100-acre parcel of open space south of Rock Canyon High School, west of Monarch Boulevard. If approved, the University would relocate its main campus to Highlands Ranch, boosting from a residential campus of approximately 900 students to a capacity nearly three times that.

It is evident that the estimates CCU and Shea proposed to the HRCA and the citizens of Highlands Ranch was far too low. There is a significant difference between the 1500 presented and and upwards if 2700 students living on campus. This also makes the number of students estimated to live off campus a questionable figure as well.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Colorado Christian University Withdraws Request to Purchase Land

Via The Highlands Ranch Community Association Website:

Colorado Christian University has withdrawn its request to purchase land from the HRCA for a university campus in Planning Area E in the Backcountry. As a result, the community information meetings scheduled for January 12th, 14th, and 27th have been canceled.

This is very good news!

We appreciate all the hard work volunteers have done to make Save Highlands Ranch Open Space a success.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Caught Up In A Game We Shouldn’t Play

A letter to the editor of the Highlands Ranch Herald:

Instead of spending time with my family baking cookies and getting ready to enjoy my holiday, my presence was better spent investing my time and support in saving Highlands Ranch Open space with hundreds of other families with the same values to preserve the future of our community.

I left the meeting with a bad feeling about this project. I was happy to see that both sides were presented and had an opportunity for the community to ask questions. I must have been naive to think that the CCU presentation was going to be given by CCU to share their vision and why Highlands Ranch would even consider this as an option. Shea’s representative was quite condescending with his presentation while he glossed over questions and concerns of the community.

One of the questions was trying to draw an analogy with what inning we are in a baseball game and the answer was the “first.” That being said, from what I observed last night, the home team Highlands Ranch packed seats with standing room only and only a couple supported CCU. If the score was by clapping hands this was a blowout beyond measure and CCU (ie Shea) struck out on every question/concern with vague/no answer or disregard of the community impact.


The problem here is a large number of the scorekeepers being the delegates and the board were no where to be seen. I don’t want to feel that this game is fixed and no matter how right we are with the concerns that we have already lost.

I continue to hear from others across the community that they are not being informed about this proposal. HRCA owes its community better communication of facts and answers, prior to jumping to the ninth inning before the community even hears about what it means for homeowners.

Highlands Ranch is in a game that we should not even play. There is obviously a strong political pressure to approve before the people have a full understanding of the impact. There is a reason that other community associations have rejected CCU’s proposals due to a track record of negatively impacting its community for years. There seems to be too much political collusion between CCU and Shea, which I hope has not influenced Highlands Ranch Community Associations responsibility to its homeowners.

I ask the HRCA delegates and the board to do your duty by representing the community and strike down and out this proposal before another Shea Sales pitch.

Josh Quist
Highlands Ranch