Maybe we ought to ask our downvalley friends what they think about the entrance to Aspen. I don’t mean all of them, of course — just the ones working up here, keeping the town running and providing most everything that makes mountain life special. Oh, and maybe their spouses and kids who watch them leave early every morning on the big commute and wait anxiously for their return every evening, pushing worry to the back of their minds.
I suppose, too, it might be nice if we listen to our old friends who lived here forever before retiring down there. It seems right to make them still feel welcome. It’s a heartwarming thing in these tumultuous times to rally around the unifying cry that we are but one community here in the Roaring Fork Valley.
It makes us feel good. It makes us feel strong. It is empowering in its optimism.
I’m just wondering where the talk stops and the living it starts. Are we only one community when Aspenites take their cars to the dealerships in Glenwood for warranty work or need to stock up on household essentials at Target? Or, is this a two-way street? Our workers travel Highway 82 every working day of their lives, and not in a reverse commute. It is not easy.
It is not always safe. It steals gobs of precious time from life’s savings account. The big issue with the entrance to Aspen is where to place the new Castle Creek Bridge before the old one collapses.
The “straight shot” option would reroute a very short section of Highway 82 through Marolt Open Space and directly onto Main Street. There is a landing spot for paragliders there. There is a beautiful community garden.
People run, hike and walk their dogs there. And yet, we shouldn’t lose sight, so to speak, of the way most enjoy it. It is by looking at it.
It doesn’t matter if it’s out your kitchen window, glancing up, riding your bike or seeing it from a car as you drive past. And, nobody can say which of these enjoyments of open space is richer. It is literally in the eye of the beholder.
The point is, commuters driving past Marolt Open Space are daily users of it and they are also heavy users of Highway 82. And if we consider that the placement of the new Castle Creek Bridge is not just a single issue but three — counting emergency evacuation routes, our daily commuting workforce is undoubtedly the group most impacted by the location of Castle Creek Bridge. It wouldn’t be ridiculous to ask what they think about it.
It would be respectful. I have been emotionally tied to that land since before it was designated open space. I played there as a kid, floating the ditch on inner tubes, flying around ranch roads in clouds of dust on our go-cart, and generally messing around with my cousins.
My grandmother lived on the rise just above it across the street from the hospital. The farm house still stands. We had many summer picnics there to which half the town showed up.
My cousins had wedding receptions. My daughter had her rehearsal dinner there two weeks ago. When I am there now, I mentally unwrap the gift of being a boy again.
That is priceless! Still, I don’t see moving a short section of Highway 82 through the edge of Marolt Open Space as a degradation. I truly do not. The hang glider landing area would stay intact.
The same with the community garden and Holden/Marolt museum area. The straight-shot option only reshuffles a small piece of land so the open space you give up to the south you gain to the north, expanding the area around the big golf course lake, which would be beautiful and easier to access by more people living in the Cemetery Lane neighborhoods. And, best of all, with actions instead of just words we make our community members from Basalt to Rifle feel that we are all in this together.
This assumes that our commuting workforce would choose the straight-shot option and the reason almost all of us assume this is because it is the option that makes the most logical sense. It’s the option most experts have endorsed. If we aren’t asking our downvalley friends the question, is it because we don’t want to hear the answer? And, if we are turning deaf ears to them, shame on us.
We might as well give them the finger, too. If we are considering the next 50 years that the new Castle Creek Bridge will stand, along with our expanding downvalley community that will include many of us someday, our neighbors’ thoughts today might well be ours tomorrow. We should listen.
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