On Aug. 7, members of the Boulder City Council received an update from the city staff and consultants with whom they are working on several flood-mitigation options for South Boulder Creek. All of these options will include the use of some of the university’s property at CU Boulder South and are designed to spare local neighborhoods from future catastrophic flooding like they experienced in 2013.
During the public meeting, the City Council also heard input from citizens, advocacy groups, the university and other stakeholders who are following the process.
CU Boulder owns the 308-acre CU Boulder South property and has offered up to 80 acres of land to the city for flood mitigation. If the city chooses to annex the property in the future, the university would use the rest of the site to preserve open space, upgrade and build athletic fields that will be shared with the public, and develop housing for faculty, staff, upper-level undergraduate students, and graduate students and their families.
Frances Draper, CU Boulder’s vice chancellor for strategic relations and communications, represented the university at the City Council meeting and said, “This is a city project, but we stand ready to engage openly on this issue. We urge the City Council to move forward quickly to begin planning on one of the options presented to protect lives and property.”
Through an ongoing, comprehensive public-engagement process, city staff are gathering input from city planning boards, citizens, the university and others with regard to six flood-mitigation proposals that include:
- Master Plan, 100- and 500-year options
- Variant 1, 100- and 500-year options
- Variant 2, 100- and 500-year options
On Aug. 21, council members are expected to issue a decision on whether to:
- Accept one of the six flood-mitigation options examined by city staff and city consultants over the past year
- Ask city staff to study a seventh upstream option put forth by members of the community
- Turn their direction toward flood-mitigation efforts in other parts of the city
The second action item would delay a decision for a final flood-mitigation concept for CU Boulder South and would likely postpone any preliminary design work for several more months, according to city staff.
The third action item, suggested by city staff, would eliminate consideration of any flood-mitigation project, in recognition of the fact this process has gone on for many years and—due to competing interests within the city—has not led to City Council’s successful selection of an option.
Draper has let the City Council know the university finds all of the options put forth by city staff and consultants acceptable, except for the Master Plan, 500-year option, and the Variant 1, 500-year option.
In both of these cases, CU Boulder would lose significant portions of land designated as “public” under the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan, where the university hopes to place housing for faculty, staff, graduate students and upper-level undergraduates. The two options would also make it more difficult to access the site and more expensive to build on it. In addition, the university would have to review whether to move existing tennis courts and facilities, which would further increase costs and reduce available acreage to develop housing and academic spaces.
“We believe all of the remaining options have been well-vetted by city staff and consultants for feasibility, effectiveness and cost while preserving as much open space as possible,” Draper said.
In response to questions raised by council members and recent op-ed pieces, Draper noted the university has committed to not building high-rise residential or academic buildings or large athletic facilities at CU Boulder South.
Any future construction by the university at CU Boulder South would conform to the city’s 55-foot height limitation and, contrary to some public misconceptions, the university has no plans to build habitable structures in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) 500-year floodplain, she said.
