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Urban Blight Awards: That's Ugly! The Independent tags a handful of Colorado Springs' most egregious eyesores
Colorado Springs founder Gen. William Jackson Palmer would be crying in his saddle.
A hundred and thirty years ago, when he sat at the base of Pikes Peak and gazed eastward across the expanse of short grass prairie that stretched out before him, Palmer envisioned a great city with wide, tree-lined streets and handsome, aristocratic structures.
It's doubtful that he pictured nondescript, windowless concrete monoliths dotting the land, vast expanses of pavement or strings of cardboard cutout houses as far as the eye could see.
But, in large part because the city has grown up without any design guidelines or limitations on building wherever cheap land is available, sprawl is what we've got, and much of what is built turns out to be an eyesore. Unlike many other cities, Colorado Springs has, until recently, grown without benefit of a design review process that requires developers to show us what they propose before the projects are built. In addition, without serious restrictions on building along ridge-lines, in geologically unsound areas, on heavily graded land, in floodplains and on shifting soils, developers have basically built whatever they want, wherever they want.
Some developers -- particularly the city's early builders -- have executed remarkable projects. Consider the Broadmoor Hotel, the Pioneers Museum and, more recently, the Plaza of the Rockies high-rise next door. And Colorado Springs boasts two of the state's genuine architectural treasures -- the Air Force Academy Chapel and the Fine Arts Center building.
Aesthetics are, of course, highly subjective. But, with the help of city leaders and architects -- all of whom demanded anonimity for fear of backlash from developers -- the editorial staff at the Independent has identified 10 projects or buildings that deserve to be cited for their, ahem, aesthetic offensiveness.
On March 27, the Colorado Springs City Council approved a Comprehensive Plan that is designed to serve as a growth management tool for deciding what gets built in the future. One of those tools, for the first time in the city's history, is a process that will -- if the plan is given teeth -- require developers to build projects that are visually compatible with...