Eastern Lafayette Gateway
Why We Must Preserve the Land at Baseline and 119th
When you’re heading west on Highway 7 to Lafayette, you drive past all of those houses in Broomfield’s Anthem, then Flagg Drive, and suddenly it’s all farmland on the south side. The grain elevator and silos are visible in the distance, the red and white homestead is on the left, and you are almost home. It feels great.
With all of the development in town, this area is still a rural gateway to our city. That’s because Lafayette, with its sometime partner Boulder County, has purchased most of that land as open space.
But there’s one section left to fill in the rural picture, and a Texas developer has its eyes on it. The developer’s plans will change not only the look and feel of the area, but also impact an important piece of the valuable ecosystem the Lafayette Open Space Advisory Board and city staff have been working to preserve for decades. And so has the Preserve Lafayette team.
View from the Burlington Northern trail at the eastern end of Old Town looking across the city-owned Old Town Pond—now called Chuck’s Pond—to the city-owned Waneka Centennial Farm on Baseline. The land between the pond and farm is slated to be developed. (Photo by Karen Norback).
History of Open Space at Our Eastern Gateway
The efforts to preserve Lafayette’s rural eastern gateway began in 2013, when the railroad tracks running along the end of Old Town, next to Burlington Avenue, became part of the city’s Rails to Trails program. The tracks that carried Lafayette coal and grain out of town were removed and a trail was installed.
That same year, the silos and grain elevator—the iconic symbols of eastern Lafayette—were obtained by the city of Lafayette, adding another historic landmark to our open space portfolio.
Fast forward to 2019. The city of Lafayette purchased the Old Town Pond—just a tad east of Burlington Avenue—and a 100-foot buffer running the length of the trail, along with a 50-foot buffer down Emma to 119th St.
The Old Town Pond, now called Chuck’s Pond, is currently dry. But back when it contained water, it was an amazing jewel that hosted flocks of pelicans at certain times of the year and a variety of water-loving birds year-round. It was a place that rivaled Lafayette’s Greenlee Wildlife Reserve in habitat, but with a fabulous agricultural backdrop.
The Old Town Pond is one of 10 open space properties identified for study in the city of Lafayette’s 2024 Wildlife Plan. This plan includes a list of strategies for habitat restoration and conservation, including the addition of water to the pond.
Pelicans on the Old Town Pond.
In 2019, the city also purchased the Waneka Centennial Farm. These are the red and white farm buildings you see coming into town from the east on Baseline. The city bought the entire homestead of four acres and the buildings, and partnered 50/50 with Boulder County to acquire the remaining 131 acres between the homestead and Flagg Drive to the east.
According to Lafayette’s Wildlife Plan, “The recently acquired Waneka Centennial Farm property was identified as a priority site for acquisition in the PROS Plan on the east edge of the City. It was also recognized in the Boulder County Comprehensive Plan as having multiple Environmental Resource Elements of significance, including critical habitat, wetlands, and agricultural Land of National Importance. CNHP (2021) conducted a site assessment of the property which further described the high value vegetation and habitat.”
(The PROS Plan is Lafayette’s Parks, Recreation and Open Space Plan, and CNHP is the Colorado Natural Heritage Program.)
In 2020, the city purchased the 23.5 acres west of the Centennial Farm, at the southwest corner of Baseline and 119th. The property was zoned commercial and was at one time the site for a Lowe’s store. Lowe’s backed out of the development, and we saw an opportunity to buy the land for open space.
According to city and county records, the city paid $650,000 for the Centennial Farm and its surrounding land, about $1 million for the Old Town Pond and open space buffer along Burlington and Emma, and $3.3 million for the Lowe's land. The city and county split the $6.9 million purchase price for the land east of the Centennial Farm. Adding that all up, the total amount of money the city and county have paid for this 161 acres of open space is about $11.9 million.
Understanding the Valuable Ecosystem We’ve Saved So Far
On the eastern edge of this open space is Powers Marsh. It spans both sides of Baseline, west of County Line Road and Flagg Drive.
Michael Monahan, PhD, who was the co-director of environmental sciences at the University of Denver before he retired, studied Powers Marsh for over a decade. In a letter he wrote to Boulder County commissioners in 1988, when they were considering rezoning the land from agricultural to residential, he said: “From my experience the Powers property has no match in the Greater Metro area for total diversity or abundance of wetland species.”
Dr. Monahan mentioned rare to uncommon species such as northern harriers (with attempted breeding on the site), American bittern, white-faced Ibis, two species of breeding rails and long-tailed weasels.
He also wrote about the unusually high breeding densities of some bird species on Powers Marsh, and listed several factors that probably contribute to this:
1) The marsh is large by Front Range standards.
2) It has a steady water level, maintained in part by an artesian well.
3) There are diverse habitats that adjoin the site, including several hayfields and pasture used for feeding by many marsh-nesting birds, along with the riparian habitat of Coal Creek that is used by birds for roosting and loafing.
The Boulder County Commission did not rezone the land. The 2019 county and city open space land purchase includes the southern section of Powers Marsh. It’s now preserved in perpetuity.
Another view of this incredible property. (Photo by Karen Norback).
The Missing Piece in This Amazing Puzzle
What we have now is a valuable ecosystem bookended by Powers Marsh at the east and the Old Town Pond at the west, with acres of agricultural land between it that provides food, nesting areas and materials, ease of movement and protection for all kinds of wildlife. It also creates a stunning buffer between Lafayette, Erie and Broomfield. But there’s a missing piece in this ecosystem—the rural properties at the southwest and northwest corners of Baseline and 120th.
These properties are now a top priority for purchase on Lafayette’s open space wish list. Plus, each year Boulder County asks its open space committee and staff what they want to be considered for potential partnership purchases, and these properties are on the list.
In addition the Lafayette Open Space Board’s Proposed Open Space Acquisition/Conservation Projects list for Boulder County participation to purchase states:
2. Land North and South of Baseline Road and West of 120th Street. Area 6 from PROS Plan. Approx. Acres:81.51. This property flanking Baseline Road West of 119th St. forms a buffer to Old Town Lafayette on the Eastern edge of the city. Adjacent land was recently purchased by partners Boulder County and Lafayette known as the Waneka Centennial Farm. This property has connectivity for farming, trail access and wildlife movement corridors to the Waneka Centennial Farm and would be managed in conjunction with that property. With swift development occurring all around this parcel, securing it as open space for future generations is a high priority to the residents of Lafayette and Boulder County.
In regard to wildlife, experts believe saving larger swaths of land is the way to go. If you start to break up a large rural area, it affects the wildlife you’re trying to protect.
For instance, if development is put in around Old Town Pond, the wetland is cut off from the rest of the natural ecosystem. Wildlife won’t use this area, due to the increased noise and light pollution that comes with such developments, not to mention the loss of agricultural land. This is called habitat fragmentation. Right now, coyotes denning near the Old Town Pond, hawks roosting in its cottonwood trees, songbirds chirping from the marsh reeds and other small mammals and insects scurrying about would all have to find other places should this development happen.
If you take a stroll on the trail along Burlington Avenue and next to the Old Town Pond, you can see nature programs in real life. One recent memorable sight was two raccoons being treed, followed by the head of a coyote pup popping up. Or a coyote flanked by two magpies, looking like a Native American story in real life. Northern harriers, Swainson’s hawks and flocks of vultures all pass through this area, and many birds, including great horned owls, kestrels and red-tailed hawks, are permanent residents.
It’s all connected, and we believe it should be saved.