The coronavirus pandemic sent Coloradoans into city parks in droves this year and at the same time cut into budgets for maintenance, staff and construction projects, leaving managers scrambling for extra dollars and creative solutions. 

The result was some “incredible pressure” on parks departments who started to see traffic every weekend equal to holiday crowds, said Allison Kincaid, with the Colorado Parks and Recreation Association.  

Some parks and recreation departments saw staffing cuts right away or did not hire seasonal staff as they normally would because of coronavirus driven spending cuts, so the remaining staff had to take on different duties. For example, life guards in Erie were reassigned to parks maintenance, she said. Parks budgets tend to recover more slowly from cuts and so its likely the creativity will have to continue into next year, she said. 

In Colorado Springs, the budgets cuts meant removing portable restrooms from parks, deferring tree trimming and reducing mowing along city right of ways, said Kurt Schroeder, the city’s parks maintenance and operations manager. The parks department also left 14 positions unfilled including five in maintenance, he said. 

Westminster saw the number of visitors along its 150 miles of trails quadruple during the pandemic, and at the same time city could only hire a handful of seasonal employees instead of the typically 800 staff members, said Joe Reale Westminster open space superintendent. So life guards, recreation class leaders, cashiers, library staff and volunteers helped care for the parks and open spaces, he said. While crowds have tapered a bit with the fall, he is hopeful some of the increased visitation will be permanent. 

While dollars were short, some lucky parks and open space agencies got a bit of a boost from a $15 million Great Outdoors Colorado Resilient Communities grant program, funded by lottery money and intended to fill the some needs created by the coronavirus. For example, the grants helped keep the renovation of the Prospect Lake Beach House in Colorado Springs’ Memorial Park on track, funded trail development in Westminster and will share the cost of developing Prospect Park in Wheat Ridge. The funding also allowed the Palmer Land Conservancy to hire a staff member who will work open space acquisition for trails in the Pikes Peak region and an expansion Teller County’s Mueller State Park. 

The Colorado Springs beach house project, a $1.4 million renovation of the building constructed in 1937, received $316,100 grant from GOCO, which will allow it open next year, said Tilah Larson, a senior analyst for the Colorado Springs parks department. The building closed for its remodel in 2019. 

Without the lottery funds, it could have been tough to find donors elsewhere because many members of the philanthropic community had turned their attention to COVID-19 focused causes, she said.

“Our well had, kind of, dried up on what we were going to do on this,” she said. 

Once complete, the building will have updated locker rooms, restrooms, space for concessions, classrooms and a small conference rooms, she said. She is also expecting to put in beach volleyball space, picnic tables and room for slacklining and space to hang hammocks outside. 

Other city staff members are focused on trying to prevent the blue green algae that closed Prospect Lake to the public two years in a row, she said. 

“Certainly we don’t want a beach house, without a beach,” Larson said. 

In Westminster, the city expects to spend about $122,000 in GOCO grant money to develop a former farm known as the Lower Church Lake Open Space near the intersection of U.S. Highway 36 and Wadsworth Boulevard. The arid property needs attention because weeds have moved in and prairie dogs have eaten the area down to bare dirt in sections, Reale said. 

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The city expects to restore the native grasses, add a garden that will attract birds and bees and put in 1.8 miles of new trail in the area that will connect with the existing U.S. 36 bike trail, he said. He expects most of the work will happen next year.

Wheat Ridge received about $162,000 to put in amenities including a new dock, shelter, picnic tables and fencing to develop Prospect Park, near west 44th Avenue and Instate 70 said Karen O’Donnell, parks and recreation director. It’s a project that wouldn’t be finished without the grant money, she said. She expects the current phase of development to be completed by the end of 2021. 

As for more space to play near Colorado Springs, the Palmer Land Conservancy is hoping to expand options for recreation in the region and expects a new staff member can work on land deals to finish the Ring the Peak Trail, a long-planned route around Pikes Peak. The new employee would also work on a trail that would follow Fountain Creek to Pueblo and a Mueller State Park expansion, nonprofit executive director Rebecca Jewett said. 

“We have all seen in 2020, our current public open spaces and parks have just become inundated,” she said. 

The possible expansion of 5,000-acre Mueller State Park could push its boundaries northward to add about 595 acres, said Bill Vogrin, a spokesman for Colorado Parks and Wildlife. The agency has not committed any funds to the purchase but would be open to accepting a donation potentially in the future, he said. 

“It’s exciting, if it were to come to pass,” he said.