Last December, a crowd gathered in the snow for an over-capacity hearing in the small town of Palmer Lake to determine whether a plan to annex land for a Buc-ee’s travel store met legal requirements to move forward.

Almost six months later, a similar crowd stood in the rain for the same meeting topic. 

The outcome of this meeting was similar as the last, with six of seven town trustees voting to approve the project to the next stage of scrutiny. 

The request was back before the Palmer Lake Board of Trustees on Thursday because developers of the travel store, a chain of supersized gas stations out of Texas, withdrew its successful application earlier this year. 

The Buc-ee’s plan came back to the board with changes appearing to address some of the concerns raised on the previous request, including in a lawsuit filed by area nonprofits in El Paso County court in January. Stan Beard, Buc-ee’s director of real estate and development, said in an emailed statement in March that the withdrawal was due to a “technical issue.” 

The request would connect a 30-acre parcel next to Interstate 25 via a “flagpole” of land following County Line Road to the border of the town. The new request increased the area of the connecting land from half of the road to the full breadth of County Line Road, as well as extending the area past a piece of land recently de-annexed from Palmer Lake. 

If annexed, the land would have access to Palmer Lake utilities and pay sales tax revenue to the town of about 2,500 north of Colorado Springs.

The Thursday meeting was to determine the application’s eligibility under Colorado statute, not whether to approve the request outright. That did not stop at least 100 protesters and public commenters from vocalizing their opposition to Buc-ee’s inside and outside the small town hall setting. 

“It’s an out-of-state company, and they’re coming in and drastically changing our way of life,” said Linda VanMatre while standing outside the meeting with a “Stop Buc-ee’s” sign. 

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Opposition was the overwhelming presence at the meeting, though trustee Kevin Dreher said that he was hearing some positive voices outside of the public sphere. 

“I get a lot of people who are afraid to come out because of the backlash,” he said. 

The discussion on the request’s legal eligibility centered on whether the plan had a “community of interest” according to the requirements of the state’s annexation statutes. To Nina Ruiz, a project consultant with Vertex Inc., connection to the town and inclusion in the town’s master plan meant it did. 

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“The town has identified this land specifically as a retail node,” she said. 

Trustee Atis Jurka disagreed. 

“I do not feel comfortable about the community of interest and integrating with the town of Palmer Lake,” he said during his sole vote to oppose the request. 

The proposal will next come before the Palmer Lake Planning Commission on June 18.