Buc-ee’s Files Its Site Plan; Construction Would Run from Spring 2027 to Fall 2028

Buc-ee’s has filed the site development plan for its travel center at Interstate 25 and County Line Road, and El Paso County accepted it for review on Oct. 12. The plans call for a 74,000-square-foot store, two fuel canopies, about 810 parking spaces and traffic signals at both I-25 ramps, with construction planned from spring 2027 to fall 2028. County staff will decide it without a public hearing.

The filing, county file PPR2628, is the site plan for the 30.8-acre parcel, and it follows the county commissioners’ 4-1 ruling on Aug. 27 that the travel center is an allowed use in its C-1 zoning district. It runs to 33 documents and about 1,500 pages: a site plan, building elevations, a traffic study, a water supply plan, drainage, grading and geotechnical reports, and draft agreements covering the road work Buc-ee’s would build and the money it would post to guarantee it.

The documents describe what neighbors on Beacon Lite Road and drivers at the County Line Road interchange would live with. The traffic study projects about 22,150 trips a day at the store and recommends signals at both I-25 ramps, a roundabout where County Line Road meets Beacon Lite Road, and a signal at the store’s north driveway. The water would come from two wells drilled on the property, stored in a 500,000-gallon tank. The site would be built up with about 477,500 cubic yards of fill and held along its east side by a retaining wall more than 30 feet tall at its highest.

What was filed, and who decides

The county’s file was created on Aug. 31, with Vertex Consulting Services of Colorado Springs named as Buc-ee’s representative. Most of the documents were uploaded Sept. 11 and 14. The county recorded the submission as received on Oct. 12, assigned it a file number and took the fees. That afternoon it sent the plan for comment to 18 reviewers, seven of them county offices and the rest outside agencies, among them the Colorado Department of Transportation, the Town of Monument, Douglas County, Lewis-Palmer School District 38, the Tri-Lakes Monument Fire Protection District and Monument Sanitation District. When The Independent checked on Sept. 25, no Buc-ee’s site plan appeared on the county’s list of active files.

The application names Buc-ee’s EPCO, LLC, of Pearland, Texas, as owner. The engineer is Kimley-Horn and Associates.

A site development plan is reviewed by county staff against the technical standards of the El Paso County Land Development Code and approved by the planning director. The county’s own checklist, filed with the application, says such plans “are approved administratively by the PCD Director, unless otherwise modified by a condition of approval,” and the cover sheet carries a signature line for Meggan Herington, executive director of the county’s Planning and Community Development department. The county said after the Aug. 27 vote that the plan “does not return to the Board of County Commissioners for approval, and there is no appeal of that administrative approval to the Board of County Commissioners.”

Neither the county’s public file nor the referral chapter of its procedures manual gives a deadline for that decision. The manual’s 21-day comment period for outside agencies applies to subdivision preliminary plans and final plats, not site plans. Reviews of this kind run in rounds of comments and resubmittals. Two recent examples in the county’s files: a site plan for a gas station and convenience store on Owl Place received its file number in February 2024 and was approved in June 2026, and one for two small commercial buildings in Peyton received its file number in October 2025 and was approved in April 2026.

The building and the lot

The plan places the building toward the east side of the parcel, facing west across the fuel canopies to Beacon Lite Road, with Interstate 25 behind it. The architect’s elevations put the roof at 26 feet 8 inches above the floor, with parapets rising to 38 feet 4 inches. A note on the sheet quotes the code’s definition of building height, measured to the roof surface on a flat-roofed building, and says the main building is 26 feet tall and within the district’s 30-foot limit.

Two fuel canopies run north and south between the building and Beacon Lite Road, each labeled on the site plan as having “60 fuel pump stations”; the traffic study describes the project as having 120 fueling positions. The plan provides about 810 parking spaces, including 10 for buses and RVs, against about 280 required, with an area marked for future electric-vehicle charging. Its two parking tables do not quite agree: the cover sheet gives 809 provided and 287 required, the parking sheet 810 and 280, though the parking sheet’s own rows add to 809. The summary table on the cover sheet gives the land use as “convenience store.” The parking-lot sheet labels the building “Proposed Buc-ee’s Travel Center.”

The landscape plan calls for 413 trees and 2,025 shrubs and ornamental grasses. Ponderosa pines make up 205 of the trees; the rest are junipers, piñons, spruces, bur oaks and honeylocusts. The site is wooded now: the stormwater plan says about 30 percent of it has tree cover, and the drainage report says about 40 percent. The demolition sheet marks existing trees “to be removed,” and the general notes direct the contractor to “clear and grub the site.” The wildfire report, by a consulting forester and prepared for Vertex, says “most of the stands of ponderosa pine will be removed.” The stormwater plan says “an effort has been made to preserve as many trees as possible.”

The ground falls about 60 feet across the site, according to the geotechnical report, and the plan levels it with fill. The stormwater plan estimates about 477,500 cubic yards of fill against 109,500 of cut. The geotechnical report expects fill of up to about 31 feet, and settlement of “about 4 to 6 inches or more” within the new fill, and calls for monitoring before foundations go in. In one boring it found groundwater 8.5 feet down. Along the east side, facing the interstate, a retaining wall about 1,300 feet long would hold the fill; the geotechnical report puts its maximum height at about 36 feet. A detention pond sits at its foot.

Counting the road work, construction would disturb about 44.56 acres. The stormwater plan says the project “will begin in Spring 2027 with an anticipated final stabilization of Spring 2028, with final construction complete anticipated Fall 2028.” The county stormwater permit form carries the same dates.

Traffic

The traffic study, by Kimley-Horn and dated June 2026, does not rely on the Institute of Transportation Engineers’ standard trip rates. It draws its rates from 15 existing Buc-ee’s stores in Texas, Georgia, Florida and Alabama, none in Colorado, and multiplies their average weekday rate per fuel pump by 120. The result is about 22,150 trips a day, 1,236 in the morning peak hour and 1,679 in the afternoon. The study counts 85 percent of those as “diverted link” trips, drivers already on the highway who pull off and return to it, citing Buc-ee’s sales data showing that more than 85 percent of customers at its stores are not local. The study calls the other 15 percent, about 3,322 a day, “net new trips” to the surrounding streets. The diverted trips still leave the interstate and use the ramps, County Line Road and the store’s driveways, and the study’s road forecasts include them.

The study models weekday peak hours. Buc-ee’s own figures in its appendix show the 15 stores averaging 22,509 trips on a weekend day against 17,433 on a weekday.

It sends 46.25 percent of the store’s traffic north on I-25 and 47 percent south. On County Line Road between Beacon Lite Road and the southbound ramps, it projects 4,300 vehicles a day in 2028 without Buc-ee’s and 20,100 to 24,900 with it. On the north end of Beacon Lite Road, 1,000 becomes 9,400.

Under existing conditions, the study says, both off-ramps work acceptably: the southbound at level of service C or better, the northbound at B or better. By 2028, without Buc-ee’s, drivers waiting at the end of the southbound off-ramp would be at E, the second-worst grade. With Buc-ee’s and today’s stop signs, both off-ramps would fail, with average delays the study reports only as more than 300 seconds. With the signals and lanes it recommends, the study projects the southbound ramp intersection at B in the morning peak and C in the afternoon, and the northbound at C in both.

Its recommendations for 2028 are:

• traffic signals at both ramp terminals, using the existing bridge deck, with added turn lanes on the off-ramps and County Line Road;
• realigning County Line Road and Beacon Lite Road so that traffic from the interchange flows straight onto Beacon Lite, with a roundabout or a signal where the west leg of County Line Road meets it (the site plan draws a roundabout);
• a signal at the store’s north driveway on Beacon Lite Road, with two southbound left-turn lanes into the store, the inside one 490 feet long;
• a left-turn lane at the south driveway, and a right-turn-only exit onto County Line Road, about 590 feet west of the southbound ramp.

The church on the southwest corner of County Line Road and Beacon Lite Road, whose only driveway is on Beacon Lite, would be limited to right turns in and out. The study says the project team “will coordinate with the church and El Paso County regarding the possibility of incorporating a second point of access.”

At the Aug. 27 hearing, Commissioner Holly Williams asked that the record reflect that she did not want traffic turning left onto Beacon Lite Road, while acknowledging that she would have no control over that when a site plan came forward. The plan provides two full-movement driveways on Beacon Lite Road.

The study says a memorandum on the interchange was prepared for CDOT on May 28, 2025, and that “the standard diamond interchange with improvements was accepted by CDOT on July 1, 2025.” The memorandum, reproduced in the study’s appendix, is headed “Buc-ee’s Palmer Lake” and addressed to the division administrator of the Federal Highway Administration’s Colorado office. Its last page ends with a list of recommended improvements and carries no signature or approval. Nothing from CDOT or the highway administration recording an acceptance is in the county file. The sentence is not new: a Kimley-Horn traffic study for the Palmer Lake proposal, dated July 10, 2025 and included in the town planning commission’s packet for Aug. 20, 2025, carries it word for word. The county sent the new plan to four CDOT reviewers on Oct. 12. As of Oct. 13, none had returned comments.

The interchange work is drawn in a separate set of plans for the Colorado Department of Transportation, marked “60% Plans” and “Not for construction or recording.” It shows new signals at both ramp intersections, with the note “CDOT to own and operate signal.” The traffic study’s design keeps the existing bridge over I-25, about 72 feet wide, and fits two westbound through lanes onto it. Every title block reads “Access Permit #XXXXXX,” a placeholder; the sheets do not identify an issued permit. The general notes require all work in CDOT’s right-of-way to be finished within 120 calendar days.

Who builds the roads, and the money behind them

A draft development agreement would have Buc-ee’s build the improvements listed in its Exhibit A “at his sole expense” within 24 months of a construction notice to proceed, and post $5,595,271.60 in collateral. The exhibit is titled as covering public improvements only, on the El Paso County portions of Beacon Lite Road and County Line Road, which the plans call Palmer Divide Road. The cost estimate filed with the same total is broader: about $1.16 million for grading and erosion control, $2.35 million for public road and storm-drain work, and $2.09 million for water, sewer and storm lines the county would not maintain. The filing does not reconcile the two. The estimate includes three traffic signals at $62,720 each without saying where; the plans draw three, at the two ramp terminals and the store’s north driveway. Buc-ee’s also acknowledged a county road impact fee of $406,852, at $5,498 per 1,000 square feet of building, due when it applies for a building permit.

The documents assign the interchange work only in part. The traffic study recommends the ramp signals “with construction of the project.” Its interchange memorandum says the added westbound storage on County Line Road “would be constructed in conjunction with Buc-ee’s Palmer Lake development,” and that, “based on discussion with CDOT,” a right-turn lane on the northbound off-ramp “is expected to be constructed by future developments to the east of I-25, such as Monument Ridge East.” CDOT planning worksheets in the study put the total cost of signalizing each ramp intersection, including design, contingency, right-of-way and utility work, at $555,910, and name no payer; the development agreement’s exhibit is titled as covering only the El Paso County portions of the roads.

The CDOT plan set is drawn for Buc-ee’s and written for an access-permit holder, “the permittee,” with the permit number left blank. Under the State Highway Access Code, work that such a permit requires is done “at the expense of the permittee.” Where a development on a local road needs improvements at the point where that road meets a state highway, “the permittee may either be the local jurisdiction, the developer or a combination, at the discretion of the local authority.” What is built in the highway right-of-way becomes public property, and the signal sheets say CDOT will own and operate the signals. When Buc-ee’s sought annexation into Palmer Lake, the town’s July 2025 summary of the proposal said that “all roadwork, including that related to the interchange, will be solely the financial responsibility of Buc-ee’s.” That proposal was withdrawn in February.

Water, sewer and drainage

The water supply plan, by Martin and Wood Water Consultants, estimates demand at 25.47 acre-feet a year. That figure comes from the highest of three comparison stores’ metered use (Amarillo, Texas) plus irrigation. The county’s standard “presumptive use” values would give 10.61 acre-feet, which the report calls “not directly applicable.” Supply would come from two state well permits Buc-ee’s acquired from Monument Ridge West, one into the Arapahoe aquifer and one into the Denver aquifer, together allowing average withdrawals of 32.8 acre-feet a year. Both permits require the wells to be built by March 19, 2028. The site plan shows the two wells, a 500,000-gallon concrete storage tank “to be partially buried,” a booster pump station and a chlorination building at the south end of the site.

Wastewater would be pumped from a lift station on the site and piped south along Beacon Lite Road to an existing Monument Sanitation District main at Wakonda Way. The district is named in the sewer plans as owner of the gravity line.

Stormwater would drain north and east under I-25 through existing culverts, and the drainage report says it ultimately reaches Greenland Ranch Creek, about half a mile northeast. Three detention ponds would hold it first. The report says they are to be owned and maintained by Buc-ee’s and sets the drainage fee at $275,147. A channel across the site that federal wetlands maps show as an intermittent, seasonally flooded stream is described in the stormwater plan as “non-jurisdictional.” The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which decides such questions, returned comments to the county on Oct. 13; they are not posted on the public file.

The water passes wetlands on its way. The report’s map of existing drainage shows a “freshwater forested/shrub wetland” east of I-25 and Monument Hill Road, along the path the runoff takes. The report says these downstream wetlands were analyzed to make sure they would not face erosive velocities or be “starved” of water, and that the velocity “increases slightly” after development. Its table shows the flow in one wetland channel nearly doubling, from 2.31 to 4.53 feet per second, which is still under the 5 feet per second it treats as non-erosive. At the farthest point it modeled, northeast of the interchange, peak flow would drop from 151 to 101 cubic feet per second.

Past the interchange, the water follows a channel that federal stream maps leave unnamed and the report calls Greenland Ranch Creek. It runs north through Greenland Ranch, the conserved ranchland north of the county line, to Carpenter Creek and then East Plum Creek, which drains to the South Platte. By The Independent’s overlay of federal stream and protected-land maps, about 4.4 miles of that channel lie under a conservation easement on the ranch, whose edge is about a sixth of a mile from the site. Colorado Parks and Wildlife maps the channel, from the interchange north, as aquatic native species conservation waters, one of its high-priority habitats. A June 2025 environmental assessment by HWA Wildlife Consulting of Laramie, Wyoming, filed with the commissioners during the appeal, warned that spills at the site “will eventually flow east and northeast” into that habitat.

Wildlife fence, lighting and plate readers

The demolition plan removes 4,663 feet of existing wildlife fence. The site plan draws a new wildlife fence along the edges of the site, with deer guards.

The grading plan draws the limits of construction along and north of County Line Road, beside a line it labels the “south line of existing conservation easement,” on Douglas County open-space land west of I-25. The landscape plan cites the easement’s recording information but does not name its holder, and the filing does not say whether any of the work falls within it. The traffic study’s interchange memorandum lists “the existing conservation easement on the northwest corner of the interchange” among the reasons it rejected a diverging-diamond design.

The lighting plan’s schedule lists 260 light positions, some carrying two, three or four fixtures, for 435 fixtures in all by The Independent’s count, every one at a color temperature of 3,000 kelvin; poles are no taller than 20 feet. The plan says the design follows the “basic tenets of Dark Sky Compliance,” including “zero light trespass at property lines” and fully shielded fixtures. Its calculations put light at the property lines at zero to 0.1 foot-candle. Under the fuel canopies light averages about 11 foot-candles and peaks at 17; across the parking lot it averages 2.9 and peaks at 9.4. The county code caps light at 0.1 foot-candle at a property line adjacent to homes or a public right-of-way, at 20 under a canopy or at a loading platform, and at 10 elsewhere on a site. Two walkway entries in the calculations peak at 17.3 and 11.1 foot-candles; the plan does not say which limit it applies to them.

DarkSky International, which certifies outdoor lighting, allows 3,000 kelvin as the upper limit for fixtures it approves and requires that commercial fixtures be dimmable to 10 percent of full output. The plan’s notes describe no dimming or after-hours controls. Canopy lighting at fuel stations can run far brighter: a 2009 study by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District measured 30 to 45 foot-candles under a California convenience store’s canopy before an LED retrofit and 40 to 78 after.

Buc-ee’s has described its usual practice before. When it sought annexation into Palmer Lake, the town’s July 25, 2025 summary of the proposal said that, according to Buc-ee’s, its exterior bulbs are typically LEDs rated at 5,000 kelvin, and that it uses 3,000-kelvin lighting “in areas where effects of this phenomenon may be more acute,” meaning skyglow. The same summary said that, according to Buc-ee’s, following a CDOT recommendation for dark-sky-compliant lighting, made in a letter dated May 28, 2025, was “not feasible at this Interstate adjacent location.”

The paving plans place a “license plate reader, detailed and installed by others” at each of the two Beacon Lite Road driveways. “By others” leaves the readers out of the civil engineer’s work, much as the architect’s elevations leave security cameras to be supplied “by security consultant.” The filing does not say who would own or run the readers, what they are for, or what would be done with the data. The county’s checklist for site plans does not list cameras or security equipment among the things a plan must show.

Buc-ee’s privacy policy says the company collects “surveillance data,” such as video recordings, “for fraud detection, loss prevention, and public safety,” and may disclose it in response to a law enforcement request. The policy does not mention license plates or vehicles.

Loose ends in the file

The filing is a first submittal, and parts of it say so. The construction drawings are marked “60% SET,” and their engineer’s and owner’s statements still read “[NAME, P.E. #]” and “[NAME, TITLE].” The architect’s sheets are stamped “Interim review documents.” Several documents still carry the name of the Palmer Lake proposal Buc-ee’s withdrew in February: the construction drawings’ cover gives the location as “Palmer Lake, CO 80118,” the pond spreadsheets are titled “Buc-ees Palmer Lake,” the interchange memorandum is headed “Buc-ee’s Palmer Lake,” and the lighting calculations’ drawing file is named for “Palmer Lake, CO.”

Some figures disagree with themselves. The traffic study’s trip-rate worksheet lists one of its 15 stores, in New Braunfels, Texas, at 56.87 weekday trips per pump, though that store’s own figures, 16,805 trips and 120 pumps, work out to 140; the table that turns the average into this store’s forecast is headed “Oak Grove Trips.” The CDOT cost worksheets give their preparer as “0” and their date as “1/0/1900.” The plant list counts 61 spruces and describes them as 31 blue and 20 green.

The documents do not agree on the parcel number. The application lists 7102203007, the 30.83-acre parcel the county assessor created this year; the site plan, the letter of intent and the county’s file list numbers the assessor has since retired. The maintenance agreement filed for the ponds is a draft written for a different county file, a road-construction stockpile on the same land, between the county and CSMS Management, LLC.

The lawsuit

The commissioners’ Aug. 27 decision is the subject of a lawsuit filed Sept. 24 in El Paso County District Court by Tri-Lakes Preservation and eight other plaintiffs, case 2026CV032336. The complaint does not ask the court to halt the project while the case is pending. As of Oct. 13, the state courts’ public docket showed no hearing scheduled in the case. The Gazette reported on Oct. 1 that the county had not yet filed a response.

What happens next

The agencies’ comments go back to Buc-ee’s and its engineers, who revise and resubmit until county staff find that the plan meets the county’s requirements. The plan does not return to the commissioners. Signs need a separate permit, and construction needs building permits.

The county’s public file gives no deadline for this first round of comments. Buc-ee’s has a schedule: construction from spring 2027 to fall 2028. When the drawings come back, the cover sheet may change too. It still gives the location as “Palmer Lake, CO 80118.” The annexation that would have put the site there failed.

Sources & further reading

The Independent’s own coverage: Commissioners Grant Buc-ee’s Appeal, 4-1, the Aug. 27 vote and Commissioner Williams’s remarks · Buc-ee’s Opponents Take the County’s Decision to Court, the Rule 106 complaint · Eight Hours at Centennial Hall: How Buc-ee’s Won Its Appeal, the hearing and where the site’s water goes · Where the Easement Ends: Two Land Trusts Join the Buc-ee’s Argument, the conservation easements north of County Line Road · Palmer Lake Candidate Forum, October 4, 2026, the candidates on Buc-ee’s

County record: PPR2628 file, EDARP (application, letter of intent, site development plan, elevations, landscape and lighting plans, traffic impact study, water supply plan, final drainage report, geotechnical report, stormwater management plan, grading and erosion control plan, construction drawings, roadway and CDOT plan sheets, offsite sewer, financial assurance estimate, draft development agreement) · El Paso County statement on the Aug. 27 decision · Site development plan requirements · State Highway Access Code, 2 CCR 601-1 · Procedures Manual, Referral of Applications · Land Development Code, Chapter 2 and Section 6.2.3 (lighting), via Municode · El Paso County Assessor, parcel 7102203007 · PPR244 and PPR2532, EDARP

Lighting: DarkSky Approved Luminaires guidelines · Sacramento Municipal Utility District, LED canopy lighting technology brief (2009 demonstration) · Town of Palmer Lake, Buc-ee’s proposed development commitments, July 25, 2025 (via FOX21)

Plate readers: Buc-ee’s privacy policy (effective March 18, 2025)

Palmer Lake record: Planning Commission packet, Aug. 20, 2025, item 5 (Kimley-Horn, “Traffic Impact Study, Travel Center Palmer Lake,” July 2025), Town of Palmer Lake CivicClerk portal

Downstream: U.S. Geological Survey, Network-Linked Data Index (NHDPlus stream network) · U.S. Geological Survey, Protected Areas Database of the United States, PAD-US 4.1 · Colorado Parks and Wildlife, aquatic high-priority habitat data · HWA Wildlife Consulting, environmental assessment, June 12, 2025 (Exhibit B to the Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck letter of Aug. 24, 2026, pp. 17–51)

Court: Colorado Judicial Branch, public docket search, El Paso County District Court, 2026CV32336 (searched Oct. 13, 2026) · The Gazette, “Group files court complaint against county over Buc-ee’s decision,” Oct. 1, 2026

Methodology

All 33 documents in the county file were downloaded on Oct. 13, 2026, as filed. The Independent read them with the help of AI tools that extracted each page’s text and flagged figures; pages without a text layer were viewed as images. The figures in this article were checked against the pages they come from. They describe the applicant’s submitted plans and estimates, which remain subject to county review; The Independent did not model traffic, certify engineering compliance or determine who holds title to the land.

The diagram was drawn by The Independent from the drawing layers embedded in the engineer’s site plan (sheet 2), at the plan’s stated scale of one inch to 120 feet; the property boundary was checked against the plan’s surveyed legal description, which closes to within a hundredth of a foot and gives 30.832 acres. The locator map uses El Paso County’s geographic data.

Trip, volume and level-of-service figures are the traffic study’s own; The Independent did not model traffic. The weekend and weekday averages are from the study’s trip-generation worksheet. The tree and plant counts are summed from the landscape plan’s plant list. The fixture count is The Independent’s, from the arrangement column of the lighting plan’s luminaire schedule (a pole carrying three heads counts as three fixtures). The review times for other site plans run from the date each file received its number to its approval, from the county’s file records, and are given as examples, not as an average.

The downstream route was traced with the U.S. Geological Survey’s stream network, starting where the network meets the drainage report’s outfall northeast of the interchange, and overlaid on the USGS Protected Areas Database (PAD-US 4.1) and Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s aquatic habitat maps. The easement boundaries in PAD-US come from 2006 and 2013 submissions and may not match the recorded easement exactly; the mileage is The Independent’s measurement, not a survey.

The court docket search shows scheduled hearings, not filings; it cannot show whether an answer or motion has been filed. The complaint was provided to The Independent by a lawyer assisting Tri-Lakes Preservation in September.

No one was asked for comment for this article. The Independent will put questions to the county, Buc-ee’s and the agencies reviewing the plan in a follow-up.

Using this reporting? Credit The Monument Independent and link to this article: https://monumentindependent.com/government/bucees-site-plan-ppr2628/. Our guidelines are at Using Our Reporting.