Projects that failed to get into Colorado Springs, Monument or Palmer Lake keep reappearing before El Paso County, where the answer is nearly always yes. Voters in Colorado Springs and Palmer Lake have claimed a say over annexation. A bottling plant that, fully built out, could use as much water as the development Colorado Springs […]
Tag: Land Use & Zoning
Posted inGovernment
CDOT Sends the Buc-ee’s Interchange Request to the Full Transportation Commission
Colorado’s chief transportation engineer will not decide the ramp changes Buc-ee’s needs at Interstate 25 and County Line Road himself. The state Transportation Commission will decide them, likely in spring 2027, after an Environmental Assessment. No state permit for the work can be issued before it acts. Updated Oct. 19, 2026: Adds the Colorado Department […]
Posted inGovernment
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 […]
Posted inLocal News
Five Acres at a Time: Sixty Years of Zoning in Black Forest
Most of Black Forest has lived under one rule for sixty years: a house for every five acres. The county spread it across the forest in 1965, residents wrote a plan around it in 1974, and for years, by its own account, the county followed the plan. The plan is gone now. The rule is […]
Posted inLocal News
The Walker Road Rezoning Came Back with New Numbers and the Old Argument
Fifteen acres at Highway 83 and Walker Road are back before El Paso County, refiled seven weeks after the Board of County Commissioners turned them down. A denied application may only return if it is “substantially different in a material way,” and the applicant says this one is, because it asks for fewer homes. The […]
Posted inGovernment
Buc-ee’s Opponents Take the County’s Decision to Court
Tri-Lakes Preservation, the Monument-area nonprofit that has opposed a Buc-ee’s at Interstate 25 and County Line Road since the Palmer Lake annexation fight, has joined neighbors of the site in asking El Paso County District Court to overturn the county commissioners’ Aug. 27 decision allowing the travel center in the C-1 zoning district. The complaint, […]
Posted inLocal News
Needles Highway 83 Approved 3–1, on the Criterion That Denied Walker Road
El Paso County commissioners approved a rezoning on Highway 83 Thursday morning by a vote of 3–1, converting 47.55 acres from five-acre lots to two-and-a-half-acre lots. No one spoke in support. Four residents spoke against it. The commissioner who voted no reached his conclusion through the same criterion the Board used to deny the Walker […]
Posted inOpinion
The Commissioners Will Write Their Own Limits
El Paso County is rewriting the code that decides how much discretion its commissioners have over land use. The five commissioners will adopt it. Residents have no ballot measure to reach for; what they have is the November ballot, and the right questions to ask on it. The first round of written comments on El […]
Posted inGovernment
Monument Town Council, September 21, 2026: 7 Brew Approved, Police Fees Rewritten
Monument’s council approved a drive-thru coffee stand it had sent back two weeks earlier, cut most of the police records fees it adopted in August before those fees take effect, moved the town’s employee health benefits to a public-entity trust, and hired a new water attorney to begin replacing one who has represented the town […]
Posted inLocal News
At the Woodmoor Barn, Residents Press the County’s Code Consultant on Density and Rezonings
About 50 residents questioned the county’s code consultant at the Woodmoor Barn on buffers, rezonings, density and water. Comments close Oct. 16.