Teller County Planning

Client: Regional Planning Commission

Site: Teller County, Colorado

In November of 1991, the voters of Colorado approved a constitutional amendment legalizing limited stakes gaming in three historic Colorado mining towns, including Cripple Creek in Teller County. Although limited gaming is viewed as an attractive economic development tool by more and more communities, the only community with any experience with limited gaming impacts was Deadwood, South Dakota. The Collaborative was the lead firm in a consultant team that prepared a Comprehensive Historic Preservation Plan for Deadwood. The Plan addressed both the sudden and the long-term impacts from gaming, many of which were stressing every system in the community. Based on the experience and expertise developed in evaluating and mitigating limited gaming impacts, the consulting team of the Collaborative, Coley/Forrest, Inc., and BRW, Inc. as lead, was selected to address gaming impacts in Teller County. Our firm’s responsibilities included:

• Defining the quantity and location of the gaming market that would affect Teller County;
• Estimating the degree of impact related to progressive stages of economic development, paying specific attention to land use, historic resources, hotels, infrastructure, emergency services, socio-economic impacts such as crime and schools;
• Quantifying the manner in which local government would be impacted, particularly the degree to which such impacts would require more government employees and space;
• Developing a short-term Urgent Action Plan to mitigate the identified impacts;
• Assisting the consultant team in the development of a long-term Regional Plan.