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The Colorado State Parks District (CSPD) is notifying the public about the planned shutdown and re-opening of Canyons Village, which will cause an estimated 1,500 people to be stranded and unable to get back to their homes. The shutdown will be the result of the CSPD losing title to the site, which the U.S. Forest Service transferred to the CSPD last year. The CSPD has been trying for years to develop the area into a park for years, and now that effort will have to be shelved.
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The $3.1 billion project to build Canyons, a complex of ski resorts, high-speed rail, hotels, conference centers and an airport, was meant to happen during the last two years of the Obama administration, but was repeatedly stymied by the slow U.S. Congress.
President Donald Trump first announced the U.S. Forest Service’s transfer of control of Canyons to the CSPD in December 2017.
President Trump signs a bill to transfer responsibility for management and maintenance of Canyons Village to the Colorado State Parks Office on Dec. 23, 2017. Michael Patrick/The Denver Post via Getty Images
The CSPD had planned to bring in the private sector to develop Canyons, and a year-long lawsuit against the federal government was ultimately resolved in favor of the state. This has left the agency scrambling to figure a way to operate Canyons as a state park, and that is what they’re trying to figure out.
“We’re going to figure out what to do with it,” said CSPD spokesman Chad Bateman, who spoke with members of the public at the ski area this week.
“There’s a lot of unknowns,” Bateman said. “It kind of seems like it was a year-and-a-half of uncertainty … but I do feel like we’ve come a long way in a year-and-a-half to this point.
“The best news of the weekend is that we�
