By the slimmest margin, the Colorado Springs City Council backed the proposed master plan to manage Fishers Canyon Open Space for the next decade.

Fishers Canyon covers 343 acres of mountains and forests on the back end of the Broadmoor Bluffs neighborhood, including the eastern slope of Cheyenne Mountain. The city purchased the sprawling open space in 2021 using $4.2 million from the Trails, Open Space and Parks budget and the land has officially remained closed to visitors until the city enacted a master plan for the land.

The council voted 5-4 Tuesday to reject an appeal brought by a group of residents who opposed the plan, largely from the Spires neighborhood and the Broadmoor Bluffs area bordering the canyon. Residents raised a variety of concerns during the extended council meeting, from the financial cost of opening more public parks to wildfire risks and bear migration.

“The key words here are well-managed and well-maintained. We also recognize that poorly managed parks are detrimental to their surrounding neighborhoods,” neighbor Brenda Tracy said.

Council President Lynette Crow-Iverson and Councilmembers Dave Donelson, Roland Rainey and Brandy Wiliams voted for the appeal that would have blocked the master plan. Donelson had voted back in 2021 to purchase Fishers Canyon and said his opposition was about the burden on neighbors who would be living near the new access road. He pushed back on comments that called the opposition NIMBY concerns.

“This literally is in their backyard. It’s not just a phrase. And it’s easy for everyone else to say you should absorb this change in your life because we’re going to enjoy it,” Donelson said.

Parks staff have worked since the end of 2023 to develop the master plan across a series of public hearings and community meetings. The proposal was unanimously approved by both the Colorado Springs Parks Board and the TOPS Working Committee in May.

The master plan includes building out nine miles of additional trails throughout the park including a stretch of the longer Chamberlain Trail. Between 69 and 110 new parking spaces will be built, depending on the demand and the number of visitors. Around 66% of the space would be dedicated for natural preservation areas.

David Deitemeyer, the TOPS administrator who led the master plan process, said Fishers Canyon would address some of the concerns neighbors had raised during the process. A fence line separating the canyon from backyards would be at least 150 feet from homes and wouldn’t be built unless there were trespassing issues. The park would not fully open until after the first parking lots were built.

“We heard ‘start small,’ ‘start to allow some sort of public access but not the entire component,’ so that is where we implement these phased approaches,” Deitemeyer said.

The most recent online survey the city ran in February found that 65% of all residents who answered strongly supported the Fishers Canyon master plan. The support levels flipped when it came to solely the Spires neighborhood, where around 65% of people opposed the proposal.

Tracy’s biggest concerns for the project were about the proposed stretches of trail near her home on Irvington Court. She worried that the increased visitors could trespass in her backyard and park in front of her driveway and there would not be park rangers or police available to enforce the open space’s rules.

“Our trails that we currently have are overrun. People use them a lot. The best way to alleviate that is to come up with some dispersion opportunities and Fishers Canyon is a perfect opportunity for people to do that,” Councilmember Dave Leinweber said.

A land use attorney working on the appeal argued that the city was acting in the wrong order by enacting a master plan before Fishers Canyon had been rezoned as a city park. The city attorneys said that parks plans were specifically exempt from needing a development plan. The rezoning will need to be approved before construction begins on the parking lots or other development in the area.

Several of the neighbors wanted the master plan to include more financial commitments from the city for mitigation and water line additions. The extensive maintenance backlog across the Parks department led other neighbors to ask whether the city should hold off on working on Fishers Canyon until current parks were in better shape.

“We don’t want to be like children where we break one open space, shrug and ask for a new open space,” resident Monika Millburn said. ” We need commitments, not ideas, and when the Fire Marshal says we could do, let’s say we are going to do it.”

Williams cited her concerns about the broader Parks budget as her main reason opposing the project.

Parks Director Britt Haley said deferred maintenance was not as big of an issue for open spaces because they had fewer structures and a dedicated funding source through TOPS. The city program dedicates around $1.2 million per year for the stewardship of open spaces.

The decision comes almost exactly a year after the City Council denied a similar appeal opposing the plan for Blodgett Open Space. Cory Sutela, a long-time advocate for mountain bikers and trail access, said the city had gone even further to address concerns with Fishers than they had during Blodgett and was excited to see the new land open.