Project Description:

The Town of Bayfield, a bedroom community approximately 20 minutes east of Durango in southwest Colorado has been experiencing growth pressures for a few years. In recent years, the Town has completed a number of planning efforts from a CDOT Access Plan, to a Downtown Colorado Inc Community Assessment and economic analysis identifying markets and carrying capacity. In 2017, Bayfield awarded a contract to RG and Associates, LLC (who TJ Dlubac was employed by at that time) to complete an update to the Comprehensive Plan.

The approach was rooted in the establishment of a “blue line” based on the capacity of the Town’s water treatment plant which was recently upgraded. By using water service as the deciding factor, the project team quickly identified the ultimate population the facility could serve and used that as the maximum population. We completed a population forecast and demographic profile of the future community at the planning horizon to ensure it wasn’t going to be exceeding the capacity of the water treatment plant. Once we established that, we focused on identifying priority growth areas which were areas which already had sufficient infrastructures and public services (water, sewer, power, accessible roadways, etc.). Not only did this exercise identify prime developable lands within the Town and surrounding area, but it also identified lands that were not suitable for development such as flood plain, floodway, steep slopes, properties above the height of the water tanks yielding them unserviceable, and fire prone areas. By overlaying these layers on a map using GIS software, the planning team was able to identify properties that were riper for development for the Town to focus economic development efforts on.