Company planning to build industrial park
A 600-acre site next to the Colorado Air and Space Port in Adams County could become a kind of inland port for businesses manufacturing and distributing goods and could generate hundreds of jobs under a plan by Rocky Mountain Industrials.
The company has proposed building an industrial park at the site about a mile north of Interstate 70 and adjacent to the Union Pacific Railroad tracks. Adams County has given preliminary approval to Rocky Mountain Industrials’ development plans. The final review is underway.
There is a need for ways to distribute goods and materials like the sand, gravel and other materials that Rocky Mountain Industrials produces and provides, said Greg Dangler, CEO and co-founder of the Denver company.
One of the company’s products is limestone, which it mines from a quarry it owns just north of Glenwood Springs. Its plan to expand the Mid-Continent quarry to nearly 450 acres from about 16 acres has stirred strong opposition in the area.
Rocky Mountain Industrials would ship the limestone from Glenwood Springs to the industrial park, which Dangler called “essentially an inlet port.”
“We need distribution capabilities for the supply chain and it just didn’t exist,” he said.
The park will provide a combination of different kinds of transportation and industrial zoning.
“Think about it as an industrial subdivision. We are the anchor tenant. We’ll use it to distribute high-value materials via train,” Dangler said. “We’ll bring mined product to the area and distribute it throughout the Front Range.”
Other tenants, some of which Rocky Mountain Industrials is in talks with, could include homebuilders that would bring in materials by truck or rail for assembly and then ship the finished products throughout the metro area.
The project has been a few years in the making, Dangler said. His company expects to spend about $100 million to develop the site. The company will build roads, lay 5 to 7 miles of rail track and create a municipal district to provide utilities
“We’re hoping to move dirt sometime in the October-November time frame,” Dangler said.
Dangler figures it will take about 18 months to complete the infrastructure and maybe three years to fill the lots. His company anticipates employing about 50 people in the development’s first phase. Other companies Rocky Mountain Industrials is negotiating with are projecting hundreds of jobs.
“The county is excited for the
development planned in and around Colorado Air and Space Port, which is owned and managed by the county, and looks forward to working with (Rocky Mountain Industrials) and other developers in this area,” Adams County spokeswoman Christa Bruning said in an email.
The reception to Rocky Mountain Industrials’ plans in Glenwood Springs is far different. The company, formerly known as Rocky Mountain Resources, acquired the quarry in 2016. Plans to expand the operation is strongly opposed by the city of Glenwood Springs and surrounding communities and have triggered lawsuits.
The Glenwood Springs Citizens’ Alliance is suing the Bureau of Land Management, claiming the agency has failed to make the company comply with its current permit. The BLM manages the federal land the mine sits on and will decide whether the quarry can be expanded.
In another lawsuit, Rocky Mountain Industrials is challenging Garfield County’s authority to regulate the quarry. Glenwood Springs’ motion to intervene in the lawsuit was approved in May, the Post Independent newspaper reported.
Dangler said the quarry expansion would generate a hundred jobs, which would benefit Glenwood Springs considering that tourism, the community’s main industry, has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. He said fears that enlarging the mine would damage the hot springs, the centerpiece of the community’s tourism business, are groundless.
The company has spent millions of dollars investigating potential hazards and preparing for the environmental impact statement required by the BLM, Dangler said.
Limestone’s uses include building materials, water filtration, additives in animal feed and chemical spillcleanups.
Glenwood Springs Mayor Jonathan Godes said the city isn’t willing to risk “the lifeblood of our economy,” including the hot springs and outdoor recreation that the area is known for. He said greatly expanding the mining and its hours of operation will dramatically increase truck traffic, noise, dust and possibly damage the water system that feeds the hot springs and keeps the resorts in business.
“To compromise the quality of air and water and turn this into an extraction town would be a long-term change, a forever change,” Godes said.