Editor's note: In the last issue of this newsletter, we published excerpts of Ron Neely's taped reminiscences about early preservation efforts in Georgetown. In this issue we conclude the account of his comments and stories. Bill Wilson transcribed and compiled the narrative, with minor editing.
Leavenworth Mountain
[The Leavenworth Mountain issue] came up because the DRC turned [the developer] down. They were turned down for a building permit on a couple of bases: one, development of that mountain that way would be the first injection of a series of vertical buildings on the mountainside, and because of the number [of them]; and secondly, because, as I recall, [the townhouses] were all the same.
The developer, "South of Second Street," sued the town. [They] claimed that the town had exceeded its authority. It went to a couple of rounds of District Court, where we won the first one and lost the second one, and then we appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled that we were unconstitutionally vague, because we hadn't drawn in the lines distinguishing each treatment area from the other. But they did uphold the right of the town to pass such an ordinance and control the development.
It was Vernon Hines, then HGI president, who came up with the idea [of a solution]; he in fact said that this thing had gone on long enough - let's see if we can't get the sides together and negotiate a settlement....The point being, the Supreme Court had said [the developer] could go ahead and build. We sat down and over a series of meetings we negotiated a settlement whereby the town would pay the developer two or three hundred thousand dollars in lieu of court-ordered damages, which we thought was reasonable. The Georgetown Society would pay $100,000 to buy the five acres of land in question. We had paid $60[,000], and Walter Berry came along and paid off the last $40[,000] of that. The Town at that point had nothing to show for it, and we agreed that we would give them roughly half of that land up there. HGI came out pretty well on that transaction.
It was the winter of '81 when we negotiated that settlement… We announced the settlement by the end of that year, and three or four months later, the Boettcher Foundation announced the grant for the High Bridge. I talked to John Mitchell about that. High in their thinking, although not paramount in their thinking, was the fact that that the Town of Georgetown [had], in effect, saved itself from Leavenworth Mountain, which was kind of a closing argument for them. [As a result,] the Boettcher Foundation donated $1 million in memory of E. Warren Willard to the Colorado Historical Society so that they could build the High Bridge.
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I've often pointed out when I take a walking tour up there that what you see up Leavenworth Mountain, which is kind of a funky mountain of no particular merit (it didn't make Walt's book, Fourteeners!), that what that settlement did was to help get us the High Bridge on the Georgetown Loop. More importantly, I think it reaffirmed a lot of people's faith in the future of the Landmark District. We could have just laid down at that point and said we lost in the Supreme Court, but we didn't - we fought and we fought and we fought. We raised the money and lo and behold we ended up not only stopping that development, but we really gained a much greater sense of what historic preservation was all about, for most of that money, that $60,000, came from people here in Georgetown.
Saxon Mountain
[The gift of] Saxon Mountain started formally when Idun and Walter Berry took Cindy and me up there on a picnic. We drove up there in their yellow Cadillac… We drove up to the top of the mountain, looked around up there, drove back down to some meadow off the road, and had a little picnic. That's when Walter first formally said to us, "Idun and I want to give you this mountain. These are some of the things we have in mind." That was quite a day!
Downtown Improvement District
The whole idea of the Downtown Project started out as a drainage issue, because after a rain, the basement of the Ram would flood and the basement of the Silver Queen would flood. I think that was the impetus to get it started. Then it very quickly became a town-wide issue, therefore a preservation issue. It ended up with drainage, curb and gutter, flagstone sidewalks, handicap access, and light poles. Cindy still gives me [a hard time] on those light poles. The issue was whether we should buy cast-iron light fixtures, or aluminum. I got into some sort of shouting match with somebody about it…, and I said that we have to spend the extra five grand to buy the cast iron: they last longer, they look better, and are more authentic. I said that if you're not going to do it, I'll do it. So I put in five grand out of my retirement fund to buy them. [Chris Bradley: "Which you didn't have."] Well, of course I had it, that's where I got it. I didn't have much after that… But I went ahead, with Cindy's help, I guess, reluctantly, and we put in that five grand…
That's why I mentioned to the Town Administrator the other day that we had to straighten out a couple of poles that had been knocked askew and clean up the glass. I wanted him to know, as the Town Administrator, that there were a couple of people that had more than a passing interest in those posts!