Great Outdoors Colorado celebrates ‘evolution’ year with high-profile projects realized – Colorado Springs Gazette

While much changed in 2020, it was largely business as usual for Great Outdoors Colorado, the lottery-funded arm pumping millions of dollars into parks and open spaces and conservation.

With $77.8 million invested across 101 projects in 34 counties, 2020 marked the 19th consecutive year the program born in 1992 met its constitutionally mandated cap, read a recent end-of-year report. (That cap is annually adjusted for inflation; it's set for $71.7 million for fiscal year 2021).

"Looking at the numbers, you might think 2019-2020 was a year like any other for Great Outdoors Colorado," executive director Chris Castilian wrote in the report.

Yet he considered the period GOCO's "most introspective and forward-looking work in years."

A 16-month strategic planning process "resulted in an evolution in our role as a funder," Castilian explained.

Before the pandemic hit and was followed by a racial justice awakening, GOCO had committed to a future with equity at the center. Grant-giving was restructured to better account for communities ill-equipped with matching capabilities. And by deciding to set aside certain sums of lottery revenues, GOCO set a course for more large-scale "legacy" projects "more projects with lasting benefits for future generations," Castilian wrote.

"[W]e couldn't have anticipated that our flexibility and community-centered approach would be tested so soon," he remarked.

The year saw GOCO establish the Resilient Communities grant program, dedicated to fill pandemic-caused shortfalls. An example was the $316,100 given to Colorado Springs' parks department to keep the Prospect Lake Beach House project on track. Another was the $456,646 awarded to the city and county of Denver to develop a youth-focused stewardship program at local parks.

GOCO's report mentioned high-profile, multi-year funded projects that reached milestones in 2020. They included Trinidad's Fishers Peak State Park, which opened a small portion for visitation in the fall. Sandstone Ranch, what Douglas County open space managers call their "crown jewel," also opened last year. And the report saluted the Palisade Plunge, a long-dreamed mountain bike trail on the Grand Mesa that completed construction before winter.

GOCO finished 2020 by announcing $1.3 million for the local grassroots mission to acquire a 10-acre peninsula on Lake San Cristobal in Lake City. Also in December, GOCO closed another $1 million project dedicated to Pitkin County in preserving Sunfire Ranch, described as "the largest ranch that remained unprotected in the Crystal Valley" and filling the gap in public land making up the 221,000-acre Thompson Divide.

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Great Outdoors Colorado celebrates 'evolution' year with high-profile projects realized - Colorado Springs Gazette