Thriving neighborhood northwest of Colorado Springs has nature preserve, greenway | Cronin and Loevy | News

Post WWII Single Family Homes at Modest Prices. Mixed in are lots of two to three storey garden flats.

There is also a wonderful nature reserve with great hiking trails, as well as a heavily landscaped greenway with a cycle path.

And don’t miss the environmental education center and charter school for intellectually adventurous elementary and middle school students.

You’ll find it all in Mesa Springs, a thriving neighborhood located northwest of downtown Colorado Springs.

The northern boundary is West Fillmore Street as it climbs the hill after crossing Interstate 25. The eastern boundary is I-25. The southern boundary is a short stretch of West Uintah Street. And the western boundary is mainly Centennial Avenue as it curves south and then east from West Fillmore.

Mesa Springs is growing. People there just bought into Indian Hills, a cluster of new homes off Centennial Boulevard.

The neighborhood is organized into an informal group called the Mesa Springs Community Association. All activities are voluntary and the cost of membership is only $10 per year. The group’s major social event is an annual picnic and block party held at the end of the summer.

Mark Tatro, a Colorado Springs park ranger, is the association’s current president. He notes with pride that Mesa Springs has two great assets: Sondermann Park and the Mesa Springs Greenway.

Sondermann Park is a nature oasis located in the western part of the district, which has almost 100 acres of rolling hills. A major feature of the park is Mesa Creek, which creates a riparian zone as it flows through the park. Hiking trails allow access to different parts of the park.

Sondermann Park is named after Fred Sondermann, a legendary political science professor at Colorado College who was also a member of the Colorado Springs City Council in the 1960s.

The park has lost some of its wildness and remote character recently as Centennial Boulevard was built along the western edge of the park and connected to the West Fontanero Street interchange with I-25.

Mesa Springs’ second big asset is the Mesa Springs Greenway. This linear urban park along the edge of I-25 was created in the late 1990s when I-25 was widened through Colorado Springs from four to six lanes.

At the same time homes were removed to make way for an additional lane of southbound traffic on I-25, other homes were removed to make way for the park and trail that parallels the west side of I-25.

A tall noise wall was built between I-25 and the new park and trail to reduce the impact of traffic noise on both nearby homes and the park and trail.

The linear park and trail are nicely landscaped with mowed grass and small groves of trees here and there. The park widens and narrows, sometimes nearly a block wide, as it weaves its way behind the wall of noise along the freeway.

And the trail for bikers and hikers meanders back and forth through the park, rather than always going in a boring straight line. The trail connects at Fontanero Street to the city’s trail system that runs along both banks of Monument Creek.

There are other assets in Mesa Springs besides Sondermann Park and the Mesa Springs Greenway.

The Beidleman Center, located at the former Upton Gardens Kindergarten, is a nonprofit environmental education center. Offers programs and camps that educate school children about the environment.

In the summer, buses from the Beidleman Center take schoolchildren to places of ecological interest in the Colorado Springs area. The center is named after former Colorado College biology professor Richard Beidleman.

There are several. The local elementary school, Pike Elementary School, closed in 2010 and the building was converted into a charter school, the Academy for Advanced and Creative Learning.

This District 11 facility attracts gifted and talented students from across the city. Students attend the academy from kindergarten to eighth grade.

Mesa Springs students who do not attend the academy attend the nearby Bristol School, located south of Uintah Street.

Community Association President Tatro describes the Mesa Springs neighborhood as “a nice mix of many types of people. Adding to the community is that there are many long-term residents who really like it here.”

Tom Cronin and Bob Loeyy are news columnists who write about Colorado and national politics.