Plan for major medical center at Fillmore/Centennial

       A development plan for a 2- to 3-level medical office building - Phase 1 of an 83-acre office-complex master plan on the south side of Fillmore Street at Centennial Boulevard - is under review by Colorado Springs Planning.
       According to a posting at the site and a City Planning mail-out to addresses in the area, comments will be accepted until Friday, March 25, after which planning staff can administratively approve the plan.
       The property belongs to Lyda Hill, a prominent Westside landowner. The plan was prepared by Marshall Erdman & Associates of Broomfield.
       The size of the medical center complex is just under 14 acres. The building would take up 110,000 square feet, with a 563- vehicle parking lot around it.
       Access would be from a roughly quarter-mile extension of Centennial south of Fillmore and, about 800 feet east of there on Fillmore, a private street across from the entrance to La Farge Asphalt. Both would be full-access, meaning that left-turn exits are allowed in and out. A stoplight currently exists at Centennial and Fillmore; the plans do not call for a light at La Farge.
       The project would begin with a considerable grading effort on the entire 83-acre property, which the development plan's geologic report (by CTL Thompson) describes as “flat with some steep slopes.” The developer envisions cuts and fills of up to 50 feet in different places, the report states.
       James Mayerl, the city's lead Westside planner, said that much of the grading is necessary for the Centennial extension. “If we want the road, the grading needs to occur,” he said.
       As a result, a hillside overlay designation (which regulates major terrain changes in hilly areas) has been removed from the site.
       “There will be very little of the existing grade or topography left,” he explained.
       According to the Thompson report, some of the acreage is already disturbed, having been “extensively mined” for sand and gravel in the 1950s. This was to build I-25 at that time, Mayerl elaborated.
       The building and its parking area would be between Centennial and the private street. The building would have two levels on its west side, stepping down to three on its eastern, dowhill side, the development plan shows. A 25-foot-wide landscape area would buffer the complex along Fillmore and Centennial.
       Proposed uses for the medical center are internal medicine, specialty medicine, general surgery, laboratory work, imaging, a pharmacy and administrative support, the plan states.
       According to the property's master plan, which the city approved last summer, additional office buildings could be developed on the 83 acres - either on the side west of Centennial or east of the private street. The plan also includes a total of 23 acres of open space.
       Centennial Boulevard, which currently stops at Fillmore, is master-planned as a median-divided four-lane road that would eventually continue southeast about 2 ˝ miles to connect with the Fontanero Street interchange at I-25. The extension is being built incrementally, as developers come forward. Another portion has already been required for construction in Phase 2 of the under-construction Indian Hills Village subdivision about a mile south of the proposed medical center.

Westside Pioneer article