SUPERIOR, Colo. — After tragedy, it is important to celebrate big milestones. The Town of Superior did just that Friday with a walking tour of its brand new downtown.
“This is a 6,000 square foot, two-story space,” said Anthony Blout, development director for Carmel Partners, the construction company working on much of the new development in downtown Superior.
The newly minted downtown is decades in the making, a vision of town leaders dating back to at least 2001.
“This is a downtown modeled after the downtown we all dream to live in,” Blout said.
The brand-new downtown Superior will include walkable residential, retail and event space in what used to be an open field.
“Never really had a downtown and a street called Main Street,” said Superior Mayor Clint Folsom.
This tour is a major milestone for Superior. It comes less than one year after the Marshall Fire and on the heels of a report released just this week detailing lessons learned from that catastrophic fire.
“People need to have answers to process all that they’ve been through,” Folsom said.
“It’s certainly been a challenging year for the Town of Superior,” Blout said.
The report details the new threat of grassland urban interface wildfires, highlights the unprecedented wind gusts that day and night, and also helps to educate other communities about key issues like underinsurance.
The Marshall Fire destroyed more than 1,000 homes, and 92 percent of those homeowners were underinsured.
“I think a big key takeaway is insurance,” Folsom said. “Insurance is really designed to make people whole after a disaster – whether it’s flood, fire, hurricane or whatever. But you’ve got to make sure that you’ve got enough insurance to cover the cost to rebuild. And then being more fire aware and making existing homes, new homes, as fire resistant as possible.”
Although damage to the new downtown Superior was minimal in the Marshall Fire, video included in the report shows a new townhouse in downtown on fire, sitting just feet off a still under construction Main Street.
Main Street looks much more hopeful and vibrant now than that ominous night 10 months ago.
“It’s been a long time in the making,” Blout said. “A lot of work and effort has been put in to get us to this point in this beautiful setting.”
“This is the downtown that Superior has really never had,” Folsom said.