Land exchanges serve the wealthy

In 2017, the public lost 1,470 acres of wilderness-quality land at the base of Mount Sopris near Aspen, Colorado.

For decades, people had hiked and hunted on the Sopris land, yet the Bureau of Land Management handed it over to Leslie Wexner, former CEO of Victoria’s Secret and other corporations, at his request. The so-called “equivalent terrain” he offered in return was no match for access to trails at the base of the 13,000-foot mountain.

This ill-considered trade reveals how land management agencies pander to wealthy interests, do not properly value public land and restrict opportunities for public involvement. It’s an ongoing scandal in Colorado that receives little attention.

Since 2000, the BLM and the Forest Service have proposed over 150 land exchanges in Colorado. Last year alone, the agencies proposed to trade more than 4,500 acres of public lands, worth over $9 million, in three major Colorado land exchanges.

Land to be traded away includes precious riverfront, lands recommended for Wild and Scenic River designation, and hundreds of acres of prime hunting and recreation territory.

Public land exchanges can be a useful tool. Federal agencies use them to consolidate land holdings, improve public access, reduce management costs and protect watersheds.

By law, the trades must serve the public interest, and the land exchanged must be of equal value. The agencies are supposed to analyze, disclose and mitigate the impacts of relinquishing public lands in exchanges, and also solicit public input on whether a trade makes sense.

But here in Colorado — and elsewhere around the country — this management tool has been usurped by powerful players who aim to turn valuable public lands

into private playgrounds.

Often, the deals

The proponents and their consultants have ready access to these documents, yet the public, which owns the land, does not. In Valle Seco, appraisals were completed in August 2020, but they weren’t released to the public until December 2021, just a few weeks before the scheduled decision date for the exchange. Advocates managed to pry the appraisals out of the agency only after submitting multiple Freedom of Information Act requests and taking legal action.

In another deal, the Blue Valley Exchange, the BLM also withheld drafts of the management agreements until just before releasing the final decision. This is hardly an open and fair public process.

The federal government presents what are, in effect, done deals. less Area, a designation meant to block development of high-quality land. The exchange would allow a neighboring landowner to consolidate those 380 acres with his 3,000-plus acre ranch, opening the door to development.

Development plans and appraisals are undisclosed and comment periods hindered. By prioritizing the proponents’ desires over public interests and process, the land management agencies abdicate their responsibilities.

The result is that too many land trades are nothing less than a betrayal of the public trust as the public loses access to its land as well as the land itself.

Erica Rosenberg is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit that works to spur lively conversation about Western issues. She is on the board of Colorado Wild Public Lands, a nonprofit in the town of Basalt that monitors land exchanges around the state.

The Valle Seco Exchange follows a long-standing pattern. “Exchange facilitators,” people familiar with the land-acquisition wish lists of agencies, help private landowners buy lands the agencies want. The landowners then threaten to manage and develop those lands in ways that undermine their integrity.

The Valle Seco proponents did this by closing formerly open gates and threatening to fence the 880 acres for a domestic elk farm and hunting lodge. This is blackmail on the range.

While catering to these private interests, the agencies suppress public scrutiny by refusing to share land appraisals and other documents with the public until afterthe public process has closed — or too late in the process to

BY ELLIS ARNOLD EARNOLD@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

At e Alley in downtown Littleton, you might nd a musician who’s so into the music, they’ll get up and dance on the bar.

When a local band surprises the crowd with a stellar performance that no one saw coming, “it just knocks people’s socks o ,” said Mary Riecks, e Alley’s bar manager and a Littleton-area native.

e watering hole on Main Street doubles as a music venue that nds and helps grow local talent — and the shows are free. It’s one of the bars in the metro Denver suburbs that o ers a window into up-and-coming homegrown performers amid a music scene that one longtime bar owner says is growing.

“Twenty years ago when I opened up the bar, there were a few bars around that had live music,” said Doug Jacobsen, owner of Jake’s Roadhouse in Arvada.

Since then, he’s noticed that “all of these di erent bars” now o er space for shows, said Jacobsen, who has friends who perform at spots around metro Denver.

“ ere’s a lot of great musicians here,” Jacobsen said.

Here’s a look at places o the beaten path where you can catch some lesser known — and sometimes famous — music artists in person.

‘Something for everyone’ Wild Goose Saloon in Parker o ers a bit of a di erent environment: It’s a bar but also a large event venue. ey’re both longtime musicians themselves — they perform in a band called Lola Black, garnered play on the radio and toured around the country — and have played Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre several times, Dellinger said. ey take their knowledge of the industry to running the Wild Goose, which was built around the concept of serving as a music venue and has a bigger stage, sound and lighting setup than most bars do, Dellinger said.

It aims to be “Colorado’s version of the Knitting Factory” — a unique, independent venue that hosts local and national artists, said Chris Dellinger, who serves as co-owner of Wild Goose Saloon with his wife.

It’s “kind of like every musician’s dream to own their own venue at some place and time, and we just ended up being able to pull it o ,” said Dellinger, who lives in Aurora.

After opening in July 2021, Wild Goose has hosted some large country artists and “some `80s artists that are still big,” Dellinger said. National pop-rock act American Authors is set to play there in late April.

“My motto always is, ‘If you don’t like the music one night, that’s OK — it’ll be completely di erent the next night or the next week,’” Dellinger said. “So we really try to have something for everyone here.”

His venue tries to get exposure for local talent by letting them open for national touring acts. For the audience, the typical admission cost for a national artist’s show at Wild Goose sits around $25 to $30, but local artists’ ticketed shows can cost as low as $10, and most of the local artists’ shows are free.

Dellinger and his wife have

“snuck in” a performance or two at Wild Goose, he said — they were set to play there in late April with the Texas Hippie Coalition, an American heavy metal band. Keeping classics alive

You might also see Jacobsen, a guitarist himself, playing with a band at Jake’s Roadhouse in the north metro area every now and then.

His bar started o ering live music “right away” after opening near the end of 2003. Sitting in east Arvada close to Denver and Westminster, the venue o ers mostly cover bands and blues, and on Wednesday nights, bluegrass is on tap. Sometimes, artists play original songs, but it’s rare, Jacobsen said.

“Our people come in to hang out, and most original bands don’t have four hours’ worth of original music,” Jacobsen said.

But playing covers at Jake’s Roadhouse is one way to get a new artist’s foot in the door in the local music scene.

“We have bands that come to us all the time that can’t get these other bars to give them a chance to play because they haven’t played anywhere before,” Jacobsen said. He added: “We’re not like that. I know a lot of musicians around town, and we will give a band a chance to play just on the word of a friend.”

He feels that live music is im-