Small Town Main Image

Small Town, Big Issues

Lamar seeks new paths to leaving the car behind.
Photography by
James Chance

The bad news about small-town life is that everybody knows everybody’s business.

Yet the reality of life under a microscope can also be the good news, when everyone knows exactly where the problem blocks are and what needs to be done about them.

A “healthy places” review of the small farming hub on the Eastern Plains of Colorado quickly zeroes in on a list of specifics that seem graspable and doable:

  • Get some light poles at the Escondido Park ball fields complex so that residents who waited out the hottest parts of a Plains summer day will have enough light to see during late-evening games.
  • Connect existing parks and trails with fill-in biking and walking trails to create a “Lamar Loop” that is both a draw for recreation and a realistic alternative to commuting by car for some users.
  • Create a youth movement in health with leadership training. Lamar’s kids are being armed with cameras to snap examples of the good and the bad in healthy living in their town. A kite festival included designs around the “5210” theme of health goals: five servings of fruits and veggies in a day, two hours or less of screen time, one hour or more of exercise, and zero sugary drinks.

A long menu of suggestions came easily for Lamar leaders when they joined the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and the Colorado Health Foundation Healthy Places initiative to get the community of 8,800 people moving. The ULI outsider assessment of where Lamar is starting from can be brutal.

“Facing a perfect storm of a deteriorating physical environment, poor access to affordable healthy food and streets that discourage any travel other than by automobile, low-income residents will continue to be at risk for chronic health problems” concluded a weeklong study session in April 2013.

Many of the initial ideas start with what Lamar already has, drawing on the frugal roots of a long-surviving farming and ranching community. Lamar has already been a draw for baseball players, and a sports field complex at “The Sports Hub” provides a focal point. Community leaders want to link academic programs at Lamar Community College to the activity space available at the Hub.

A Cinema in the Parks series is another way to get people outdoors and remind them of backyard parks they may have neglected.

Encouraging a return to the streets on foot and on two wheels is not a simple lifestyle change, and the healthy living activists had to acknowledge that upfront. Changing a massive urban area like Denver may seem daunting, but there are everyday human examples to point to as models: bicycle commuters streaming down the Cherry Creek bike path toward downtown at 8 a.m.; joggers cramming the gravel path around Washington Park every evening at 5:30 p.m.; B-cycle hipsters checking out one of the red roadsters for a taproom crawl at 11 p.m.

Healthy examples are not quite so evident in all Eastern Plains towns. “Everyone drives in Lamar,” the ULI’s study panel members were told frequently during their field trips.

The initial list of action items in Lamar, therefore, is aimed at enticing and coaxing the walkers and the bikers, while making their lives simpler. The pedestrian and bike lanes near the Civic Center area of downtown Lamar should have better paint striping, for example. A new stoplight in an area of downtown that sees 1,300 large trucks a day would help calm traffic and encourage more families to walk with their kids to school. Walking and jogging through-paths at the “crown jewel,” Willow Creek, should be more obvious and make closer connections to Main Street and the sports field complex. A trail should extend south from Willow Creek to the golf course.

An early success in Lamar’s transformation has been encouraging to town leaders. When it was time to rebuild a popular park playground, 297 people signed up to work on the project.

“We got that playground built,” a city official said.

Construction Update - March 2015

The Urban Land Institute (ULI) sent a team leader back to the three Healthy Places communities to report on their remarkable progress and share how recommendations are coming to life. [Read more]

 

This article was originally published in the Summer 2014 issue of Health Elevations.

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