THE BIG CITY

Whether you think Colorado Springs is a giant city or a town of modest proportions, you’re right.

Colorado Springs is huge if you consider only land area. The city covered 185.7 square miles in 2000.

That ranked it No. 28 in the nation. The largest city by far was Anchorage, Alaska, at 1,697.2 square miles, about nine times the size of Colorado Springs.

Still, this town is a lot bigger by land area than many with higher national profiles. Colorado Springs sprawls so far from mountain to plain that it’s the same size as Miami, Boston, San Francisco and Minneapolis — combined.

That sounds enormous, but try a few other comparisons and Colorado Springs shrinks a bit. Consider:

- Colorado Springs had an estimated 374,343 residents in 2004, which made it the 49th-largest city in the nation.

- When you account for surrounding communities, the Colorado Springs Metropolitan Statistical Area had about 576,000 residents in 2004. That makes this area the 85th-largest in the nation. We have about the same population as Scranton, Pa., or Wichita, Kan.

A relatively small population hasn’t stopped the city from expanding geographically.

The 1980s were the most active time for annexations. Colorado Springs added 89.2 square miles to its boundaries during that decade, an area a little larger than the city limits of Seattle.

The largest annexation was the Banning-Lewis Ranch, a 37.5-square-mile area on the city’s eastern edge that was added to the boundaries in 1988. Like many large development projects, building in Banning-Lewis has been delayed by ownership changes, lawsuits and negotiations with city officials over requirements to pay for things like roads and water.

The City Council voted in February to allow the first homes to be built on the ranch. As many as 175,000 people are expected to live there when building is done in 40 years.

Much of Colorado Springs remains vacant — about 37 percent according to the city Comprehensive Planning division. City leaders say all that empty space holds promise and peril for people who will move in and those who live here now.

“I hope the City Council, planners and utilities don’t consider the fact that land is annexed a mandate to get that land paved and built on as quickly as possible and at any cost,” said Dave Gardner, the founder of Save The Springs, a group that advocates growth control.

City Councilman Darryl Glenn, whose district includes a lot of vacant land, said he worries over whether police, fire and ambulance crews will be able to reach emergencies quickly in the far-flung areas. Glenn said the City Council requires building companies to pay a fair share of services such as roads and water, and the companies pass on those costs to people who buy new homes.

Margaret Radford, another City Council member whose district includes big expanses of empty land, said she wants to see future developments with work centers, shopping, homes and schools in close proximity, even for people who live on large lots where the houses are spread far apart.

“This is the West, folks, we don’t want to live on top of people out here,” Radford said.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0187 or perry.swanson@gazette.com

URBAN LAND MASSES

The Colorado Springs land area in 2000, at 185.7 square miles, could contain all four of these cities:

Miami — 35.7 square miles

San Francisco — 46.7 square miles

Boston — 48.4 square miles

Minneapolis — 54.9 square miles