Durango has a pulse.
Much like a heart, the city acts as a hub for people all over La Plata, Montezuma, Archuleta and San Juan (Colorado and New Mexico) counties. People flood the city by day and exit by night. Tourists visit in throngs during the summer and winter, and stay away during the shoulder seasons. Students attend Fort Lewis College from late August to mid-May and return home for the summer.
The daily and seasonal pulse is a measured rhythm familiar and intuitive to businesses, longtime residents and city staff. People living in Durango have an intimate, albeit veiled, relationship with the commuters, students and tourists who invest their time and resources into making the city what it is economically and socially.
The 2010 U.S. Census reported 16,887 people living in Durango, a number that grew to an estimated 18,985 by July 1, 2018, according to the Census Bureau’s Population Estimates Program. But the Census Bureau does not account for people coming to Durango or leaving it every day for work. It doesn’t show the influx of Fort Lewis College students each fall or the second homeowners who leave when the cold arrives.
And who could forget the tourists?
Take all those people into account, and the daily average population looks a little more like 30,000, according to the Durango Police Department. The math looks like this: 19,000 permanent residents; minus 3,000 residents who commute to jobs outside the city; plus 11,000 people who commute from outside city limits into the city for work; plus 3,000 tourists – a total of 30,000 people by day.
The fluctuations have a unique impact on city services, businesses and infrastructure.
Monday nights are slow for the Durango Police Department, but calls and activity tend to pick up around 10 a.m. weekdays before subsiding around 8 or 9 p.m., said Chief Bob Brammer. Officers can count on spikes each morning during the rush hour and a constant buzz of activity throughout the day. Fridays and Saturdays are busy from 8 a.m. to 2 a.m. of the next day. Sunday’s are quiet, then the cycle starts again.
The disparity between Census counts and police department staffing numbers makes it seem, on paper, like there’s plenty of law enforcement in Durango – but in reality, Brammer said the department has fewer patrol officers than it needs to keep the community safe.
“Staffing continues to be an issue; we’re competing against organizations that have less service demands and they pay much more money,” Brammer said.
The same, in effect, can be said for the Parks and Recreation Department, which on paper, has more than enough indoor recreation space – 128,284 square feet, to be exact. But Durango Community Recreation Center saw more than 400,000 users last year – many who waited for an open basketball court or swimming lane, department director Cathy Metz said.
“People will self-regulate and go at a different time of day that’s less likely to be impacted,” she said. “When things are popular – when we have classes and they’re drop-in – sometimes people will come super early to reserve a space, and then what happens is we hit a capacity and we can’t let people in.”
The recreation center is also a popular summer field-trip destination for schools outside Durango, Metz said. It’s great to see dozens of children alighting buses eager to exercise, she said, “and that’s impactful.”
“We’ll talk to regular users. We say, ‘You may want to avoid this time or give us a shout and we can let you know if a group is scheduled,’” Metz said.
Then there’s the parks, specifically the four athletic fields at Smith Sports Complex on Fort Lewis’ campus. People come from far away to play or practice soccer, lacrosse, football or rugby. But cleats rip holes in turf.
Parks and Recreation plans months in advance with athletic organizers to manage the damage to Durango’s premiere grass fields, Metz said.
“We track user numbers of all rec facilities and hours of use – what we’ve seen is numbers continue to grow,” she said. “We see a steady growth rate. We’ll see surges when a new amenity comes online. We had Lake Nighthorse open in 2018. If you look at numbers, we’ll see a big bump because of that.”
The scene downtown is inverse of Durango’s regular rhythm, drawing more people on nights and weekends. Residents of Durango and nearby communities flock to Main Avenue for dinner, drinking and dancing, said Tim Walsworth, executive director of Durango’s Business Improvement District.
“In summer, the disparity between day and night will be less, but in winter it’ll be more pronounced,” he said.
The seasonal cycle can be quantified using Central Business District sales tax collections for each month, but it’s not perfect. There are more purchases, and by extension, more people shopping in June, July and August, according to sales tax data. In 2017 and 2018, the city collected more sales tax from the Central Business District in December than any other month.
But each downtown business is different. A large restaurant, for example, may have to employ more seasonal workers than a boutique shop, Walsworth said. And different crowds patronize different businesses at different times. The Durango Police Department bases its shift changes, in part, on the 2 a.m. last call, Chief Brammer said.
Businesses predict patronage based on time of day and time of year, Walsworth said.
“Every retail or restaurant or entertainment business downtown is going to staff up in the summer,” he said. “When I talk to businesses, most are pretty savvy about how to have an appropriate level of staffing to maintain profit margins and a good level of service.”
There are about 7,200 homes, businesses and buildings that need fresh water or a place to put liquid waste, said Jarrod Biggs, assistant utilities director. The capacity of the system handles the fluctuation of usage, he said, but there are distinctive peaks city staff have to plan and prepare for.
City water usage averages around 7 million gallons a day in the summer, but “we do see fluctuations on a daily basis. When people are showering in the morning, that’s when a lot of drains are in use – so we’ll have a peak,” Biggs said.
Wastewater flow increases in the morning, too – but the treatment plant at Santa Rita treats just 2 million to 3 million gallons a day, Biggs said. He attributes the disparity between fresh and wastewater to irrigation or the water people consume and deposit outside city limits.
City staff may see more water and sewer use on big weekends or holidays, Biggs said. The influx of people into Silverton for Independence Day taxed the town’s wastewater treatment plant and left parts of town smelling like feces.
“We’re a popular destination, we’re a regional job center, a good economic base,” Biggs said. “One of the big questions I have is, how do we accurately or in any meaningful way measure tourism population?”
bhauff@durangoherald.com
