Dear Editor,

While I was a vocal opponent of high-density housing at Red Feather Ridge (RFR), I now find myself admiring and appreciating the way further development of that property is being conducted.

The owner of that property (by default) is MidFirst Bank of Oklahoma. Their interests and those of our community were not in harmony regarding the way the property was to be developed. In fact, the citizens of Glenwood Springs voted (in my opinion wisely) to disallow annexation of RFR, thereby precluding MidFirst from maximizing their return on the property.

To their credit, MidFirst seems to have taken this setback in the most constructive fashion possible. They continue to improve the property, to landscape it, to maintain it impeccably, and to do all this in a very workmanlike manner. Witness the small mountain of prior construction trash they are preparing to remove that otherwise would have remained buried to haunt future owners.

I fully understand that MidFirst is doing this in their own interest and ultimately to facilitate a sale of the property. Yet I wonder how many other businesses, realizing that significant financial rewards are unlikely, would continue to be such good and conscientious stewards of the property. I hope that in time MidFirst will be rewarded with a buyer who has a similar respect for this land and treats it as sensitively.

In the meantime those of us in Glenwood Springs can be thankful for the way MidFirst is handling the situation. Things could be a lot worse.

Michael Larime

Glenwood Springs