#Frisco #Colorado
A legal battle looms over the fate of Fiester Preserve, a 6-acre open space parcel at the southwest corner of Highway 9 and the western entrance to Peak One Boulevard on the outskirts of the Town of Frisco.
At the core of the fight to save Fiester is the legal argument to save a conservation easement placed on it decades ago — by the county itself.
That argument will be put forth by the open space conservation nonprofit Colorado Open Lands, who inherited the easement from the former Colorado Divide Land Trust when the two organizations merged last year.
Colorado Open Lands President and CEO Tony Caligiuiri gave the Summit Daily a broad overview of the defense his organization will put forth if and when Summit County’s Board of County Commissioners attempts to condemn and extinguish the conservation easement on its own land. Aside from the Fiester Preserve, Colorado Open Lands owns and protects just around 450 conservation easements across the state.
From the outset, Caligiuiri made clear that his organization would not voluntarily extinguish its own easement.
“We are obligated to defend the easement, and we are always concerned about facilitating any kind of precedent when it comes to condemnation,” Caligiuiri said. “It would start eroding the integrity of easements in general.”
