On Dec. 16, the Pagosa Springs Town Council heard a report on a business survey which asked how Colorado Department of Transportation’s (CDOT’s) U.S. 160 reconstruction project is impacting businesses in the downtown corridor.
The survey was conducted by the Pagosa Springs Area Chamber of Commerce over a six-month period, from April to September, with an average of about 30 businesses responding in any given month. It included businesses from 10th Street to the River Center.
In the survey, the business types of the respondents ranged from entertainment, retail, restaurant, bar and medical to unknown.
The Chamber’s current executive director, Sandy Douthey, and former director, Mary Jo Coulehan, were both on hand to present the report’s findings to the council.
Coulehan explained that around 50 percent of the businesses in the downtown corridor responded to the survey in the given months.
For whatever reason, it was many of the “service-industry businesses that were not responding to us,” she added.
Douthey explained that many of the respondents reported losses in sales during these months and, in the survey, they “directly” blamed downtown construction and the loss of on-street parking near their businesses for the losses.
One respondent, describing their business type as entertainment, reported that “the road construction is DEFINETLY affecting my business and accessibility to my business location. It is making it hard for a small business to survive.”
Douthey explained that, “no matter the month,” most businesses reported a loss in sales compared to 2024 of “more than 20 percent, and that could be due to a myriad of reasons, but the story in the report” shows that most respondents claim “it came directly on the construction.”
She added that the sales tax numbers, frequently studied by the town, could be skewing the narrative about the performance of the local economy, since these numbers include sales taxes collected from businesses, such as Walmart and City Market, located uptown, away from the downtown construction zone.
She said that the Chamber is starting a “new survey that will include more than just the downtown businesses” and that it will add “a lot more details.”
“We are doing this to get a clearer picture of what’s going on uptown and what’s going on downtown, and how the sales tax numbers are showing one thing, but the [downtown] businesses are reporting another, because it could be that uptown businesses are skewing the numbers,” she said.
Coulehan added, “The sales tax numbers were on the increase, but we were hearing from our [downtown] businesses that they were down,” citing this as one of reasons the Chamber wanted to conduct the survey.
She said, “We still don’t know” if consumerism was shifting toward uptown as consumers avoided the construction zone, but that the Chamber survey hoped to “get a pulse” on what’s going on with the local economy during the construction.
Council member Brooks Lindner replied, “I would like the council to acknowledge” that even though sales taxes, overall, could be up, “it’s apparent, from the survey, that we have businesses downtown that are really struggling, and this construction has had a huge impact on our downtown businesses.”
He said that, going into the construction, “I thought we had prepared really well for this, as well as we could, especially since we had that delay of a year … and we really did a lot of proactive moves to prepare for this. And, yet, having done that, it seems we still have a lot of struggling businesses downtown.”
He added, “It really gave me pause to ask, what can we do? And how does this jive with the sales tax information that we are getting?”
The downtown survey shows that in July, typically Pagosa’s busiest month for tourism, 48 percent of the respondents (out of 25 respondents) reported being down in sales by more than 20 percent compared to the same month in 2024.
Zero respondents for the month of July reported being up in sales by more than 20 percent and only 20 percent of businesses reported being up in sales by 1 to 20 percent compared to last year during the same month, the survey shows.
Council member Madeline Bergon expressed that a lot of what is going on with the CDOT road construction is “well outside” the control of town staff or town council.
She suggested that the council looks “at things within our control” to try to minimize the negative impacts of the construction on businesses.
Council member Matt DeGuise suggested that he knew businesses were “hurting,” but he also wondered how much of the impact stems from “the economy as a whole,” which could be impacting tourism numbers to the area.
He added that the surveys were a good thing, because “the more information we have at our disposal, the more we can use that information to help fix problems.”
During public comment, several downtown business owners spoke out about what they have experienced during the road construction.
Rosanna Dufour suggested that she is concerned that “inaccurate” snapshots of the local economy, using overall sales tax numbers, gave a “false sense of stability” that impacted local participation in the economy.
She expressed concern that if locals believe “there is no problem,” then they will believe “that downtown businesses do not need their support.”
“They’ll believe we are managing through construction without serious impact,” she said, suppressing “community engagement at the moment we need it the most, discouraging intentional choices to shop downtown at businesses struggling to survive this project.”
She added, “Businesses are asking for honesty, transparency, and acknowledgment.”
Darren Gantt echoed Dufour’s comments, adding that “the losses are much more than the data reports.”
He also shared a rumor that businesses in Durango are telling their customers “not to go to Pagosa,” because businesses are closed, suggesting a “proactive campaign to advertise that Pagosa is open for business.”
Kirsten Skeehan explained that her sales are down 23 percent, adding that “we were prepared,” but worried even more about the second year of road construction.
“We planned. Great. Let’s plan again and again,” she said, adding that she’d like to see a better parking plan and a campaign to “retrain” people on where to park.
Janine Emmets explained that customers have described “almost giving up” trying to access her shop and expressed wonder at “how many customers never made it.”
She said that without dependable access during the winter months, “we will not make it.”
Scott Allen told the council that his sales are down “35 to 45 percent,” and that he, basically, had to scale down his staff to his wife, himself and one cook.
He described the patio as “a filthy mess” caused by mud and dirt being blown onto it from the construction “slinging dirt everywhere.”
“Nobody wants to sit out there,” he exclaimed.
After public comment closed, Lindner said, “I really appreciated hearing from you all. Nobody liked having this road construction project hoisted on our community.”
He suggested that the town gather ideas from the business owners on “what your suggestions are,” and then the council could look at everything to see where it could help.
Council member Gary Williams added, “we’re adaptable,” suggesting a “quick review to see what the town could do to help struggling businesses, whether it’s sweeping the street more often, waiving fees, more parking or better signage.
Douthey explained that the purpose of the survey was to “reach out to the businesses to hear what they were going through” during the construction, and “to itemize it and drill down into” what businesses would like to see and what they might need going forward.
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