Author: Bill Mckeown
-
GETTING THERE: FREX service may fall on city chopping block in 2009
Is the FREX commuter bus service to Denver worth saving? That’s the question the Colorado Springs City Council likely will have to answer in the coming weeks, as it struggles to make cuts to cover an $8.7 million budget shortfall caused by plummeting sales tax revenue. In prosperous times, the answer might be easy. The…
-
Ski Shop doesn’t even need summer
It’s tough for any locally owned business to survive more than five decades, let alone one that depends on that most fickle of meteorological conditions – snow. That’s what The Ski Shop has done. Opened in 1952, the business on South Tejon Street has fitted generations of Colorado Springs skiers with boots and skis. And…
-
Home Front cares supports soldiers, families
The Home Front Cares, a nonprofit organization started five years ago in Colorado Springs to help wounded and deployed service members and their families, has begun to think about its role when the Iraq war ends. Brock Strom, a retired Air Force colonel, is the organization’s president and chief executive. He said the organization was…
-
GETTING THERE: I-25 problems at Rockrimmon exit persist
Despite the new higher speed limit on Interstate 25 through Colorado Springs, it isn’t all clear sailing for motorists. The contractor that rebuilt and widened the interstate two years ago, a $150 million project called COSMIX, is working to correct a thorny problem near the Rockrimmon/North Nevada exit. Northbound interstate traffic in that area has…
-
Dreams pass along from one generation to the next
Americans on Tuesday were challenged by their first black president to honor the sacrifices of past generations and shape, in a perilous time, a future worthy of this country’s ideals. It was a message that resonated deeply among some in Colorado Springs, some at the end of their lives, others just beginning to live them.…
-
Slain teen made a lasting impression on former teacher
At the end of his first year of teaching in 2002, a then-24-year-old Phil Hutcherson asked for a promise and made a pledge to his fifth-grade students at District 2’s Wildflower Elementary: Graduate from high school, and he’d be in the stands to watch.Hutcherson, now 31 and a math teacher at District 11’s West Middle…
-
Banks see flurry of refinancing
Low interest rates have sparked what some are calling an unprecedented flurry of home mortgage refinancing applications in recent weeks, a bright spot in a bleak local real estate market.Still, some mortgage bankers said they’re seeing some homeowners shut out of lower mortgage payments by the recent decline in home values in the region or…
-
GETTING THERE: State roads, bridges just don’t make the grade
Colorado’s network of roads, bridges and dams is decaying, as time, weather and neglect slowly erode the asphalt, steel and concrete used after World War II to construct a modern state. And the deterioration is only going to get worse. That’s the grim conclusion of a group of professionals who help design and build Colorado’s…
-
I-25 speed limit through town going up Sunday
Drivers, start your engines! The speed limit on Interstate 25 through Colorado Springs will be raised Sunday. Highway crews will begin replacing 55 mph speed signs with 65 mph signs beginning at 8 a.m. The first sign allowing the higher speed will be put up on the right shoulder along northbound I-25 just north of…
-
GETTING THERE: Drop in gas prices only temporary
In the midst of a grim economy, lower gas prices have been a small but real comfort. Just don’t expect them to last forever. That’s the new-year prognostication of Harlan Ochs, a gentleman who has been in the oil and gas business for 51 years. He and brother Ken co-own and manage Acorn Petroleum, a…