The Estes Park Town Board of Trustees unanimously approved the Downtown plan and the Downtown Parking Management plan at their regular meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 23.

The Downtown plan was presented to the Town Board by Planner Audem Gonzales of the Community Development Department. Gonzales spoke on public input into the final plan.

"I feel after going through the whole process we have had a lot of public input," Gonzales said. "We have had over 20 downtown plan steering committee meetings and that committee was very valuable in creating this plan."

There were also three community meetings and Community Development has received hundreds of comments in each meeting, changing and evolving the plan to its current and final iteration.

The plan is a 20 year vision for Estes Park, according to Gonzales, and what Downtown Estes Park is now and can be in the future. The plan is not a regulatory document, but it is policies and goals that will set the stage for the next decades.

"It offers flexibility for future projects; it is a database of current situations; is framework for implementations and provides a very clear vision of Estes Park," Gonzales said.

Gonzales said that the plan has considerations for the new flood plain maps coming out in the future and the plan will be updated through the years.

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Public Works Director Greg Muhonen said that the new flood plain maps don't change the content of the Plan and he doesn't expect any changes. Town Administrator Frank Lancaster said that Town officials didn't know when those maps would be done with a third party review originally requested by Loveland. The Board approved the Downtown Plan with a unanimous vote.

Muhenon presented the Downtown Parking Management Plan to the Trustees for final approval. This plan is a subset of the Downtown Plan and Muhonen said that this dives deep into the parking issues facing Estes Park.

"This plan is a guiding document that allows the Town to strategically manage their parking issues," Muhonen said. "This plan addresses some issues that are really important to the economic vitality of this town."

The plan calls for a four phase process that first studies the issues, collects data, and then slowly implements paid parking throughout most of downtown over the span of a number of years.

The first phase does not implement paid parking, and by the end of phase three, 37 percent of parking remains free.