DEL NORTE — The Rio Grande County Land Use Department held its first in a series of economic development workshops this past Thursday, July 30 at the county annex room in Del Norte.

The goal of the meetings, which are expected to continue until January, is to reconfigure the county master plan’s mapping of “opportunity areas” surrounding the municipalities of Monte Vista, Del Norte and South Fork, all of which lie along the Highway 160 corridor.

“Overall, we feel the master plan is adequate, but we’re not very happy with the commercial areas it depicts,” said Land Use Administrator Rose Vanderpool, opening the session. We’ve got some commercial zones that aren’t adequately placed. We need to keep commercial areas closer to the towns.”

The hour-long meeting was attended by the Rio Grande County Commissioners, along with officials from the above three towns.

Representatives from Center, which lies in both Rio Grande and Saguache Counties, were not present.

Although the initial plan was to push future development within three miles of a population center, it was determined that it would be more productive for each town to individually evaluate its potential opportunity area zones and present them at a later meeting, with factors like highway access and natural terrain coming into play. “It’s kind of hard for Monte Vista to tell South Fork what they’d like and South Fork to tell Del Norte what they’d like,” explained Commissioner Doug Davie.

Vanderpool also said that changes to the master plan’s identification of opportunity areas would be “more guideline than enforcement” and would also be subject to approval from the Colorado Department of Transportation.