Eagle Valley Land Trust breaks ground on new Conservation Center
Building will open for community programming and gatherings following completion of phase one of construction in November
Zoe Goldstein/Vail Daily
The Eagle Valley Land Trust held a groundbreaking ceremony for its new Conservation Center in Edwards on Wednesday.
The land trust purchased the former Wildflower Farm property in 2022 after setting its sights on creating a Conservation Center in 2020. Already a well-recognized space within the community, the Eagle Valley Land Trust plans to create a hub for conservation-related programming.
The site has extra meaning for the Eagle Valley Land Trust because of its proximity to the Eagle River Preserve, county land on which the land trust holds a conservation easement.
“This is a really great example about how conservation in partnership works really well,” said Jessica Foulis, the executive director of the Eagle Valley Land Trust. “We’re really excited to have the opportunity to showcase that, and be neighbors with Eagle County, and collaborate and create a really great resource for the whole community.”
The Conservation Center is being designed as a community gathering space and the home of the Eagle Valley Land Trust offices. The Conservation Center will serve as a space for the Eagle Valley Land Trust’s community partners to provide programming, and for community members who have questions about how to conserve, access and enjoy land to find direction and answers.
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“My hope is really to democratize this acre, to create a space for our community partners to use,” Foulis said.
Renovations will create beautiful, useful space for gathering and learning
Construction on the property will be completed in two parts. The first phase, due to be completed in November, includes light renovations on the building space and the front of the property.
“We really want to respect the legacy of the building,” Foulis said. “We know the community loves this place, and we’re so grateful to have the opportunity to conserve it, and we want to keep it as much true to what it looks like right now as we possibly can.”
Renovations will make the building ADA accessible by adding a second entrance, and add offices, gathering spaces and a kitchen. A permanent space for the Eagle Valley Outdoor Movement’s community gear library and bilingual adventure resource center will also be created on the building’s first floor.
Community gathering spaces will have movable partitions to change the space size depending on the program taking place. The back of the building will feature a large glass door that can be opened to the outdoors when the weather is nice.
“Everything is designed to be as useful as possible, so multi-use, multi-organizational, so that we can move things around to meet the needs of our partners and our programs,” Foulis said.
The fundraising goal for the first phase is $4 million. The Eagle Valley Land Trust has already raised $2.9 million toward that total and hopes to reach the target by the time construction is completed in November.
The second construction phase will be a remodel of the building’s backyard.
“The idea is for the space to be really beautiful, and open to the public, but as useful as possible for different configurations for different programs and events,” Foulis said.
At the top of the yard, there will be a patio with shade structures and movable tables and chairs, a small amphitheater, and several demonstration gardens. The gardens will showcase environmental strategies like pollinator gardens and WaterWise, as well as the Eagle Valley Land Trust’s community partners, like the Eagle County Conservation District.
“We’re hopeful that landowners can come here and learn how they can create those gardens at their own homes,” Foulis said.
Another section of the yard will house a wildlife viewing platform. The elevated platform will offer a space for visitors to safely watch wildlife, as well as “360 views of the valley, which will be pretty amazing,” Foulis said. Below the platform will be a shaded gathering space for meeting and learning.
The northern end of the property will feature a sensory garden for kids, including a space to play in the dirt, and a rain demonstration garden.
Community Center provides a solution to a community need
“This is something that the community was asking for through our strategic planning process, and we’ve been able to deliver it much more quickly than we anticipated,” Foulis said.
In 2016 and 2017, the Eagle Valley Land Trust conducted a gap analysis through the Family Leadership Training Institute to identify the community’s bigger issues and determine the ones the land trust might solve.
Through the analysis, the Eagle Valley Land Trust recognized that the community needed a landscape-scale approach to conservation, and “also a place where all the resources are consolidated, and community members can come and learn,” Foulis said.
“What we kept hearing from people was, ‘I don’t want to go outside, I don’t know where I’m allowed to go, I don’t know what the rules are there, I don’t know if it’s appropriate, I don’t know if my dog can be off-leash or not,'” Foulis said.
Community members will be able find answers to those questions at the new Conservation Center. Landowners, who often confront a different set of challenges when it comes to promoting conservation on their land, will also find solutions in the Conservation Center.
“For landowners, there are lots of different resources, (but) landowners are incredibly busy, they don’t have time to be calling around to figure out who can help them with all these different things,” Foulis said. “They can come to us, and we can do that work to bring in grant funding, to bring in partners, to help them solve the challenges that they’re having on their property.”
The Conservation Center is designed to increase conservation engagement and resources going forward.
“We feel that having this physical space for landowners and for our community will help us to increase the rate of conservation, (and) also encourage our community to all be able to engage with conservation, and get out on public land and enjoy nature,” Foulis said.
