From The Gazette (Colorado Springs): Moving Sky Sox baseball stadium downtown no longer is part of the City for Champions plan but all information gathered to support that project is locked away.
Colorado Spring’s city attorney will not release the results of a community survey taken by the city last summer to gauge public interest in a downtown baseball stadium even though plans to move Sky Sox stadium downtown were dumped in December.
In October, City Attorney Chris Melcher said the results of the survey were being kept secret and considered to be a “work product.” He denied the Gazette’s request, filed under the Colorado Open Records Act, to release the 50-question survey results and said the answers from the 2,000 community members who responded could be used to negotiate a future deal with Sky Sox team and stadium owner Dave Elmore.
But in December, just as the state was about to review the city’s application for four tourism projects dubbed the City for Champions, the architectural rendering of the baseball stadium morphed into a drawing and description of a sports arena.
In the city’s responses to a series of questions from the state’s Economic Development Commission, the city said: “The subsequent analysis herein does not include the Sky Sox as an anchor tenant.”
The Gazette filed a second request under CORA saying the survey results no longer were a work product because there were no plans to move the baseball stadium downtown. Council member Joel Miller also asked that the survey results be released to the public.
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