This page contains Frequently Asked Questions and Answers.
Ignoring the positive economic benefits that will come from a whitewater park, the goal is to fund the whitewater features with little to no City money. We will be doing fundraising from private donors as well as looking at what grants might fund it.
It all depends on what sort of feature/park you want. Parks can be functional with less than 100cfs of water or over 10,000cfs. For the Poudre the engineering company feels they can design features that will provide easy/beginner features at 1-200cfs, as well as at higher flows. One feature may be better at lower flows, and one at higher flows.
Neither do we! Most all kayakers, rafters, SUPers, etc, enjoy the experience of being in a natural environment. We want the river to look as natural as possible. The bulk of whitewater parks are made with mainly natural stone. The current target for the park is east of the College Avenue bridge. This currently has a concrete diversion, concrete wall, and large pile of rocks. It is far from natural. Part of the goal of the Downtown River Project is to restore this to a more natural environment, the whitewater park features will fit in well with this.
The features were designed to be good at many flows from a couple hundred to several thousand CFS
More to come!
While it is true the kayaking population of Fort Collins (or any Boulder or Lyons or Golden for that matter) is small, whitewater parks in those cities and more have proven to attract many more people than purely kayakers.
Many cities have shown that whitewater parks add to the economy. Our Information page has links to studies done on Golden and Lyons as well as the impacts of the Poudre River on Fort Collin’s economy.