In 1973, in a prescient move to preserve one of the last remaining parcels of undeveloped land in the upper Vail Valley, the Town of Vail purchased Anholz Ranch, a 38-acre tract east of Vail Village bound by Gore Creek and South Frontage Road, now known as the Gerald R. Ford Park. The intent was to create a public green space that would satisfy the resort’s growing recreational and cultural needs. 

Fast-forward 51 years, and Ford Park hums with activity from early June through Labor Day, busy from dawn until long after dusk with lots and lots of people doing lots and lots of things, from fly fishing and kayaking to picnicking and dog walking, to pickup games of disc golf and beach volleyball. Like Manhattan’s Central Park, Ford Park also is where Vail visitors and locals gather en masse throughout the summer for big events, from the Vail Lacrosse Shootout—an annual pilgrimage for lacrosse fans that attracts over 100 teams and hundreds of spectators to the sprawling athletic fields—to typically sold-out classical music, jazz, and rock concerts at the 2,500-plus-seat Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater.

But only four lead organizations provide the oversight and management needed to operate and maintain this highly visited destination: Betty Ford Alpine Gardens (BFAG), the Vail Valley Foundation, Vail Recreation District, and the Town of Vail (which effectively owns the park and manages its common areas, creek frontage, roads, paths, and parking lots). Every 10 years or so, the Town updates the park’s master plan, an evaluation that looks at its present state but also reimagines its future to ensure that it continues to meet the needs of the community and its burgeoning year-round visitor base. In November 2023, the Town Council approved the 2023 Ford Park Master Plan, a 155-page blueprint for the park’s next decade, culminating a 17-month whirlwind of planning, community engagement, and research that was spearheaded by WRT, a planning and landscape architecture firm based in Philadelphia and San Francisco.

A Park for the People

Like previous iterations, the current master plan examines the park’s existing conditions—its management, seasonal usage, and competing interests, factoring in what has become glaringly obvious to locals and visitors alike: Ford Park is literally “being loved to death.” Case in point, using data derived from cellphone locations, BFAG (through a hired consultant) was able to ascertain that nearly 200,000 people visited the gardens in 2023. While some of those visitors were simply passing through, given Vail’s year-round population (4,735), it’s a large enough number to suggest that Ford Park is a highly attractive destination for tourists.

While master planning projects tend to veer toward big and transformational ideas, the 2023 Ford Park Master Plan is a more low-profile, high-
results-yielding process meant to identify and resolve existing issues and evaluate proposals for modest additions and modifications. 

“Almost every part of the park is cherished, claimed, protected or coveted by multiple parties, and as such there are many desires and hopes for the park that are sometimes conflicting,” the master plan introduction explains. “This plan has been developed as a continuation of many of the foundational tenets that have protected the park throughout its existence. It builds upon these principles and offers recommendations for new operational strategies and physical improvements. Many of these are in response to proposals put forth in the last few years and challenges that have evolved since the last plan.”

The most pressing and vexing challenges, according to Town of Vail Capital Projects Manager Todd Oppenheimer, involve traffic management and balancing the needs and demands of all stakeholders and park users.

“It’s a complex situation because everyone wants a piece of the park,” adds Oppenheimer. “How do we make it accessible to everyone without damaging the unique natural environment in which it sits?”

Andrew Dawson, a Denver-based senior associate at WRT, is the project manager. Since 2013, the four primary stakeholders, he says, had worked well together to implement everything that had been called for in the previous master plan update, including the construction of a new Education Center at Betty Ford Alpine Gardens and upgrades to the amphitheater’s entrance plaza. In the ensuing decade, however, new issues emerged—all related to increased human use—that must be addressed, including competing events that create conflicts with pedestrian and vehicular traffic, particularly during times of peak occupancy in Vail. Because each organization has its own unique mission, it’s critical, he explains, for all four stakeholders to coalesce around a holistic vision for the park that improves overall visitor experience while preserving the outdoor recreational space that draws users to it. 

“Everyone is fighting for their piece of the park and, at the same time, relying on a similar donor base,” says Dawson. “That struck a truth for us as we worked through the master planning process. This update takes the competition off the table.… It’s fundamentally about the ability of the stakeholders to work together. How can we create a vision for the next 10 years that sets everyone up for success with established priorities for operational and policy-driven improvements?”

Master planning processes often start with a bang, hatching big (and occasionally bold) ideas that often fail the most basic reality check: “Can we build it? Can we afford it?” The Ford Park Master Plan was no different. Addressing the congestion on Betty Ford Way, the park’s primary thoroughfare, Dawson proposed a canopy walk, an elevated pathway connecting main attractions that effectively would have bypassed traffic—a scrum of everything from cars and golf carts transporting concertgoers to semis and delivery vans ferrying cargo—that clogs the road before, during, and after performances at the amphitheater. While Dawson’s canopy plan was not included in the master plan’s final draft (it was deemed both too expensive and impractical to build), it did draw attention to a critical problem that, if left unchecked, likely will only worsen as more and more visitors flock to Vail and its signature green space, especially during the summer season.

The Big Challenge

Of particular concern is the easternmost stretch of Betty Ford Way, which drops 50 feet as it descends barely a quarter-mile from the 200-space main parking lot off South Frontage Road on the park’s Upper Bench to the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater entrance in the creek bottom on its Lower Bench. 

“The reality is that a visit to Ford Park is likely to involve a run-in with a vehicle at some point,” warns the 2023 master plan. “An unfortunately steady stream of maintenance, delivery, event, and private vehicles make their way along Betty Ford Way throughout a typical day.... Anyone in a wheelchair or pushing a stroller, especially visitors who are not used to the altitude, will have a difficult time moving between the Upper and Lower Bench. The organizations within the park strive to accommodate these visitors to the best of their abilities, with golf cart shuttles offered when needed and preferential parking treatment for donors during events.”

One of the primary outcomes of the Ford Park Master Plan is the much-needed establishment of an oversight committee that allows for a more streamlined approach to sharing knowledge and responsibility about events, maintenance, and needs in the park. According to the plan, one of the Ford Park Oversight Committee’s initial and primary tasks will be to implement a study to improve parking and transit efficiencies and manage vehicular and ADA-compliant access within the park. For example, the Vail Valley Foundation (VVF), which operates the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater (a.k.a. the “Amp”), has dramatically increased the number and scale of annual events in the Amp, says Dave Dressman, a VVF vice president who oversees the amphitheater, to maximize the potential of what until recently has been an under-utilized venue. Both expensive and logistically challenging to operate, the Amp must capture all its revenue during the six months it is open each season. As the master plan summarizes: “Pressure is on the VVF to deliver a wider variety and heightened production value of concerts, all within the confines of the longstanding difficult logistical dance required to host the New York Philharmonic one night and Trombone Shorty the next.” 

To that end, the VVF—which also owns and operates the GoPro Mountain Games, Hot Summer Nights, and the Vail Dance Festival—has partnered with AEG Presents, a live music and entertainment booking agency, to add a performance or two at the Amp to the itineraries of national acts scheduled to perform at Red Rocks and other Colorado concert venues. That collaboration has filled a nice niche, says Dressman, but it’s also creating a need to add more efficiency and sustainability to the organization’s overall operations. 

“We take the guest experience component of live entertainment very seriously,” he adds. “Even though the shows are getting bigger and the season is getting longer, we continue to approach the guest experience at the same world-class level we always have because it’s expected, from the community, donors, patrons, sponsors, media, and the artists. When Robert Plant or Trey Anastasio returns for a repeat performance, it means something. There’s no shortage of beautiful options to hear live music in this state and we want to be one of them.”

Conversely, Mike Ortiz, executive director of the Vail Recreation District, favors leaving Ford Park as—drumroll—a park. Enough is enough, he says, warning that booking too many big events could degrade the experience for everyone.

“How awesome is it for a resident or guest of Vail to play tennis and hear the New York Philharmonic performing next door and have the view of the Gore overhead?” he asks, adding, “But we’re programmed out right now. We have to be cognizant of creating an experience that is enjoyable for all users.” 

For Ortiz, collaborative scheduling and eliminating vehicular traffic in the park will go a long way to solving the current issues. “Let’s find ways to help people get to the bottom of the park other than cars, particularly cars that are driven by people who don’t live here. Cars have no business being in the park, period.”

Nicola Ripley, executive director of Betty Ford Alpine Gardens, is a bit more circumspect about the plan. The Town of Vail, she says, recognizes the value of having a public park encompassed by a world-class botanical garden. As a collaborative addition to the Ford Park Master Plan, BFAG is developing its own landscape master plan that considers the potential for new or under-landscaped areas within Ford Park with the goal of providing a road map to the stakeholder group for a shared maintenance agreement. 

Despite this progress, a couple of wildcards remain in the park’s master plan for the future, including the Vail Nature Center. In recent years the Nature Center has been managed by Avon-based Walking Mountains Science Center, which runs seasonal programs out of a 1940s cabin perched on a seven-acre parcel of land on the Lower Bench overlooking the creek just upstream of the amphitheater. Because routes into the Lower Bench are not compliant with ADA standards, improvements to the Nature Center and other organizational issues in this part of the park are now priority operational actions for the future. Separately, in an effort to create new opportunities to grow the arts and cultural scene in Vail, the Town’s Art in Public Places Program board recently approved a strategic plan that includes the construction of a studio building on a flat meadow overlooking Gore Creek in Ford Park that will house the organization’s artist-in-residency program.

How the Ford Park of the future manages the annual crush of activities and visitors is anyone’s guess, but for the next decade, a more organized and cooperative oversight committee will ensure that it is inclusive and accessible for all. As the master plan’s executive summary concludes:

“Ford Park remains a special place to the Vail community and the visitors that return each year. As an extremely valuable open space adjacent to Vail Village, it is a public asset that should continue to be protected.”

And cherished, for generations to come.