Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
Revolutionizing · Modernizing · Simplifying
Picture a convenience store. You are thinking one register, maybe two. A slushie machine. A guy behind the counter selling lottery tickets and beef jerky.
Now picture 74,000 square feet, about 120 fuel pumps, roughly 20 EV charging stations, and 780 parking spaces.
Same thing, right?
That is the actual question in front of the El Paso County Board of County Commissioners this morning. They met at Centennial Hall in downtown Colorado Springs, a hearing booked for 9 to 11 a.m. on Thursday, August 27. And the whole thing turns on whether a Texas travel center the size of a small airport terminal counts as a neighborhood convenience store under the county's Land Development Code.
I am not exaggerating. That is literally the question.
Buc-ee's tried this once already, and it did not go well.
Back in 2024 the company wanted to annex into the town of Palmer Lake, population about 2,700. And the town lost its mind. Within two days of the plans going public, more than 1,200 people signed a petition against it. What followed was not a normal zoning fight. It was recalls, resignations, special elections, and lawsuits. The kind of stuff that tears a small mountain town apart.
Buc-ee's pulled the plug on that plan on February 4, 2026, and withdrew the application.
But they did not leave. Two months later, in April 2026, Buc-ee's bought a roughly 30-acre parcel just west of Interstate 25 up at Monument Hill, near the County Line Road exit. Over
Here is the part people miss. By going after county land instead of town annexation, Buc-ee's changed the entire game. Different rules. Different decision makers. And a whole different legal question.
In July, county Planning and Community Development Director Meggan Herington made her call. And her call was basically that she could not make a call. She said she could not determine whether the proposed use meets the code's definition of a convenience store in the C-1 zoning district.
Buc-ee's did not love that. They filed their appeal on July 2, 2026.
And this is important. Today's hearing does not approve construction. It does not deny construction. It answers exactly one thing: is a Buc-ee's an allowed convenience store use in C-1, yes or no.
Sounds small. It is not.
Because if commissioners rule the use is allowable, every future development application goes administrative. Meaning no public hearing. Meaning the community that just spent two years fighting this thing loses its microphone.
That is why the opposition is not treating this like paperwork.
Palmer Lake trustee Beth Harris, who got elected after a Buc-ee's-related recall (let that sink in, an entire local political career born out of this fight), emailed commissioners and urged them not to treat this proposal with an administrative approval. She sees exactly where this road goes.
On August 3, 2026, the Monument Town Council did not mess around either. Unanimous letter to the county asking them to uphold the original determination and reject the appeal. Every single member. No wiggle room.
And this thing has pulled in names way above the county level. Governor Jared Polis, along with U.S. Senators John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet, earlier called on Buc-ee's founder Arch Aplin III (yes, his nickname is actually 'Beaver,' which is a whole thing) to reconsider the location. When your gas station fight has two sitting U.S. senators weighing in, you are past the slushie-machine stage.
The concerns across the Tri-Lakes area, and that is Monument, Palmer Lake and Woodmoor, come down to water, wildlife, light pollution and traffic. This is high, dry country. A 24-hour operation with 120 pumps burning lights all night is a real question up there, not a talking point.
Buc-ee's counters with the number it always counters with: nearly
If you want to know what a Buc-ee's looks like when it lands, drive north. Colorado's first one opened March 18, 2024, at 5201 Nugget Road in Johnstown. It is 74,000 square feet, 116 fuel pumps, 12 EV chargers, open around the clock. Same footprint as what is proposed for Monument Hill, give or take a few pumps and chargers.
Now put that on the ridge over I-25 where people have been fighting it for two years straight.
The company laid all of this out in an application that runs nearly 300 pages. Three hundred pages to argue that the beaver belongs in the same code line as the corner Kum & Go.
The commissioners have to draw a line somewhere. And wherever they draw it decides not just one gas station, but whether Monument Hill's future gets settled in a public room with a microphone, or quietly, on paper, with the neighbors reading about it after the fact.
Buckle up. This one is far from over.