Courtesy photo
George Newman’s 12-year tenure as a Pitkin County commissioner started and ended in crisis.
“It’s interesting,” the 69-year-old said in a phone interview Thursday, his second official day out of office. “I was talking to a friend of mine recently and I hadn’t thought about that. I started at the time of the Great Recession and then COVID (struck).”
But the crises between January 2009 and Tuesday, when he stepped down, have bookended a political career that Newman said he thinks lived up to the slogan on the yard sign from his first campaign he still keeps in his garage: “Preserve, Conserve, Collaborate.”
A former industrial site off McLain Flats Road near the Rio Grande Trail between Woody Creek and Aspen will be home to a new solar farm, which will cover 35 acres and should start being built by fall 2021. (Aspen Times file photo)
Pitkin County commissioners on Wednesday enthusiastically re-endorsed a solar farm they approved last year that hasn’t yet been built.
A new solar energy company has taken the reins of the project and plans to finish construction at the former industrial site off McLain Flats Road between Woody Creek and Aspen by the fall, an official said.
“We’re quite excited about this project and what it represents,” said Nathan Hewitt, a senior manager with Oakland, Calif.-based Primergy Solar, which took over from Renewable Energy Systems as the builder and operator of the farm.