In the late 1990s, Andrew Klotz and Gabe Preston, at the time both employees of the Pitkin County, Colorado, Planning Department, noticed something about planning efforts – when there were any – in the rural areas of the West. “Too much planning was happening intuitively,” says Klotz. “There was rarely enough information available to make good decisions.”

So Klotz and Preston set out to change that. They scraped together some grants and came up with a plan, and in 2000 they formed the Rural Planning Institute, a non-profit dedicated to working alongside communities to help them grapple with growth. In one of the fastest growing regions in the country, they had no trouble finding work.

Since then, RPI has provided technical assistance and other planning services to dozens of clients up and down the Western Slope of Colorado, including:  Durango, Aspen, Mancos, Garfield County, Glenwood Springs, Rifle, Montezuma County, Montrose and many others. Projects include the development of impact fee schedules, fiscal analyses of developments, long-term fiscal outlooks, master plan development, housing needs assessments and more. Currently, RPI is working with the San Juan Public Lands Office to develop a management plan for U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands.

RPI’s professional and experienced team has developed a reputation of involving the community in the decision-making process while still adhering to a thorough and rigorous analytical approach. The team’s information-gathering techniques are sophisticated, but it emphasizes a simple and straightforward presentation of information and data in a way that everyone can understand in order to facilitate a wise and informed decision making process. The result is a final product that is clear, functional, credible, and innovative.

RPI delivers professionalism and excellence to its clients.

Give us a call at

970-382-9886

or visit our office at

1911 East Main Ave., Suite 224 • Durango, CO 81301