How should Fort Collins use the former Hughes Stadium land?

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FORT COLLINS

Before 2017, the parking lot at Hughes Memorial Stadium was the place you went on a September Saturday to hibachi hot links and guzzle New Belgium brews before heading into the arena about 3 miles from Colorado State University to watch the Rams lock horns with their football rivals. 

But school officials decided to abandon the old concrete stadium for a new on-campus, $220 million football complex, leaving an enormous human-made scar in the prairie where Hughes and its parking lots once sat. CSU thought the best use for these 167 acres was transforming them into a mix of housing, commercial uses and a transit center with some land set aside for open space. 

A group of Fort Collins conservationists had a different…