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State of the Valley News January 2008 |
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The State of the Valley News is a periodic newsletter from Healthy Mountain Communities and the Watershed Collaborative. Valley News contains information on initiatives, trends, ideas, and events impacting the Roaring Fork and Colorado River Valleys. |
Happy New Year!
The board and staff at Healthy Mountain Communities wish you all the best for 2008!
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The proceedings of the 2007 State of the Valley Symposium are now online.
Symposium materials, slide presentations, and a video of the presentation given by House Speaker Andrew Romanoff are all available to view or download.
Thanks again to the symposium speakers, sponsors and the over 160 participants for make the symposium a success!
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New land-use code & big proposals in Garco
A draft land-use code that has take the staff, consultant
team and planing commission four years and more than 45
meetings to develop is now going before the Garfield County
Commission with a recommendation of approval from the planning
commission.
Land use code public hearings are scheduled during January and
February. For a full schedule on meetings and the draft of
the new land use code visit the
Garfield County Building and Planning website (www.garfield-county.com).
A few big land use proposals won't get to test the new code in
2008. They fall under the current land use code. They
include:
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The
Sunlight Mountain Resort proposal, which includes 800
residences and lodging units and 100,000 square feet of
commercial space. The proposal also includes an estimated
$10 million in improvements to Four Mile Road from Dry Park
Road to the resort.
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The new
Cattle Creek Crossing preliminary plan includes 979
housing units - including 197 town homes, 299 multi-family
units and 315 single family homes on the 282 acre property.
The development team is promising that at least 10 percent
of the housing will be affordable housing
Garfield Commissioners recently
approved the Spring Valley Ranch development, a 6,000-acre
project with 577 housing units (75 affordable units). The
development has been before the county since the mid-1980s,
when 2,700 units were originally proposed.
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This past November saw a number of questions pass voter scrutiny throughout
the region.
In Rifle, voters
overwhelmingly approved a 2.5% lodging tax. In the 2004
municipal election, the lodging tax failed by a 52 to 48 percent margin.
Voters also
approved the elimination of the the city ordinance requiring all police
officers live within a 25-mile radius of the city and a land swap.
In Aspen, voters said
yes to all five referenda on the ballot including:
- a sales tax and use tax on construction materials to
fund city transit services and pedestrian amenities
- a property tax increase to fund an expanded
stormwater management system
- a bond issue to fund a new hydroelectric facility on
Castle Creek
- authorizing a change in use of open space for the
hydroelectric plant
- amending the city's home-rule charter to allow
instant runoff voting for council elections
And in
Glenwood Springs, voters embraced moving municipal elections from the fall
to the spring, approving their budget in December instead of October and
November to April, allowing language changes to the municipal code and (by
two votes!) allowing the city to publish full ordinances on the city
website and publish only the ordinance titles in the newspaper legal ads.
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Glenwood, Rifle, and the Roaring Fork School District have new board members for 2008 due to the results of the election this past fall. Thanks to all the community members who ran for seats, helped run campaigns and voted.
As Roman Statesman Cicero said over 2,000 years ago, ""Freedom is participation in power."
Glenwood Springs
Long-time community volunteers, Russ Arnesman, Shelley Kaup, and Dave Sturges won seats on Glenwood Springs' seven-member board. Bruce Christensen also won a second term and will serve as mayor for two more years.
Rifle
One incumbent Jonathan Rice and two new faces Jeanette Thompson, and Jay D. Miller, got the nod for
Rifle City Council. The new council member promptly re-elected Keith Lambert to serve again as Mayor.
Roaring Fork School District
Carbondale Community members Debbie Bruell and Bill Lamont will replace incumbents on the five-member school board. They will be joined by Myles Rovig of Glenwood who ran unopposed. The school district serves Basalt, Carbondale, and Glenwood.
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Carbondale & School District pursue affordable housing
Carbondale trustees approved the rezoning Roaring Fork School District property to enable affordable teacher housing in town.
The rezoning is one of several necessary steps for turning the 14.5-acre school campus between Third Street and Weant Boulevard
into affordable housing. The Town still must approve the district's PUD application and then review the actual development proposal. Playing fields and a community nonprofit center are also envisioned for the site.
Read John Stroud's article in the Valley Journal . . .
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Aspen bumping up housing effort
The Aspen City Council pushed forward plans to
create more than 400 affordable housing units in
an effort to boost its affordable housing stock.
Putting affordable housing on the fast track is a
result of elected officials'
two-day housing summit held in September with
Pitkin County Commissioners. Officials
acknowledged the severity of the housing problem
and believe it is one of the highest priorities in
the community. They established strategic
priorities for moving forward with attainable
solutions.
In one of the first major actions to achieve is
housing goals, the City Council recently
approved the purchase the BMC West property
near the Airport Business Center for $18.25
million. The 4.6 acre site is adjacent to another
recently completed 40-unit affordable housing
project and could accommodate
100 additional housing units.
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RFTA, Skico tackle housing crunch
The Roaring Fork Transportation Authority and the Aspen Skiing Company took steps to address the affordable housing challenge for their employees.
RFTA purchased a 15-unit apartment complex
in Carbondale for $2.1 million.
"By buying this, we're taking 15 units from citizens of Carbondale,"
Glenwood Springs Mayor Bruce Christensen said. Instead of promoting a "valley shell game" by
purchasing existing affordable housing, he said RFTA should develop new
housing.
Meanwhile the Aspen Skiing Co. and a team of
public-private partners broke ground on the 52-unit Keator Grove Affordable Housing Project, which is located on Highway 133 near the
entrance to River Valley Ranch in Carbondale.
Read the full article in the Aspen Times . . .
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The town of Gypsum has joined the ranks of mountain communities trying to create affordable housing workforce housing. The median home price in Gypsum, once the affordable housing in Eagle County, is now around $425,000.
Gypsum is taking a different tack from other affordable housing programs in the area. Instead of capping appreciation and restricting who can purchase the unit, Gypsum is hopes that by limiting the pool of potential buyers, the units will remain affordable in future resales.
The restrictions coupled with the market system will hopefully keep the deed-restricted units selling at a lower price than units without such restriction. It's unclear if this "lower price" will be low enough to keep the units affordable in the long run.
Read Pam Boyd's full article in the Aspen Times . .
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A 30-acre parcel owned by the City of Rifle could become a joint affordable housing project with Garfield County, Garfield RE-2 School District, and the Grand River Hospital District.
Although the idea in it its preliminary stages, there is strong agreement among the potential partners that affordable housing is a growing need in the western part of the county and the lack of affordable housing is impacting recruitment and retention of teachers, public safety officials, county staff, and hospital employees.
Read Phillip Yates article in the Post Independent
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Eagle County invests $4.5m in housing project
Eagle County has invested $4.5 million in an affordable-housing
neighborhood in Gypsum that some consider to be the next Miller Ranch.
Stratton Flats, near the western side of the Eagle County Regional
Airport, a 47-acre parcel that will have 226 deed-restricted homes, ranging from
one-bedroom condos to five-bedroom single-family houses. The project has 339 housing units. The project is a "public-private partnership" with Meritage Development Group in Basalt. The county expects to recoup the $4.5 million, plus 6 percent, at the end of the project (roughly 5 years) through the sales of the homes.
Read Ed Stoner's article in the Post Independent or visit
www.strattonflats.com
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Basalt officials are embarking on ambitious plan to
relocate 38 families out of the floodplain and redevelop a trailer park in the heart of town.
 If voters say yes in April, the town will issue $4.5 million of general obligation bonds that will be repaid through a property tax increase. hike.
A major study commissioned by the town in 2004 concluded that the two
downtown mobile home parks are highly susceptible to a major flood. Both are
along the banks of the Roaring Fork River.
If
the deal is approved by voters, the town government will find
replacement housing for the tenants, then close and remove the trailer
park.
The
vast majority of the site will be converted into a riverside park. A
strip closest to Two Rivers Road will be eyed for redevelopment.
Although no plan exists yet, various town officials said it could
feature a mix of commercial and residential uses, including affordable
housing.
Read Scott Condon's article in the Aspen Times . .
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Drilling stands tall in Garfield County
Natural gas permits issued in Garfield County last year accounted for 40 percent
of all oil and gas permits issued in Colorado.
About half of the 120-125 rigs that are drilling statewide are operating in
Garfield County. The county now has 4,133 producing wells.
The value of Garfield County's annual gas production is now about $2.25 billion
a year, with the statewide production expected to top $11 billion. The county
produces about a billion cubic feet of gas per day.
Although Garfield County has seen a tremendous increase in the number of permits
issued, it lags behind Weld County in the number of active wells. The COGCC
statistics show that Garfield County has 4,423 active wells, compared to Weld
County's 14,424 wells.
Read Phillip Yates article in the Aspen Times . . .
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Basalt Trustees gave the
thumbs up to Whole Foods by allowing an expansion
of the commercial size caps within the Willits PUD.
The approval opens the door for a 44,000 sq. ft.
supermarket that could open in 2010.
The approval was complicated and confusing
because of a request and then retraction from
Willits developer Michael Lipkin who claimed Whole
Foods would only open a store in Basalt if there
was for additional housing units and commercial
space available in the Willits development.
Trustees will review the request for additional
housing in February.
Whole Foods needs close to 150 workers to run
their store. They are confident they can fill 90%
of the positions locally.
Read Scott Condon's article in the Aspen Times . .
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The oil and gas industry has had big impacts on
the communities of western Garfield County. These
impacts have resulted in the City of Rifle dealing
with bigger capital and development projects than
they have dealt with in the past. For example:
The city council approved a
contract for a
$23 million regional wastewater reclamation
facility - the biggest
capital-improvement project in Rifle's history -
in late November.
The city council also approved the
Rim Rock subdivision - the
largest proposed housing development the city has
seen. The 360 acre site, in north Rifle, would
included between 1,200 and 1,400 units, a
commercial center, parks, trails, an amphitheater
and maybe an elementary school.
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People rode buses in the Roaring Fork Valley at a
record clip in December hauling just over 200,000
passengers for service along Highway 82 and to
Snowmass Village, RFTA Executive Director Dan
Blankenship said. "That's a 5.6 percent increase
over last year," he said. RFTA had a total of 4.3
million passengers during 2007.
 RFTA
is currently working to substantially improve its
service and double its annual boardings no later
than the year 2025. Transit planners believe
improved service could be attractive enough to
boost bus ridership to 8.7 million passengers
somewhere between 2018 and 2025.
RFTA efforts are not a moment too soon. Although
the
state government invested $250 million to expand
Highway 82 to four lanes from Basalt to Buttermilk,
the added capacity was just a temporary fix. The
four-lane highway will "approach peak-hour
gridlock at critical locations as early as 2009,"
a travel demand forecast by the Colorado
Department of Transportation concluded.
To build a better transit system,
RFTA is contemplating going to voters in its
service area to seek an additional funding -
possibly a sales tax or some type of "visitor"
tax.
Ralph Trapani, a former engineer with the Colorado
Department of Transportation who headed the
expansion of Highway 82 to four lanes, said an
investment in mass transit makes sense.
"We've probably got all the highway improvements
we're going to see," said Trapani. "Widening
Highway 82 to six lanes, that's not going to
happen."
Read Scott Condon's article in the Aspen Times . .
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Pitkin real estate dips; Garco continues soar
Total property transfers in Pitkin County
dropped for the first time since 2003. In
each year, since then total property transfers
broke the previous year's record. This year,
saw a slight drop to approximately $2.51
billion, down from $2.64 billion in 2006. In
2003 total sales were a record $1.3 billion.
Despite the drop, sales value more than doubled
(increased by over
$1 billion -
more than to total sales of all of Garfield
County) in 3 years. Whew! No wonder the
market exhaled.
Meanwhile, total real estate transfers in
Garfield County broke last year's record by
at least $500 million by reaching $1.09 billion
at the end of November. In 2006, total
transactions reached $1.04 billion.
Garfield County also followed a trend that
Pitkin County has seen for a number of years - a
declining number of total transactions of
increasing value.
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A new publication from ULI,
Growing Cooler: The,
analyzes the connection between efficient land
development and mitigating the impact of climate
change.
Download the full report . . .
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Thanks to the Colorado Office of Smart Growth, you
can receive timely information on upcoming smart
growth events around the state and nation.
Sign up for their
list serv to have information emailed to you or
check out the list of upcoming events on their
website, such as:
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