The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
September 30 is last chance for Landy
Time is nearly up for developer Dick Landy to make the necessary improvements to the Buckhorn Ranch Subdivision before the county takes over finishing the repairs to and construction of infrastructure and amenities at the 280-acre development south of Crested Butte.
The Gunnison Board of County Commissioners, at a regular meeting on Tuesday, September 1, were prepared to place a deadline of September 30 on just about every piece of the project that still needs attention, giving the retired Denver-area dentist less than a month to fix the eight remaining work items on the Development Improvement Agreement (DIA).
But the two unfinished housing units in Stallion Park did get a one-year extension from the commissioners and the money being held as security for those units could be released on November 15, 2010 if the construction meets the county’s specifications.
Despite comments from Landy and Buckhorn homeowners at a meeting last year about not wanting a ball field in the subdivision, a softball field was in the original DIA to be included at Buckhorn Ranch, and the county is holding Landy to it.
“You had a year to get the original agreement amended to replace a ball field with whatever else, and as far as I can tell you never entered into that process, so we are going to require the ball field be built to the specifications by September 30 as the DIA states,” commissioner Paula Swenson said.
Tyler Harpel, a designer and field engineer with Schmueser, Gordon, Meyer, the engineering firm working on the project, said plans were in place to address all of the remaining items in the DIA, including the ball field. He said they plan to use local rocks to hold down bubbles that have been forming in the lining of a small man-made pond in the subdivision.
Assistant manager of public works Allen Moores had taken a tour of the roads in the subdivision last spring and found several areas in need of attention. The suggestion at the time was to pave sections that received the most traffic and abuse, but Landy decided to follow the letter of the DIA and resurface the road with a double layer of chip seal.
“There was supposed to be two of those areas that got done last year and only one got done,” Moores said. “In my opinion both of those areas need hard surfaces.”
In response to Moores’ comments, Landy said the roads had been mostly completed and “[paving] wasn’t in the original DIA and there isn’t any money to do that right now.”
County attorney David Baumgarten warned Landy, saying, “I think the suggestion had been originally to pave it with a hard surface to avoid future difficulty. If your choice is to double chip seal it and the double chip seal fails, the county will be holding sufficient money to deal with it… so just know what the ultimate conclusion to this might be.”
The county still holds around $1.5 million in security to ensure that all of the items in the DIA are completed to the county’s satisfaction.
Landy was also instructed to take measures to mitigate the visual impacts of the unfinished construction on the two units at Stallion Park and to prove that the alterations have been made to the four fire hydrants that were out of compliance with the standard.
The county will revisit the progress being made at Buckhorn ranch at their meeting October 6.
