Meeting planned to discuss Clark land exchange leadership

Donation of 960 acres comes with requirement of affordable housing

It has been more than a year since Gunnison residents Judy and Ralph “Butch” Clark offered to trade 960 acres they own in the Fossil Ridge Recreation Area for land that could be developed by Gunnison County for affordable housing.

Now the process of bringing their idea to bear is moving forward again with a meeting scheduled January 13 between Clark, Gunnison Housing Authority Director KT Gazunis, the town of Crested Butte and other area entities that have a stake in the future availability of affordable housing in the Gunnison Valley.
“We are very fond of the [Fossil Ridge] property and we want it to be preserved as it is for generations. And we also know that in rural western communities, finding space to build affordable housing can be a problem and we think both concerns can be addressed with this arrangement,” Clark said when the land was donated.
The Clarks purchased the property, with a “well-built cabin and a three-seater outhouse,” in 1971 from Ben Jorgensen, who built the cabin in 1938. Today, the property is entirely surrounded by land managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and a swap would complete the federal land holdings in the area.
Clark said at the time that the property was valuable to his family, but if it were kept open to the public he would be willing to work out an agreement to swap the land with the federal government for land closer to central services, like sewer and water. The land Clark gains in a swap would then be given up as an area to develop affordable housing.
Clark admits that the process of seeing through his vision for an energy-efficient and sustainably built community will likely be a long one, but thinks of the time as an opportunity to get the development right.
Since one of the first hurdles Clark faces is matching his dream with the ideas local municipalities have for affordable housing, he is hoping that next week’s meeting will produce an idea of where the development could happen and a governing structure to take the idea forward.
“We’re looking for land in exchange for the donation because the money we would get for the trade doesn’t go very far,” Clark said. “We are also trying to fit things in with the three-mile plans of the various municipalities, so there is still a lot of work to be done.”
Clark said he is hoping that the development would contain a mix of people, from those who are living in the area because of their employment and others who need affordable housing to continue living in the area.
The meeting will be an extension of a discussion that Clark had last summer with many of the project’s stakeholders, including the Office for Resource Efficiency and the BLM, and will be held Wednesday, January 13 in Gunnison.