Creekside subdivision project moving toward county approval

“We’ve come out with a really good project”

The Creekside subdivision being proposed south of Crested Butte cleared the public hearing portion of the planning process on Friday, June 4, bringing Ted Colvin of Colvin Construction a little closer to getting approval for five Slate River-side lots west of Highway 135.

After a site visit and a half-dozen meetings, the Gunnison County Planning Commission has as many details about the proposed project as they need regarding the building lots, their proximity to the steep slope bordering the river and the changes in drainage building on the property might cause.
The Creekside property is a little over nine acres. None of the lots are smaller than 1.6 acres, with the largest at 2.55 acres. At the bottom of the slope bordering the river, Colvin has proposed a park to be shared between homeowners of the Whetstone Mountain Ranch and Creekside subdivision.
“The home sites are in the relatively flat part of the property and it goes out to the edge of the 15 percent grade. We’ve done extensive covenants that require everyone to respect the possible wetlands below and treat them as if they are wetlands,” Colvin said. “The homeowners will be personally responsible to make repairs if damage is done to the park.”
Creekside’s covenants will also protect the sagebrush that covers the area and helps hold the soil in place. Colvin told the board that if any homeowner wants to replace the sage with grass, all they will have to do is water it. The sagebrush will die and grass will grow, he said, but people won’t be able to pull it out by the roots.
“I think we’re doing a good job of protecting the assets we have there,” Colvin said.
One asset neighbor, John Murphy, showed up at the meeting to make sure Colvin didn’t think he had constant peace and quiet in the subdivision.
“The corner of my property is visible on the map and I can work seven days a week, sun-up to sun-down,” Murphy said. “My concern would be if any potential buyers of parcels two, four and five are aware that they are next to an industrial park with those kinds of working hours and conditions. I don’t want that to impact my business or my livelihood.”
He said he could hear back-up beepers and engines running on the opposite end of Riverland from where his business is located and “There is a sound impact” that he’s concerned about.
Murphy also suggested that the county require a test well on the property to make sure that the water going into the river from the Creekside property is staying within the standard, “just in case fertilizers and stuff do enter the river and the [test well in the Industrial Park] comes up tainted, we could test to see where the contaminants are coming from.”
Another of Murphy’s concerns is the impact the subdivision could have on the number of people renting commercial space in Riverbend if people are allowed to work out of their homes in the subdivision.
Although the Land Use Resolution limits the number of clients a home-based business can serve in a day, commissioner Hap Channell urged Colvin to consider including something in Creekside’s covenants about outside traffic.
The planning commissioners were satisfied with the information they had gotten and the plan they’d seen and voted to close the public hearing on the proposal. Even though the subdivision process wasn’t what Colvin had hoped to go through with the county, he was happy with the way it went.
“We’ve done a lot of changes since we started the process. I wasn’t too eager to go through the subdivision process and I have to admit that this has been a very good process so far,” he said. “I think we’ve addressed an awful lot of things on this and we’ve come out with a really good project.”