County steps up to clarify easement in Saddle Ridge

Easements will provide access from Gothic Road to open space

Gunnison County has agreed to work with the Saddle Ridge Homeowner’s Association to get the public the access to Smith Hill. It was promised when the subdivision was first approved.

The issue brought a contingent of Crested Butte staff members, including planner John Hess and town manager Susan Parker, to a meeting of the Board of County Commissioners on Tuesday, September 7.
“During the approval process [for the subdivision], there was the intent that there be trails dedicated to the public that go from the top of the cul de sac to this adjacent property, that is part of the Kochevar Parcel,” county attorney David Baumgarten told the commissioners. “There was also the intent that the right of the public continues along a 60-foot easement that follows an access road leading from Gothic Road for the purposes of accessing the trail.”
But the easements the public got were recorded in different ways. One of the easements appears in the property plat and two easements appear in the subdivision covenants. And the county has to work on ways to mesh the two.
The covenants detail that on the plat there is a dedicated 20-foot-wide easement from the western boundary of the subdivision for the public to use, and an additional 60-foot side easement across a private access road from Gothic Road for pedestrian traffic, bikes or horses.
But the covenant goes on to refer to an “easement,” in the singular, that will become effective when the land to the west of the subdivision, Smith Hill, becomes dedicated to the public, either in part or in total. “That has now come into being,” Baumgarten said.
The easement would access the recently purchased 106-acre Kochevar property acquired by the town this summer.
Baumgarten is going to work with the Saddle Ridge HOA and attorney Mike Dawson, who represented the developer at the time Saddle Ridge was approved by the county, to see if they can fix the discrepancies between the covenants and the plat.
“The easement doesn’t spring into being until this becomes dedicated to the public or gets a dedicated public trail on it, and that’s why it would appear in the covenants and not on the plat,” Baumgarten said.
Dawson said “The intent was to show both the 60-foot [easement] from the road and the easement from the cul-de-sac to the western boundary… But the idea at the time was that the dedication doesn’t really occur until there was something to access.”
But Dawson was only there to “provide a historical perspective,” and that was enough to send Baumgarten to the homeowners association to see if they agree with the interpretation, “and I would hope that they are [in agreement]… and I would like to memorialize it so there is no question that this exists,” said Baumgarten.
To be sure that the easements are honored, the county can either enforce the covenants adopted by the HOA and approved by the county or as the entity that approved the application for the initial subdivision, practically guaranteeing that the Saddle Ridge homeowners association will see the agreement as Baumgarten sees it.
Baumgarten said he would return to the commissioners to report on how the Saddle Ridge HOA responded to the county’s request to formalize the easements.