Evaluating ridgeline development

Obtrusiveness in the eye of the beholder
 
Beauty, they say, lies in the eye of the beholder. In Gunnison County, where natural beauty is one of the valley’s defining qualities, it could perhaps be said that ridgeline development lies in the eye of the beholder.

The Gunnison County Planning Commission reviewed Land Use Resolution (LUR) language on ridgeline development last week, as well as the list of ridgeline vantages, to determine whether it gives the commission the direction and flexibility it needs to evaluate new development.
“Frequently, in reviewing ridgeline applications there are either circumstances that don’t seem to fit, or problems with the review and regulations as they are written,” said commission chairman Ramon Reed. “As an example that needs to be clarified, there is a house between Crested Butte and Mt. Crested Butte. If you look at exceptions [in the LUR], no feasible alternate site exists on the parcel. But in that case there would have been a site lower on the parcel where the house could have been built without interrupting the ridgeline, but road access and wells had already been put in [that location].”
In this particular case, the owners purchased the property with the road and wells in place, and the commission approved building the house at the higher location. But for Reed it highlighted the concern that homeowners might intentionally alter their property to ensure the ability to build on the site of their choosing—namely the one with the best view.
The site with the best view can also be the most visible, and the LUR was designed to protect the aesthetic quality of Gunnison Valley ridgelines by reducing a new structure’s impact on the ridgeline itself.
“It was timing,” community development director Joanne Williams said of the LUR’s adoption in 2001. “But it was also just the general feeling that if you saw a hillside and there was just one house sticking up into the skyline it wasn’t protecting the visual quality of the area. In other communities, hillside development deals with stratification of hillsides… Our emphasis was a visibility issue.”
As a result, the LUR deals specifically with visibility of structures on the horizon line of ridges, hillsides, or mesas: where the ground and the sky appear to meet, would there be blue sky visible behind the proposed building? Regulations define the required ridgeline height and the vantage points from which properties should be viewed, but ridgeline evaluation is subjective. County staff are evaluating buildings that do not yet exist, using poles and balloons to determine a building’s obtrusiveness on the ridgeline.
“You’re working off of architectural drawings of a building,” community development assistant director Neal Starkebaum explained. “It’s a pre-building permit application.”
The LUR lists factors the Planning Commission can consider in a structure’s review, as well as exceptions that could allow it to break the ridgeline. And county staff work with homeowners to find feasible solutions, but as the Planning Commission discussed for quite some time, the guidelines can be subject to interpretation: Would making the home smaller eliminate the disruption? Does the language in the LUR allow the Commission to make that suggestion? Can the commission feel comfortable asking a homeowner to make his building smaller or move it—both of which pose significant financial implications? And can the commission consider the context of the surrounding environment, if other homes in the area have already altered the feel of the ridgeline? Reed isn’t sure that commissioners can.
“To give that flexibility to take the context into consideration, I really don’t think it’s there now,” Reed said. He wanted to see the language in the resolution loosened to allow for more flexibility to consider the context of other dwellings.
“A lot of what it comes down to, the property owner wants the view. If it’s not obtrusive or it’s so momentary it’s not obtrusive to anyone else, why shouldn’t they be able to?” said Reed.
But the decision to change language in the LUR, by changing words or giving more prominence to certain exceptions, came down to whether or not it was worth changing the rules for the exception—or necessary.
“There’s a certain stability to the regulations in place,” board member Sam Lumb said. “Is there a compelling reason to change it?… And then the building community industry is like, oh they’re changing it again? It seems to be working, we haven’t turned anybody down. I think we should stay the course we’ve got.”
“I think you’re going to open it up to more subjectivity,” county  planner Cathie Pagano said. “Is this the exception to the exception, or are we seeing cases come where it’s creating a problem? And we haven’t seen that.”
After further discussion, board member Chris Behan outlined the options before the commission: “We have language here that we can work with but we might not be comfortable, or craft new language so that we don’t have to be as uncomfortable saying no.”
Planning commissioner David Owen suggested that the commission cannot design regulations around every conceivable potential issue.
“How many cases would [these changes] apply to in the last ten years? One?” he asked. “I don’t know if I’d rewrite for one in however many applications you’ve got.”
The Planning Commission went on to review the list of ridgeline vantages, roads from which ridgeline development is considered. In the end, they agreed to leave the ridgeline resolution as it is, recommending no modifications to the Board of County Commissioners.