Crested Butte Briefs

Changes coming to the Arts Festival
The Town Council approved the Crested Butte Arts Festival special event application and saw some changes to the event on the horizon. This year, the festival will officially begin on Friday night, August 3, from 5 to 9 p.m. as opposed to Saturday morning. There will also be two blocks of a single row of artist booths on Elk Avenue between Second and Fourth Streets in the busy core section of town.

Local bridges will be the site of some larger art pieces highlighting the bridges and Coal Creek. There will also be a culinary demo tent, a beer and food garden, an art demo tent and an art installation component at the entrance to the festival.
Last year the festival added some gaps between tents and elongated the length of the festival. That will occur again but artist check-in will be held at the school instead of the Four-way Stop.

Music Fest gets $ for July 4th concert
Speaking of festivals, Kim Carroll Bosler of the Crested Butte Music Festival solicited the council for money to help pay for the Fourth of July afternoon concert at the Center for the Arts. The festival requested $2,500. The Boston Brass is lined up to play the event and the council felt it was a good cause and great event that could help expand Crested Butte’s Fourth of July day of festivities.

Tick, tick, tick…
Town building official Bob Gillie said a donated clock will be located at the Four-way Stop. The timepiece will be placed on the northwest corner of the intersection near the bus stop.

Lobar approved for westside deck seating
The council okayed a request by the Lobar to have summer sidewalk seating along the west side of the Company Store. The restaurant will be able to start serving on a new deck at noon and go until about 10 p.m. The revocable license will allow food, drink and music. The 40-foot-long, seven-foot-wide deck will remain in place for the season. Lobar co-owner Kyleena Graceffa said she might re-approach the council about allowing seating in front of the Company Store since the building is under contract and the owner-to-be has shown support for such an endeavor.

Why aren’t we worse off?
Sales tax figures are in and Crested Butte Finance Director Lois Rozman told the council “March is not as bad as anticipated.” Sales tax collections were down about 2.8 percent but several filers have yet to pay. For the year, sales tax is off from 2011 by about 2.5 percent.
“I’ve heard one reason we’ve hung in there may be that prices of food and goods went up,” said councilperson Jim Schmidt. “Most business owners I’ve talked to say they were off a lot more than 2.5 percent last winter.”

More signs
The council approved changes to the code that will allow some businesses located off of Elk Avenue to place a directional sign on the town’s main thoroughfare. They did adopt a recommendation from the BOZAR to allow the signs to have unique coloring rather than uniform white backgrounds. Councilperson David Owen said he felt the ordinance was “throwing more mud on something that is pretty muddy,” but he felt those affected businesses could use the help and this ordinance was basically better than nothing.

Lacy the low bid this time—by a lot
Lacy Construction was selected to conduct this summer’s water tank storage project. The town had estimated the cost of the project would be about $900,000. Lacy’s bid came in at $629,698. The next closest bid was $715,975.

Center for the Arts update
Center for the Arts Executive Director Jennie Birnie updated the council with a quarterly report. She said the board is looking into all sorts of financing options for the proposed facility expansion. A formal funding feasibility study is expected to be done later this year. She also said the board has seen a lot of recent turnover.

Carey new BOZAR member
Local contractor Peter Carey was appointed to fill one of the two open seats on the Board of Zoning and Architectural Review.  One seat remains unfilled.

Council wants to move July 2 meeting so they can groove
The council wants to take a Monday night off to watch the July 2 Alpenglow concert. In celebration of the 25th anniversaries of KBUT and the Center for the Arts, the concert is featuring the “March Fourth Marching Band” and will start with a parade down Elk Avenue. The staff will look into how to make the wish of the council happen.