Building renovation to impact town

Eleven, I mean Ice House, getting ready to lift up the Slope building

The Eleven Group, under the auspices of Ice House LLC, plans to start renovating the old Slope building at the corner of Second and Elk. That will entail major earthwork, as they want to put in a full basement and that work will end up encroaching on some public property in the future.

The developers purchased the property earlier this year and have received approval from the Board of Zoning and Architectural Review (BOZAR) to remodel the structure.
According to town building and zoning director Bob Gillie, the idea is to have the renovated structure be a restaurant/bar and three-room hotel. In order to construct the basement, developers will need to place a series of micro-piles outside of the building footprint to stabilize the site and keep the adjacent property from sloughing into the foundation excavation.
Gillie told the Crested Butte Town Council at a meeting October 20 that the property extends about two feet onto the sidewalk on the north side of the building. The developers need a revocable license with the town to allow the micro-piles to be placed in the Second Street right-of-way adjacent to the building. That is planned to be done before Thanksgiving. Once the micro-piles are in place, the building will be lifted and excavation can begin, probably next spring.
“It may take a couple of weeks for them to put in the micro-piles this fall,” Gillie told the council. “That will cause some disruption before Thanksgiving.”
Gillie said the town will work with the developers and negotiate how best to let the work move ahead with the least overall disruption to the town.
“There will probably eventually be a boardwalk around the building onto Elk Avenue for a period next summer,” Gillie said. “We will need an agreement dealing with how the staging will be handled.”
Councilperson Jim Schmidt expressed some concern over the timing and the time it might take developers to do the project. “Based on the time they spent on the Scarp’s Ridge Lodge and the Fourth and Belleview offices, it seems to take them a long time with projects,” he said. “They don’t move quickly.”
“The town code addresses a lot of the things that come with such a project,” said town attorney John Belkin.
Gillie said that while the work will be at times disruptive, overall it will be a good thing. “As we ultimately see these old buildings rehabilitated, which is in our best interest, we will see this type of thing more and more,’ he said. “There are a lot of zero-lot line properties with the old buildings. We have to deal with the best way to handle it.”
Work is expected to begin on the micro-pile placement this month. It will take about a week for that work to take place.