Busy season ahead for new construction in the valley

Commercial construction picking back up

It’s a little too soon to forecast just how busy the summer building season will be, but current indicators suggest there’s going to be a lot going on. The town of Crested Butte appears to have returned to pre-recession levels of construction, and places like Crested Butte South are showing increased activity as well.

“It’s a little early to tell exactly who’s going to break ground on stuff. There’s a lot of fishing going on right now,” said Bob Gillie, Crested Butte’s building and zoning director. Potential developers are feeling things out and may or may not decide to build this season.
Gillie expects the remodel work on the old Slope building at Second and Elk to be ongoing throughout the year, and if all goes as planned construction will begin on the affordable housing complex Anthracite Place, next to True Value, in June. It’s also looking like construction will begin on a new building next to Kochevar’s and Karolina’s Kitchen on Elk Avenue.
“But there are other things out there that people are working on that probably won’t come to fruition this year,” Gillie said.
For residential construction, Gillie anticipates about three or four new houses in town and expects 2015 as a whole to be similar to last year. In 2014, the town’s building department issued 80 permits for everything from new construction to remodels—just five shy of the peak in 2004, when it issued 85 permits.
“It’s built back up to where it was in the early 2000s and some of this is just because there’s a real mix of stuff going on. Some of it’s small remodels, some direct renovations, some of it’s new houses, and probably what we’re seeing now is the resurrection of new commercial, which was dormant for a few years,” Gillie said.
That trend fits with the activity around the valley as well. The February edition of Realtor Channing Boucher’s Real Estate Advisor reported five homes are slated to be built in Buckhorn Ranch. And Dom Eymere, manager of the Crested Butte South Property Owners Association, says he’s seeing an increase in both residential and commercial projects coming through the design review committee.
Eymere expects the building season to be “maybe double from what we saw last year.” One project has already been approved, two are being reviewed this week, and four are expected in March.
“We’re seeing some movement in land sales and some real assertive ones that look like they’ll pull the trigger this year, and there’s potential new commercial construction that we have not seen in quite some time, too,” Eymere continued.
And up in Mt. Crested Butte, community development director Carlos Velado says, “At the current time we don’t have a firm grasp on how things are shaping up for the summer. Things typically don’t start to come into our office until March at the earliest. We are optimistic of having another year similar to last year.”
In 2014, Mt. Crested Butte issued six permits for new construction, compared to three the year before and four in 2012—one of which was a new parking structure at Crested Butte Mountain Resort.
Numbers will become more firm as summer approaches, but the upward trend across the north end of the valley seems to indicate the building industry is on the up-and-up.
In the town of Crested Butte, Gillie said, “In my personal opinion, we’re back to more of a boom cycle than a bust cycle and the last couple of years were the transition.”