The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Will the Fat Lady sing a year after Whatever?
by Mark Reaman
If the weather holds and with a little luck, the last remnants of the Whatever USA event will be gone exactly a year after it took place.
Elk Avenue will get a .75-inch pavement overlay between Fourth and First streets the first week of September. That will cover the grooves left in the street after the Whatever event. A fog seal will be put down on Elk from Sixth Street to the zero block as part of the project to maintain color consistency for the town’s main thoroughfare.
The Crested Butte Town Council held a special meeting Monday night to approve the paving contract, with United Company to do the work. The council also approved a settlement agreement with the Whatever USA organizers. That agreement releases any more responsibility from the companies, Mosaic and Western Colorado Events (WCU), associated with the promotional party that took place last September.
The issue has lingered because after the picture-perfect party weekend in 2014, a rainstorm hit town, resulting in the blue paint on Elk Avenue chipping and running.
As an emergency measure, the town attempted to pull up any remaining blue paint by milling the street along the three affected blocks in the center of town. That left grooves in Elk Avenue. Consistent rains throughout last fall postponed a planned repair and the grooves are there today.
The council debated whether to simply fog coat the street, lay down a slurry seal or completely asphalt Elk Avenue. A failed attempt to slurry-seal the thoroughfare last spring with a bad batch of slurry resulted in this latest plan to lay down a thin layer of asphalt.
The work will cost about $54,000. The town returned $190,000 of WCU’s $250,000 performance deposit last December. Western had agreed to pay $20,000 for the slurry seal but balked at the increase in price for asphalt. According to town attorney John Belkin, when the town insisted on the higher quality repair, WCU and Mosaic began squabbling over if and how to pay for it.
“We got caught in the middle of Mosaic and Western but this delay may have resulted in the best outcome,” Belkin told the council Monday. “I think the fat lady is ready to sing. Hopefully it is the end of this.”
Basically the town will return the remaining $60,000 in its possession along with a $250,000 letter of credit to WCE. Mosaic will wire $62,500 to the town. That will cover most of the paving costs with the exception of about $2,500 in legal fees that will be picked up by the town.
Town public works director Rodney Due said United would stand behind the paving project with a two-year warranty.
