The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Crested Butte now looking at plan given impacts to town
[ By Mark Reaman ]
A judge has approved the next step in a proposed development that would be located above Trapper’s Crossing and overlooking the Magic Meadows Nordic trails on Mt. Emmons. That has some Trapper’s Crossing landowners upset and has gotten the attention of the Town of Crested Butte that is worried about visual and traffic impacts.
District court judge Steven Patrick sided with the Scenic Butte Partners, LLC developers who requested an easement through condemnation over the private Trapper’s Crossing Road, Trapper’s Way, that comes off Kebler Pass Road and in part leads to their landlocked 160-acre parcel. An easement through another private lot, along with land owned by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management must also be obtained to access the site. If that is done, the developers plan to build a steep one-mile-long road (or driveway) on their property to access two potential homesites. The proposed 16-foot-wide driveway contains 14 switchbacks with grades as steep as 11 percent.
In his judgment, Patrick noted that the developers had negotiated with the Trapper’s Crossing property owners for approximately four years to no avail and “further negotiations would have been futile.”
Patrick ordered that the developers, Clayton and Clifton Jones, and their mother, Marion Defoore, “deposit a bond in the amount of two years of the budgeted expenses for maintenance of Trapper’s Way (magnesium chloride, maintenance and snow plowing), totaling $127,000,” that will act as the deposit until compensation for the easement is finally ascertained. No construction of the road can start until all permits, including those from Gunnison County and the Crested Butte Fire Protection District, are obtained.
Law of the Rockies attorney Jacob With represented the Trapper’s property owners in the case and he said they are disappointed and discussing a possible appeal of the decision. That couldn’t be filed until a dollar amount is determined for the easement condemnation compensation.
“The Trapper’s HOA will do everything they can do to oppose this,” said With. “Part of the process is getting access through the BLM and U.S. Forest Service property where the public should be able to weigh in.”
Meanwhile, as part of the case, engineer Tyler Harpel determined that to build the steep road, hundreds of dump truck loads of material would be needed and that would have to be hauled to the site through Crested Butte on Whiterock Avenue. “The volume of imported fill and base course material alone would require at least 500 dump truck trips one way, over 1,000 trips both ways, not including daily construction worker traffic and tree removal traffic,” he told the court.
“Having a thousand dump trucks roll through Crested Butte is definitely a concern,” stated Crested Butte mayor Jim Schmidt. “Let’s see if that is true and then make a comment to the county when appropriate.”
“We have been keeping an eye on the court case and Judge Patrick granted the petitioner access on the Trapper’s road,” explained Crested Butte town attorney John Sullivan, who said he would compile a detailed memo about the project for the council to consider. “No construction can begin until all the permits are granted so the town should have an opportunity to comment, not to the court, but to the county.”
