Building down in Crested Butte, up in county, flat in Mt. CB

Running out of room in town?

By Mark Reaman

The town of Crested Butte is experiencing a relatively slow building season so far this summer and there doesn’t seem to be any obvious reason why. Only two reviews are currently in front of the BOZAR (Board of Zoning and Architectural review) this month and neither are for major development plans. One is for an appeal of a Building Official determination and the second is a variance to the floodplain standards.

In the Community Development report to the council on July 7 it was reported that the department “has seen a significant decrease in development applications in the last six months.” It mentioned that in the second quarter of 2025, the town saw a few additions approved along with a single-family residence. Town also received its first application for a building in the Augusta Park development on Pyramid Avenue.

“So far in 2025, we’ve had three new single-family residences (SFR) and three additions come through BOZAR,” said Crested Butte planner Jessie Earley. “In July of 2024, we had four projects for review, but adjacent months were relatively slow with one and two projects. In 2023, we were full every month. It does seem like the last two years have been slowing down.”

Earley said one reason might be that town is getting built out and there are not many vacant lots available to build on. She said that having worked for the town since 2011, it is the first noticeable slowdown in development reviews.

Meanwhile Gunnison County figures show a relatively busy summer. In the summer of 2024, there were 73 building permits issued. That number jumped to 117 for the summer of 2025. Assistant county manager for community development and economic development Cathie Pagano said the county building department is quite busy overall. “Our single-family residence permits are down a bit, but the valuations are up,” she noted. “The folks building are at the high end of the spectrum.”

In Mt. Crested Butte, the building permit stats show this year is similar to last summer. In 2024 there were four permits for single-family homes and this year there are three. But overall in 2024, there were 65 miscellaneous building permits compared to just 30 in 2025. This summer and last are off from 2022 and 2023 when closer to 10 single-family home permits were approved each of those years along with just more than 60 miscellaneous building permits.

“Miscellaneous permits are all building permits that are not new construction like decks, additions, reroofing, residing, major and minor interior remodels, etc. The miscellaneous permits this year are as random as previous years except for we have issued more reroofing permits this year,” explained Mt. Crested Butte community development coordinator Todd Carroll. “I haven’t heard from a property owner or GC that their projects are on hold specifically because of tariffs or political uncertainty. We start a lot of new construction folders each year that don’t follow through with a building permit for various reasons, mostly because of the high cost of building here.”

Things could of course change but believe it or not, the prime summer building season is beginning to wind down.