Lower Verzuh proposal heads to public hearing in January

Weighing affordable housing needs and development tradeoffs

By Katherine Nettles

During a work session for the Lower Verzuh major impact development proposal on December 18, Gunnison County Planning Commission members openly grappled with the complexities and trade-offs of housing development in the absence of a north valley corridor plan. This was the third work session with the applicant, Bill Lacy and Daniel Dow, regarding their proposal to develop infrastructure for 344 residential units across 450 acres south of Crested Butte.

The parcel sits adjacent to residential, agricultural and conserved ranchland properties, and subdivisions such as Buckhorn. The original sketch plan proposal, submitted in February 2025, called to subdivide the parcel into 301 mixed-residential lots ranging from one-eighth acre to three acres centered around a common area, with 46 units (15%) to be deed restricted. Additionally, the proposal called for 60% conserved open space, 850-foot setback minimums from Highway 135 and maintaining the southern area as a working hay meadow to preserve views and historic agricultural use. It has changed to 309 lots for 344 units and 26% would be deed-restricted, and includes a transit stop and parking lot with 40 parking spaces, a pedestrian circulation system, public ball fields, pocket parks and potential to connect with a multimodal path between CB South and the town of Crested Butte.   

The applicants and their representatives attorney Marcus Lock and Design Workshop reviewed changes from the previous two work sessions with the planning commission. The newest change was to move the proposed deed-restricted workforce housing units from the northern portion of the site (near Buckhorn) closer to the central recreation area and closer to the proposed bus stop, and to increase units with previous planning commission feedback that a mix of unit types including multi-family unit infrastructure would be good to maximize affordability and efficiency through more density.

There are now 17 such lots, including duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes for 52 units which along with 38 single-family units would add up to 90 potential units for workforce housing on a 15-acre space. The area is now less than a quarter mile from the potential rec path.

County staff recommendations included ensuring that land would be formally dedicated for the CB South to CB trail and determining if the commission was ready to take the proposal as-is to public hearing, scheduled for January 22.

Workforce housing

Planning commission member Julie Baca said she was struggling with the general lack of density over the relatively large parcel of land. “Each project is unique and needs to be evaluated on its own,” she acknowledged but referenced the density of other projects as well for comparison.

Commission member Eric Phillips agreed, noting that Whetstone, the county’s workforce housing project, has 252 units on 16 acres. “And this is 344 units on 450 acres. There’s a lot of room with this parcel to make fit what we would like to see fit, if needed.”

Commission chair Roland Mason reviewed that the applicant had estimated about 90 workforce housing units could fit in the allotted 15 acres.

The applicant representatives said they could potentially donate the land, complete with roads and infrastructure, and the county could decide to add more units per acre if they wanted. They also suggested that instead of trying to build the units, the county could offer down payment assistance to deed restricted qualified buyers who wanted to build themselves.

“I think that’s really problematic,” countered assistant county manager for community and economic development Cathie Pagano. “What I’m hearing is the need for more workforce housing is being offloaded to others. I’m not necessarily hearing a solution that addresses those impacts but rather has ideas for how others can address those impacts. I think that remains challenging.”

Phillips suggested that the applicant should have more answers to community concerns about impact and sprawl at this stage. “You guys are going to get bombarded with questions about the impacts to the community and how to mitigate them. These impacts are to essential services, police, firefighters, nurses. Our community is strained; we’ve seen this with every application that comes forward. So, what do you have to mitigate some of these impacts on services? If you don’t have an answer now, you’re going to get pressed when we hit the public hearing.”

Dow responded that in sketch plan, the goal was “to make it useful, helpful, available and developable,” but that those details would come in after overall cost analysis at preliminary plan.

Phillips expressed concern that the affordable housing deed restricted lots were too small a percentage of the overall land being developed and sold.

The applicants responded that some of the other developable land would be used for the trails, transit stop, parking lot and to make other means of transportation available. Dow emphasized that the parcel  was ideal for development, being relatively flat with ample water available, a water treatment plant nearby and that alternatives might include subdividing into 35-acre lots that would offer no deed restricted housing. He noted there are very few options for that scale of development remaining in the highway corridor.

“If the planning commission position is ‘we don’t want any development between CB South and the town Crested Butte,’ that would be an important position for us to know,” said Dow.

Phillips said he wasn’t convinced the parcel was ideal for development, since it would lack close proximity to the RTA buses for most of the development and rely heavily on automobiles. He openly questioned whether the raw land offering would offset the negative costs and burdens to the community at the scale of such a development.

As several more comments came up about the lack of clarity without a corridor plan to guide decisions, Pagano said the intent of the upcoming north valley corridor plan is to work with the community to help identify the vision and priorities for the future, what tradeoffs the community is willing to make “and identify areas that are appropriate for responsible development… The idea is what areas have connectivity and opportunities to connect to utilities, have transit connectivity and community connections so people have access to services,” she said.

“And how they connect to each other and affect wildlife connections,” added Phillips. “It’s hard to look at this stuff individually without the cumulative impacts on the community and the cumulative developments that are going on.”

“We want to see density, workforce housing, connectivity, open space, wildlife permeability—and I believe this proposal has elements of all that,” said Mason. “A number of community members have asked us to look at all these applications as a whole and what their major impact will be. It’s hard to do that when we’re looking at each individual application, because we don’t know the time of build-out. Buckhorn took 22 years.”

Phillips chimed in that Buckhorn still is not built out, and Mason added that the Cement Creek area is not built out either.

“We understand that this is over time,” continued Mason, and he said the structure elements for Lower Verzuh lots might evolve with direction from the towns or the county.

Mason summarized that the goal of the planning commission is to see that the project meets current standards, projected needs and “is a positive tradeoff for the community as a whole.” The conversation delved into what that could mean exactly, and it repeatedly came back to housing needs for local workforce members as well as viewsheds, wildlife habitat and the test of time.

“What we want to see is something that in 20 years someone isn’t going to look at and say, ‘What were they thinking?’” said Mason of the planning commission’s complex objective.

Mason and Phillips reiterated that the development would need to meet or exceed the needs of the community on those points.

“It seems to be that our pinch point is workforce housing,” said Baca.

Mason added that other pinch points could be utilizing density over a whole piece of land. He said he believed it would be possible to accomplish everything on a parcel of this size.

Phillips cited a housing needs study that determined 75% of all new builds need to be below fair market rate to meet the current needs, which the applicant representatives challenged could never happen on a private market.

“So let’s start to think differently,” responded Phillips, suggesting more multi-family units.

As the debate of how to address housing needs through development continued, Dow asked what positives they have considered in development, including the property tax funds generated. He also suggested the RTA decision not to serve various subdivisions is a political one, and one which county commissioners could request be changed with new routes and smaller vehicles.

“I appreciate the dialogue,” said Phillips.

“Same back at you,” said Dow. “We’re trying to help solve a problem. We’re trying to come up with solutions. We really are— yeah, there’s a profit motive here, but we are trying to do another development that will be an asset to the community just like the Verzuh Annexation has become.”

Phillips asked if they would like to move to a public hearing, or to have another work session and try to propose something else that might solve more issues. Pagano said that was up to the planning commission, not the applicant. The commission then determined to move forward with the public hearing.

Dow did offer input on the corridor plan process, however. “Have a charette. Bring neighborhoods in with the developer before any of this gets going. Let’s all throw stuff at the wall and everybody talk about what will make them the least happy and what would be the best, and help the developer come up with a plan.”

The commission members countered that they, the developer, could do that.

“Yes, we could. But we need the county involved,” said Dow.

A joint public hearing on the application with county commissioners is scheduled for January 22, at 9 a.m. in the commissioners’ room of the county courthouse.