The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
An appeal of the approval comes in the same day
by Katherine Nettles
In a regular meeting on Tuesday, September 1, Gunnison County commissioners approved the specific conditions to accompany their August 18 approval of the Lower Verzuh major impact sketch plan application. That same day an appeal of the sketch plan approval was filed by a Buckhorn resident challenging its validity. The county has 30 days to consider it.
The development applicants, Daniel Dow and Bill Lacy, proposed subdividing a 450-acre parcel to create lots for 419 units near Brush Creek on the east side of Highway 135. 179 of the units would be designed and built by local contractor High Mountain Concepts for deed-restricted “essential housing.”
Commissioners approved a document prepared by county staff that identified their potential concerns related to the application, followed by 13 conditions to accompany their approval of it to move into preliminary plan phase.
“These concerns are generalized in nature and are not all-inclusive,” according to the document. “A. Impacts to wildlife and habitat; b. Transit and multi-modal connectivity; c. Essential Housing: Deed restriction structure and qualifications, AMI unit mix, transfer fee structure and management, AMI variant from County Housing Needs Assessment;
d. Cumulative impacts to water quantity and quality; and e. Cumulative impacts to infrastructure.”
Approval conditions
The document identifies 13 conditions of approval, applicable to the applicants’ preliminary plan application submittal:
“1. Incorporate and/or resolve all comments made by the referral agencies which were received during the Sketch Plan review. 2. Consider clustering the free-market residences to respond to CPW comment regarding habitat fragmentation, retain contiguous open space, and mitigate impacts of increased density. 3. Applicant shall explore and engage the potential of transit connectivity to other neighborhoods to the maximum extent feasible. The Preliminary Plan shall provide for specific site planning solutions that would allow for transit connectivity where a reasonable connection could exist in the future. 4. Engage in reasonable efforts to provide for a multimodal non-motorized connection to Brush Creek Road. The Preliminary Plan shall provide for specific site planning solutions that would allow for multimodal connectivity where a reasonable connection could exist in the future. 5. Maintain the 40% Essential Housing floor through Preliminary Plan. 6. Require a concrete commitment of proposed maximum sale prices and qualification restrictions that will ensure that these units meet our Essential Housing requirement. 7. Require a specific AMI mix, or alternative price control mechanism, tied to the delivery schedule, not just a commitment to “varying AMIs.” 8. Tie phased construction of market-rate lots to phased delivery of essential housing. 9. Provide HOA and Essential Housing Sub-HOA bylaws. Clarify who manages the transfer fee and how they are held accountable. 10. Specify who will determine household eligibility for essential housing in the project, and how those eligibility-determination services will be funded.11. Require a draft of the deed restrictions before further review. 12. Evaluate or consider cumulative impacts (i.e., in addition to water rights analysis) to irrigated lands, wells, wetlands, and riparian areas between the Slate River and East River, including as far south as Crested Butte South. 13. Evaluate how the proposed active recreation will address the needs of the community.”
Commissioners first discussed these conditions during their August 18 deliberations that led to the sketch plan approval with conditions. However, they opted at that time to give staff a chance to flesh-out in better detail the concerns and conditions they had outlined. With the document in hand on September 1, commissioners gave it a final review before approving it.
Commissioner Liz Smith addressed condition 12, asking if they could reference a letter from the Coal Creek Watershed Coalition, to provide more clarity on their expectations. County attorney Matthew Hoyt recommended against that, to avoid “elevating one particular piece of evidence above others, especially at sketch plan.” They ultimately decided that other entities had also contributed input that led to the conditions and therefore opted not to change the draft language beyond minor edits for accuracy and consistency.
Commissioner Laura Puckett Daniels then asked how to record her dissenting vote on the sketch plan application approval, and if that should carry over to the conditions of that approval. Hoyt and county manager Matthew Birnie offered suggestions that she could choose to sign the document since the board had voted in favor based on a majority, to abstain from signing it or to sign it with an added clause to note that she had dissented on the actual approval. Puckett Daniels also accepted input from her fellow commissioners. She ultimately decided to oppose the motion and abstain from signing it. “I’m okay having the document reflect how we got here now, and in the future,” she said. The motion passed with commissioners Smith and Jonathan Houck in favor and Puckett Daniels against.
The appeal
Marc David Sarnoff submitted an appeal of the August 18 approval of the Lower Verzuh sketch plan to the Gunnison County Board of Adjustment on September 1 citing several issues with the “essential housing” aspect of the application and arguing that the commissioners had abused their discretion based on arbitrary and insufficient evidence. He requested that the county reverse the approval of the sketch plan application or remand the application to commissioners for another review and determinations of his specific allegations prior to approval.
“The central issue to this appeal is the county cannot first count 179 residences as “essential housing,” use those residences to qualify a 499-unit development for [LUR] incentives and to mitigate otherwise incompatible density, and postpone until preliminary plan the determination of what “essential housing” actually means in terms of quantity and proportionality and to whom those residences will be served.”
Sarnoff stated he had standing as a person aggrieved by the decision because he owns and resides at a property “immediately adjacent to and directly affected by the Lower Verzuh development and its proposed water infrastructure.”
Sarnoff further stated that “Lower Verzuh’s principal, William Lacy, has placed the Buckhorn Ranch Homeowners Association on notice of his intention to pipe existing ditches within Buckhorn Ranch, the result will be the conveyance of water toward Lower Verzuh.” Sarnoff stated that this would create the need to alter a water-conveyance system within his residential community and impose “a substantial burden on [his] property interests.” Sarnoff also cited several other ways the application approval would directly impact him as well as “the quiet residential character of Buckhorn Ranch,” ranging from traffic, potential to add transit buses, to demand on local resources.
Sarnoff concluded with another summary, “The county cannot use 179 residences as “essential housing” to obtain expedited review, regulatory incentives, and mitigation for substantially increased density before determining under its own LUR that those residences actually constitute essential housing.”
The Crested Butte News reached out to the county for a statement on the appeal and its potential implications. According to assistant county manager for community and economic development April Kroner, “When an appeal is made, the County Board of Adjustment (BOA) has to consider it at a meeting within 30 days after the appeal was filed. In this case the BOA must meet on or before October 2, 2026. Planning staff is currently working on getting the meeting scheduled, so at this time we don’t have the date the meeting will be held.”
The BOA will consider the appeal and determine if the BOCC’s decision is affirmed, reversed, modified or remanded to the original decision-making body for further action or correction.
