CS Irwin development stymied by conflicting permit approvals

Trying to be good
environmental stewards

If it’s the thought that counts, then CS Irwin is trying to make everyone happy. The backcountry guiding company is seeking approval from Gunnison County and the town of Crested Butte Watershed Protection District to build a 6,665-sqare-foot parking barn and a 1,584-square-foot maintenance barn, and to enlarge the existing fuel barn at its site above Irwin. Site plans have been carefully designed to meet county permitting and town watershed requirements as well as to appease neighbors concerned about visibility and noise from new facilities.

But additional concerns have been raised by the town of Crested Butte, requesting that CS Irwin move its planned maintenance barn to a new location—directly in opposition to the concerns of the local residents.
“The maintenance barn is the piece we’re wrestling with the most. Maintenance currently takes place in the old maintenance facility which is up by lodge, right against the wetland,” Bill Coburn, president of Coburn Development, told the Gunnison County Planning Commission at a public hearing on Friday, July 1. “And that building is not designed to capture any kind of fuel or leaks… the new maintenance barn certainly improves on that.”
The proposed location sits in a low spot hidden mostly from the view of surrounding neighbors, where only part of the roof is visible from the lake. But the town of Crested Butte, in a letter sent to the Planning Commission by Crested Butte town planner John Hess, and the Coal Creak Watershed Coalition have requested that CS Irwin move the proposed maintenance barn to a higher location near the existing fuel dispensary.
The move would better protect the watershed by minimizing the transport of contaminants between the fuel building and the maintenance barn, but that would make the building much more visible from the road. According to Coburn and Alan Bernholtz, CS Irwin’s director of Mountain Operations, the company is willing to consider that, but that would put the development at odds with the wishes of the local community.
“We’re kind of being torn on where exactly to put the building… Where you guys are going to have to grapple is, should the maintenance barn be more visible or farther from a water body?” Bernholtz said, suggesting that determining the location of the building is complicated by the fact that watershed ordinances prevent CS Irwin from rebuilding on already developed sites.
“We can’t build where there are current buildings. Ten years ago we’d be having a different conversation in where we wanted development to happen… We didn’t choose to move away from that site but the powers that be are trying to protect the land,” he said.
Bernholtz made a point of explaining that contaminants transported between the maintenance barn and the fuel dispensary would not be that great of a risk.
“We’re not transporting fuel back and forth,” Bernholtz said. “We’re talking about a three-gallon or five-gallon jug and not transporting fuel. Any containers are off-the-shelf storage containers that would be taken down to that site.”
But any hopes that the Planning Commission would make the final decision about the location of the building were not met.
“It’s not our decision to tell you which location to put this in,” Planning Commission board chair Ramon Reed told Bernholtz and Coburn. “We are going to make a decision on the application before us, which is right now the lower location. If you decide the upper location is where you want to do it, that’s what we’ll make a decision on. We’re not going to tell you one or the other.”
“We were hoping you would make that hard decision for us,” Bernholtz said. “CS Irwin has been a good neighbor to the area, and the Irwin Estates Homeowners Association have expressed that their preference would be a lower site, that’s why we did it in the first place. Now the organization that [needs to approve the project] says that it needs to be up higher… We don’t know what to do except that we don’t think there’s anything [in that application] that would stop them from approving it. We just want everyone to be happy, which doesn’t sound like it’s going to be happening any time soon.”
The delay is a challenge for Bernholtz, who wants to build the barns during this summer’s construction season—particularly the storage barn for parking snowcats.
According to Bernholtz, only one of the company’s four cats will start when stored outside in cold temperatures, and a new facility would improve CS Irwin’s ability to capture any fluids leaking from the vehicles.
“If the snow just drips off it just drips off, but if we have hydraulic leak and it goes into the snow then we scoop it up and put it in a bag, and haul it back to town and dispose of it properly,” Bernholz said. “The proposed facility has a containment for anything that might come off of those vehicles. When it does sometimes thaw out up there they just drip onto the ground so we feel that [this building would be] a large improvement because anything that would drip off would drip off into a filter that would contain those contaminants… We still have low amount of contamination compared to the public ability to drive snowmobiles right across the lake, but we still want to be good stewards of the land and this would be an improvement.”
The Planning Commission suggested that Bernholtz and Coburn consider separating the application before the commission into two parts: one for the storage barn so that approval and construction may be secured this summer, and one for the maintenance barn.
While the Planning Commission, which visited the CS Irwin site prior to the public hearing, could see the value in either location, members of the commission felt that CS Irwin needed to sort things out with the town of Crested Butte and amend the county application accordingly.
“Either location [of the maintenance barn] would probably work with our regulations,” said Planning Commission member David Owen. “Keeping everything close together made a lot of sense to me, but also, it’s unfortunate to put a facility where it is more visibly and audibly inconvenient for neighbors, but the separation from the water of these materials I think is more important than a more aesthetic issue.”
“You need to figure out with the town where you’re at,” commission member Kent Fulton added. “To me the pro for [the site] down lower is it would help keep some of the noise down, and visually you can’t see it… As far as the fluids you guys use, I think you’re right, over time people are going to get lazy and there will be stuff stored in that maintenance facility. Mentally, it doesn’t make any sense that it wouldn’t happen.”
 “One thing I would like is a letter from you officially requesting that we bifurcate that application,” added Reed.
The Planning Commission directed staff to draw up a draft resolution of approval of the storage barn, and the public hearing was continued until 9 a.m. on July 15. CS Irwin sent the letter requesting the bifurcation of the application to the Planning Commission on July 5. According to Coburn, CS Irwin applied for the town of Crested Butte watershed permit on June 14, and the town has 30 days to review the application. But CS Irwin agreed that it would be important to reach out to the town prior to the next county hearing in an effort to keep things moving.
“I do want to go on the record, I’m a little disappointed,” said Bernholtz. “You guys made the effort to be here, but the town of Crested Butte wasn’t here to help things move along.”