Mt. Crested Butte approves master plan recalibration

$39,660 for more robust info, transportation analysis, winter survey

[  By Kendra Walker  ]

Last month the Mt. Crested Butte town council approved town staff’s request for $39,660 to recalibrate and refine the scope of the town’s developing Master Plan. Since last summer, the town has been working to create its Master Plan and the goal moving forward is to put together a more comprehensive plan than what was formerly released to the public. In what’s being called the Master Plan Draft 2.0, staff has worked with its partner Norris Design to include more robust information that was previously cut, add a transportation analysis and send out a digital winter experience survey to the public.  

The initial Master Plan budget for Phase I and II was $45,000, with an additional $15,000 for an economic analysis and $26,470 for a Gothic Road capacity analysis. The Master Plan draft was released in November 2021 for public review and input. However, the collective feedback from the council, planning commission and the community was that the Master Plan draft focused too heavily on the base area and was not as holistic to the entire community as anticipated. As a result, staff has developed a new scope for Phase III that helps identify those issues and better speaks to the community’s values. 

“We’ve taken what we’ve heard from all of you, from the public and we’re just slightly expanding the Master Plan so it looks more like a comprehensive master plan, and what we feel a master plan should look like and not just a base area master plan,” said community development director Carlos Velado during a joint town council/planning commission meeting on April 19. 

Community development specialist Hillary Seminick explained that this new draft will have more robust methodology, process, key findings, vision statements, goals and policies. “We’re focused now on creating policies, metrics and plans that actually implement the Master Plan,” she said. “We want to have actionable criteria that we can move forward with in this policy document. We want to create those implementable items so we can actually see the changes that we want in our town as outlined in this plan. We want this to be a community process that’s community driven.”

Seminick also noted that the new plan will not hypothetically remove existing buildings like the old version did. “Rather, we’ll develop policy recommendations, such as ‘protect the view corridor’ or ‘consider solar.’ Those are small action items that could be integrated in the Master Plan while you wait for that long range redevelopment scenario,” she told the council and planning commission. “We can help inform developers for how to potentially develop that space in a more meaningful way that reflects this plan.” 

Initially, the plan’s scope only included gathering public outreach and feedback last summer. “There is a need for winter outreach,” said Seminick. “We have different visitors that come here that have a different base area experience, a different transportation experience. We’ll be releasing a digital survey to try to capture that and ensure that we’re engaging all different types of visitors and residents that we see in our community.”

The recalibration also allows Norris Design to do more of the additional work, which was previously put on town staff’s plate. 

“Why wasn’t Norris doing this work and providing this product for us in the first place?” asked council member Roman Kolodziej.

“The initial scope had a large reliance on town staff drafting certain elements of the plan,” said Seminick. 

“Isa was doing a lot of this work herself, and doing it in a direction that she wanted,” said council member Janet Farmer, referring to former town manager Isa Reeb who was fired by the town council in March. “The original report was scaled down by Isa,” said Farmer. 

“There was a lot removed to keep budget down,” said Norris Design’s Tori Aidala, noting that a lot of things were removed that Norris Design had originally proposed. 

The council approved the request for $30,060 for the Phase III recalibration and $9,600 for the Mt. CB transit analysis, for a total of $39,660. The Master Plan recalibration will continue with stakeholder advisory meetings, base owner meetings and town council/planning commission meetings. The goal is to release the digital winter experience survey and begin developing draft 2.0 over the next month, and then present it to stakeholders and the community by June.  

Based on key findings from the Master Plan work that has been done so far, the Mt. Crested Butte community goals include: increasing community housing inventory; enhancing the existing multi-modal transportation network; managing sustainable, responsible growth; and developing more essential services to support the full-time population.