Gunnison County leaders chime in on corridor plan goals

Establishing a baseline for the project based on key stakeholders

by Katherine Nettles 

In a joint work session with the Gunnison County planning commission, Gunnison County commissioners received an update last week from the consultant team the county has hired to complete a comprehensive corridor plan for Highway 135. Consultant team HDR held a listening session with commissioners much like they had with the town of Crested Butte and Mt. Crested Butte to engage local governments in the process. They shared common ideas and visions they have gathered in the earliest stages of the corridor plan.

HDR has identified five stages of creating a final corridor plan and is currently in Phase 2: Visions and Goals, which includes community engagement, and preparing to move into Phase 3: Scenarios and Planning. During the current phase, HDR said they were trying to identify the overall issues, needs and opportunities at play along the corridor. The final project stages are expected to begin in January 2027 and finish that September with a final product to implement.

Miles Graham, HDR’s project coordinator for the corridor plan, reviewed recent meetings/listening sessions with the towns of Crested Butte and Mt. Crested Butte and noted highlights that stood out to the team. Graham noted that Mt. Crested Butte and Crested Butte had prioritized the goal “to build some good will and some trust.”

Gunnison County principal planner Hillary Seminick noted that both municipalities they engaged have continued to bring up a desire for a moratorium on development applications to allow the process to make progress without pressure to assess and approve or deny major project applications in the meantime.

Graham said that has come up because of “Some of the pressures that the corridor is feeling that could change its character.”

There was also repeated interest in a Memorium of Understanding (MOU) between the towns and the county. “Whether we have an MOU or not, we have a contract with the consultant team that includes a robust plan for input from those entities,” added Seminick.

“There is a sense that there is pressure on this corridor,” repeated Graham. He said the issue is balancing land preservation versus where development might be appropriate.

Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District (UGRWCD) manager Sonja Chavez, who was at the meeting for another item on the commissioner’s agenda, noted that the UGRWCD have not been consulted in this process, but would appreciate being included.

Seminick said the process is still in an early phase, and that UGRWCD was identified for inclusion in the technical working groups planned later in the process.

Chavez said out of 906 municipal water augmentation credits in Meridian Lake Reservoir, there are about 40% left. “Once development explodes past those certificates, there will be pressure to agricultural (ag) producers to sell their water rights,” she cautioned.

Graham said the team plans to hold several focus groups, and it will include business groups and ag producers. He then invited board comments on their own goals and visions.

Planning commission member Julie Baca said it is important to remember that the corridor plan is a state mandate, which commissioner Laura Puckett Daniels refuted she was unsure of any state requirements for such plans.

“But it is a priority for the commissioners. We have asked for this repeatedly in recent years,” she said.

“Change is happening regardless of what decisions we make…it’s about proactively asking how we can steer it in a way that’s a good fit for our community,” Puckett Daniels added. She said she views the county’s Land Use Resolution (LUR), the only current document guiding development and land preservation, as a “solely reactive document.”

Commissioner Jonathan Houck said he felt it was important to remind the community that the corridor document is designed to inform decisions, not to be pro or against development.

Commissioner Liz Smith said a goal for her is predictability. She spoke to the anxiety in the community over fragmented landscapes and increasing development pressure.

Planning commissioners Beverly Troxtell and Brett Adkins agreed that it would help to have clarity.

Planning commissioner Eric Phillips added that he wanted clarity in terms of wildlife, housing and cumulative impacts from a higher level.

Puckett Daniels said clear “Nos” to certain uses are as important as clear “Yeses.” She mentioned preserving critical wildlife corridors. “We are at this critical threshold where we can preserve a lot of these values,” she said.

She also said they can’t mandate agricultural production, but it is more of an ecosystem. “I’m wondering if there are other tools we can use to keep those working lands in production…incentivize that use…for the benefits of water retention, pollinators, food production. I think there’s a lot of value in it but it’s not actually our decision.”

“I think it’s cows versus condos,” said planning commissioner Sean Patrick.

Graham noted there is alignment between the municipalities on all these ideas. “The shared values there are really strong,” he said.

Graham summarized what common themes they have heard from all partners. The shared values to define a successful plan were: maintaining rural and small-scale communities, balanced outcomes, sustainable economy, managing cumulative human/development impacts and preserving community livability and affordability.

 Shared goals were: to identify locations for future growth and preservation, improve transportation, public transit, bike and pedestrian connectivity throughout the corridor, support attainable housing, coordinate infrastructure planning, protect wildlife habitat, ag lands, natural resources and hazard areas and strengthen regional coordination among local governments, service providers and community partners.

Additional shared goals for the project included: providing clarity, predictability, enabling/limiting factors, stewardship of multiple values and strengthening regional partnership.

Troxtell said that they should make the constraints created by the plan explicit. Puckett Daniels agreed. “People are going to be unhappy,” she said, of some of the tradeoffs.

Smith said she doesn’t think 2050 is far enough to look ahead for the corridor plan, and said she wants to be looking further into the future.

“By 2050, I would want someone driving between Gunnison and Crested Butte to still recognize this place. It will certainly have changed, and I don’t think the goal should be to freeze the valley in time. But I would want us to have grown in a way that preserved the things we knew were irreplaceable: functioning ecosystems, agricultural lands, major view corridors, access to nature and tight communities,” Troxtell said.

The project team shared maps showing the area covered by the corridor plan, which initially included all land within three miles of Highway 135. They then excluded areas with their own three-mile plans, such as the town of Crested Butte and the city of Gunnison, followed by hazard areas and public lands.

The purpose of the current phase is to gauge shared goals, visions and values among the primary stakeholders “to establish the project, identify shared values and create a case for action,” according to HDR’s community engagement plan. The next step is to take their questions to the public with a plan for surveys and pop-up events.