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September 17, 2004
Luxury home builders dig into The Ridge
By D. Dion and Kara Tatone
Passengers on the gondola or mountain bikers riding between St. Sophia station and Mountain Village may wonder when they missed a meteor striking the earth - huge dirt swaths have been cleaved from the upper slope, leaving giant dirt holes below the gondola station. But it is The Ridge construction project, not a meteor, that has landed just below Coonskin Ridge.
But the appearance of the broken ground should not be a surprise impact to anyone tracing the path of the development - the original design regulations were established for The Ridge, a 17-acre residential development, in 1998. Those design regulations, amendments to the city's land use ordinance, are sometimes referred to as "covenants."
According to John Horn, one of the principals of St. Sophia Partners LLP, the project's developer, the project's specifications have changed in the intervening six years, even while the design regulations remain in place.
According to Horn, the number of commercial condominium units allowed by zoning - 168 - has been scaled back in their design to 24 single-family houses. The dwellings will be luxury accommodations, from 4,000-10,000 square feet, with an owner's private spa and club and heated pathways for year-round golf cart access from the gondola station. Five of the 24 lots have already been sold.
Although The Ridge project has those covenants, or specific land use code amendments, dating back to 1998, it was still required to go through Mountain Village's design review process with planners. Mountain Village Design Review Board member Mark O'Dell said he was surprised that this project has remained "under the radar," despite the public process, and especially given the extreme public scrutiny of another recent large project in Mountain Village, the Lots 50/51 development, which has been the subject of lawsuits and two special elections.
"I know people are surprised to see that up there," said O'Dell, "but the thing about those lots is that they've always been zoned for development."
Even in Mountain Village's brief history - the town itself didn't incorporate until the mid-1990s - the lots have always been platted for development, and development has even been pushed down from the ridge so as not to be visible from the Telluride, as per the covenants.
This development has a shared history with the town of Mountain Village, and with the ski area that abuts the ridgeline lots. According to Horn, the concept of The Ridge has existed since the late 1980s.
Horn also has a shared history with the town of Mountain Village and with the Telluride Ski & Golf Company. His company has had to work cooperatively with Telksi to break ground and build infrastructure - St. Sophia Partners was also the developer of the building shell that houses Allred's restaurant and the gondola station of the same name. That infrastructure, its tie-ins to municipal water and sewer systems and a power conduit, will help service the new development below.
Horn, a former attorney for Telski and a member of the Mountain Village Metro District board, has also been granted an easement by Telski to use the ski area's access road to bring up the bulk of construction materials this summer before snowfall encumbers the road. His project will give back 20,000 cubic yards of the removed dirt to help construct this season's terrain park, and will reconstruct and reroute the trails on the property that have been displaced during construction.
Building a large-scale project just below a ridgeline, especially without standard access, has posed some challenges for developers, and some concerns for environmentalists.
Although it abuts U.S. Forest Service land (leased to Telski on a long-term, year-round basis) and is located uphill of the ski area and The Ridge development's traffic, water and wildlife flows between private and public lands - the project does not require an environmental analysis. District Ranger for the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison forests, Judy Schutza, said private lands is exempt from performing such a study.
"No permits are necessary if the land is private, we have no authority on it," she said. "We had no opportunity to comment or give input - that's the way private operates."
Monitoring of the project, however, will be voluntarily conducted in part by Telski officials.
"Of course we're interested, we're the downstream recipient," said Chris Hazen Telski's director of environmental affairs. "We're definitely, from my perspective, keeping an eye on it."
One central environmental concern for Telski is storm water management, or water from snowfall and spring runoff flows. Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment required the developers to obtain a storm water management permit, and Horn is confident the plan is glitch-free.
"We've looked at cuts, disturbances to the ground," said Horn, "and our storm water management is working fine. We've had a few big storms already."
Some ski runs are flanked by houses, but this is the first development to include the construction of an individual ski run for access to homes, Telski Director of Mountain Operations Jeff Proteau said.
"What we've done is worked with them on a regular basis - to make sure they're keeping up," he said. "We get kind of nervous on timing, but they've performed."
Telski and St Sophia officials are meeting weekly to assure they're on schedule and that revegetation and erosion work will be complete before snowfall.
Proteau said St. Sophia Partners worked with Telski to complete a two-step hydrological assessment to "build lines of defense," such as sediment and retention ponds, and silt fences to manage storm water during construction.
"The concept we're asking them to promote is to break up and follow the natural drainages," said Proteau. "We're trying to monitor this holistically so there are no major discharges."
Telski, in its massive expansion into Prospect Basin several years ago, was responsible for similar environmental mitigations, under the scrutiny of the U.S. Forest Service. This time, it's Telski who will be eyeing the effects of the construction and development.
Posted by Adam at September 17, 2004 09:49 AM