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Springs Resort Sketch Gets Planning Commission Okay |
Bill Hudson | 5/14/08
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There was a time in Pagosa Springs history when the owner of a tract of land could do pretty much whatever he wanted with his own property. As Pagosa grew and matured, more and more regulations were put in place to protect the property rights of existing homeowners and business owners — regulations such as building codes and zoning districts.
Over the past ten years, especially, both the Town of Pagosa Springs and the surrounding Archuleta County have expanded the usefulness of their planning departments, and have developed long-term community plans with the help of citizen advisory councils. These plans, and planners, have been charged with balancing the rights of land developers against the rights of the general citizenry. The general idea is to establish clear guidelines that permit a developer to plan a profitable new use for vacant land, while protecting and enhancing the value of the community’s existing homes and businesses.
The largest tract of undeveloped land within the town limits is a 30 acre expanse of porous travertine and wetlands stretching out to the west and south of the Great Pagosa Hot Springs and the existing Springs Resort, and cradled by a sweeping bend in the San Juan River. The owners and developers of the Springs Resort — a very successful motel and spa complex that makes profitable use of the town’s geothermal mineral springs — came before the Town Planning Commission yesterday, and asked for approval of a PUD, or “Planned Unit Development”, covering much of that undeveloped land. Continued...
Sketch of the proposed Springs Resort expansion as presented at last night's Planning Commission meeting. The existing Springs Resort is at the bottom right, the existing Community Center is shown at the bottom far left. Blue buildings are hotels or commercial buildings; red buildings are residential timeshares, condos or townhomes. The overall project clearly includes a substantial amount of parking. Drawing courtesy Springs Resort. |
One of the tools in the planner’s and developer’s shared “regulatory toolkit” is the PUD. When a developer wants to develop his property in ways not specifically permitted by the community’s agreed-upon plans — to build buildings higher than the community’s height limits, for example, or to include uses not specifically allowed in that zoning district — the developer can propose a “Planned Unit Development” that trades some overall “public benefit” from the development — say, perhaps, the dedication of extra open space for a community park — in exchange for permission to bend existing rules.
In the case of yesterday’s presentation, delivered mainly by Pagosa architect Tracy Reynolds and his associate Courtney King on behalf of clients Springs S2 Development Inc.; Pagosa Springs Inc.; and Gulfstream Worldwide Ltd., the sketch plan proposes to build approximately 300 new hotel rooms; 193 timeshare, condo and townhome units; and 61,000 square feet of commercial and restaurant space.
The development is projected to take place in several phases over a 10-15 year period.
Last year, the Town Design Review Board approved one 29 unit hotel consisting of 22,000 square feet. That hotel is expected to break ground, just west of the Great Pagosa Hot Spring, within the next few days.
 The PUD request is at least partially tied to the fact that the Town of Pagosa Springs previously adopted a conceptual plan for the subject area — including overlays of zoning, block development and land uses — in 1999 and 2001. Those design guidelines form a legal framework known as the Hot Springs Boulevard Neighborhood Plan. In conjunction with the Town’s more recent Comprehensive Plan, the Neighborhood Plan designates the northern and western portion of the land as ‘Mixed Use Town Center’ and the southern portion of the tract as ‘Mixed Use Residential.”
The Town planning staff noted in their report on the PUD application that “overall, the proposed development deviates from the principles as established in the adopted Hot Springs Boulevard Neighborhood Plan in regards to proposed uses and compatibility with existing overlay districts. In contrast, the development is compatible with the … land uses as defined in the adopted Comprehensive Plan, excluding heights.”
Indeed, the proposed PUD would allow several buildings that exceed the Town’s current maximum height limit of 41 feet — including 50-foot-high timeshare buildings, a 55-foot -high ‘spa’ building and a particularly massive (by Pagosa standards, at least) 65-foot-high, four story hotel building. The developer is justifying the mass and heights of these buildings by noting that the travertine landscape slopes significantly, down from Hot Springs Boulevard to the river, and taking into account the lack of any buildings whatsoever along the stretch of South Sixth Street that primarily overlooks the new project from the west.
Besides the mass and height issues, the main points of discussion at yesterday’s Planning Commission meeting centered on three items: the location of the San Juan Riverwalk trail through the development, the location and amount of parking that will be required of the developer, and the location of an easement previously promised to adjacent property owners by the Springs Resort when the original street layout was vacated back in 1990.
Architect Tracy Reynolds and his assistant Courtney King handled the PowerPoint Presentation at Tuesday’s meeting. It seems that PowerPoint has become nearly a requirement for PUD presentations at Town Hall, sometimes even including ‘animated fly-throughs’ complete with a music soundtrack. Tuesday’s presentation, however, was fairly simple and straight-forward, based mainly on a basic bird’s-eye-view sketch of the 30 acre development, augmented by some selected elevation sketches.
One thing that stood out on the overview drawing — at least to some observers — was the massive amount of required parking. Combined with the new roads, the parking appears to take up over 75 percent of the development.
At this stage of the approval process, the Planning Commission is basically saying that the overall concept is acceptable — given that the developer addresses ten particular points of concern noted by planning department staff before coming back for preliminary approval, including easement concerns of adjacent property owners, establishment of transit options within the development or on Hot Springs Boulevard, re-alignment of the Riverwalk trail, and completion of a shared parking analysis.
One key thing that this reporter found absent from the PUD presentation at Tuesday’s meeting was any discussion the “public benefits” which the developer would provide in exchange for being allowed to deviate from the “principles as established in the adopted Hot Springs Boulevard Neighborhood Plan.” It seemed almost as if the mere fact that someone was planning any type of development at all in Pagosa’s currently stagnant economy was being perceived as the “public benefit.” As I understand the PUD regulations, however, it seems to me that a more vigorous debate of “public benefits” might be in order, before the Planning Commission or the Town Council approve the next phase of this development. |
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