P&z - Regular Meeting

All righty, let's call to order Town of Basalt Planning and Zoning Commission meeting Tuesday, May 19th, 2026. Roll call, please.

Yes, Ben Farrstein.

Here.

Bob Kaplan is absent. Mike Horvath. Here. Cindy Hirshfield. Here. Rob Leavitt. Yes. Eric Bozic is absent. Kyle Oberketter. Here. And Bill Merritt. Yes, you have a quorum.

Thank you. Thank you. Let's first approve the minutes of April 21st, 2026 and May 5th, 2026. Anyone have any changes, modifications, or thoughts they would like to ventilate?

Motion to approve. Second.

We have first. We have a second. All in favor?

Aye. Abstaining. Who's not here?

Okay. Kyle, did you vote? No. Yes. Okay. Got it. Thank you very much. Motion passes. Okay, public hearing on code amendments to Town Code Chapter 16 for adoption of the Midland Avenue Design Guidelines. Carlton.

Carlton Henry, Planner 2 at the Town of Basalt. Good evening, Planning and Zoning Commission. I'm here to present code amendments to Chapter 16 of the Basalt Municipal Code associated with the Midland Avenue district design guidelines, which you guys have seen more than a couple times. a little background town council approved a contract with gm shea to establish design guidelines in line with goals set forward in the 2020 basalt master plan and to ensure consistency and compatibility with the historic nature of downtown when a new property is built or an existing property is altered after multiple rounds of public input starting in september 2025 a final draft of the midland avenue district design guidelines is presented for approval from the planning and zoning commission the current draft reflects incorporated comments and considerations from the planning and zoning commission residents business owners and comments from the planning and zoning commission works session held january 6 2026. The town council first held a work session on April 14th, 2026, and did not request changes to the guidelines. I'm sure you guys are all asking, why are you seeing this again? After that work session, staff met with the town attorney and the town attorney felt that it would be wise to reference the design guidelines in the zoning code. So we have returned with a draft ordinance which would uh refer to the midland avenue district design guidelines by reference and that language for that ordinance as well as the associated code amendments is included as part of your packet this evening as you'll see the suggested code amendments are very minor in nature and would be

also have a copy of the red line changes in front of you as well as given by the town attorney james do you have anything to add here i would add that it is a public hearing and it's a notice public hearing so staff would suggest taking public comments and then providing commission discussion and if you're comfortable you could ultimately make a recommendation to the town council As Carlton noted, the town attorney, since your packet, suggested a couple minor adjustments to the code language there on the packet materials that you have on your chair there. And generally, the amendments are all to the C2 and CSC zone districts. which are the properties that are included in the Midland Avenue Design District that the guidelines would be applicable to. So as I noted, staff would be happy to answer questions. We did have Jessica Hubbard at prior meetings kind of go through all the guidelines. We're happy to look at those again or answer questions you have, but we would suggest taking public comments at this point.

I'll make one more addition. The type of code language that we're looking at here would be very similar to the overlay districts that exist in town. And yeah as as such the code language refers to the guidelines which are not a part of the zoning code but are referred to in the zoning code.

So just as a quick point of fact before we go open to questions. What are the functional changes to the operation of this design guidelines by the town attorney's changes? Are there, or is this just procedural?

I would say it is procedural. And the acknowledgment is to add something in the town code which acknowledges the design guidelines in written language.

It's similar to the way we reference the community housing guidelines or the public works manual. Those are still requirements, but they're in a separate document from the town code, and they're still applicable to.

So in effect, this just gives more legal weight to the document. Questions, let's start with Cindy. Do you have any questions? Mike? No questions. Rob?

No questions.

Kyle?

Nope. Okay. I have a question.

If you have a statement to make, please come to the podium, state your name, where you live, and try and keep this under five minutes.

Do we wanna officially open the public hearing?

Yeah, we should open the public hearing up first before we do that. Let's wait till we do that. Okay, let's open up the public hearing at 6.12.

I'm sorry if I interrupted you. I don't know how all this works. I did have a question. I have actually three of them. I'm not sure how this works. I finally had a chance to print out the guidelines and look at all of them. And I saw the Railroad Hotel being designated as... Please state your name and where you live. My name is Cynthia Milling, and I live on top of the hill here in Basalt on Ridge Road. All right. So I'm here as just somebody from the public. I noticed that you're designating the Railroad Hotel as Pioneer Vernacular. And Pioneer Vernacular is basically a log cabin with a gable roof. So I don't understand that, and I would love to have that explained. Then under the railroad hotel, it identifies clever siding, which it does have. But since it's designated railroad hotel under pioneer vernacular, you look at pioneer vernacular, which is a log cabin. There isn't any idea about wood siding there, so they don't seem to fit. And I would love to know how the hotel got designated as a cabin.

Good stuff. Address that.

And it doesn't have a gable roof either. So I don't know if it's getting mixed up with the old depot, which is now Alpine Bank.

Just give me one moment here.

No, I don't think it's getting mixed up. I think the answer is that the Pioneer is broader than just cabins in terms of the Pioneer vernacular. It's kind of a time period. We can have Jessica Hubbard from GM Shea address your questions in an email to you, if that would work.

It seems like it should be switched out. It seems like the hotel has more in common with Putnam House or it might have more in common with 19th century commercial or the Queen Anne style. It has much more in common with other designated landmark properties than a cabin. So that was my concern because I don't see how they fit together. visually or otherwise. But it does seem to me that the hotel looks like the Putman House, Queen Anne style. Oh, I didn't mention this, but I graduated from Moore College of Art and I worked in Manhattan at Gensler & Associates, so I have a bit of an architectural background. I'm not just speaking that I don't know some of this because I do. So I think the designation for the hotel is Isn't as proper as it could be since you have other properties that it could be attached to or have some type of reference to The other thing that just was drawn to my attention I didn't know the depot used to be on an angle and it was on an angle to allow for the trains to turn around and in 1919 the Alpine Depot, the Depot, the Alpine Bank now, moved 80 feet southeast so that it lined with the road. So every building on Midland aligns with the sidewalk, except for the hotel. And so it was historically moved for the reason that there's no longer a train. And since there's no longer a train, I don't think that this business, or however you would designate it, that all the old buildings have to stay in their proper orientation. I've noticed that the Alpine Bank was moved historically, so I don't understand why you would identify the fact that buildings have to stay in their historical designation when the depot was moved. That was one other concern. The last thing that I've been trying to question through, I actually asked Jessica this, is on your page with this, the planning certificate of appropriateness, in a very small font, and I have a really great right eye, my left eye's not as great if we were talking about eyes before. It says that people have to sign certificate of appropriateness and be compliant with the guidelines and I've noticed there are a few things in the guidelines that kind of don't match up so I don't know how we can get somebody to sign something before a like you're putting in an application for design or something I don't know how they can sign on document this large and be compliant to it if they haven't had a chance to discuss it or present it to counsel So, those are my three major questions. I have others. Thank you very much. Yeah, thanks. I hope that was an appropriate time frame.

I'd make a couple comments here. Please do. First, I apologize.

Carlton, why don't we close the public hearing?

Yeah, let's close the public hearing at 618 p.m. There's no one else online.

There is not.

Okay.

Sorry, Carlton.

Go ahead. I apologize. My computer is not loading right now, so I can't reference the Pioneer Vernacular comments directly. I would note that we do still have two public hearings as a part of this approval process at Town Council, and I would apologize to Cynthia that I can't directly address her comments at the...

Please, please don't don't if you're not going to be recognized, please sit down.

I would I would encourage PNZ to consider allowing staff and the consultant group to address the architectural comments that were made this evening ahead of the two future public hearings that will be coming, including next week. And then James, do you have anything with regard to the pioneer vernacular?

you're pulling it up here you know I think it is broader than just cabin construction but I would also agree that it would be appropriate to have Jessica from GM Shay addressed those questions about the vernacular in the future public hearings would also indicate that the page of with the certificate of appropriateness it is required that a property owner that is doing development in the Midland Avenue design district fill that out as part of their approval process before they apply for a building permit. And because most of the properties are in C2 they also require a site plan review at a staff level at least. And so if if somebody does not meet the design guidelines there's a process for an exemption from a specific design guideline. And so

that would be the appropriate request if if a design doesn't meet a design guideline to request a waiver all right I would and I would note that it's with any site plan application or development application applicants are required to sign the application as well so that's not uncommon and as James noted there is an appeal process and so there is a public hearing process should an applicant take umbrage with a requirement, an architectural design piece that is stipulated as part of an application in the C2 or CSC zone districts.

All right. Let's open this up for commissioner comments. Ben, would you like to start, please? No comments. Kyle?

No comments.

Rob?

I, not having been at the previous meetings, I did go through their guidelines and I was impressed. That's not the right word, but I did think they were exceedingly thorough, which should facilitate future improvement work. I commend them for that.

Thank you. Mike? No comments. Cindy?

No comment.

All right, thank you. I will like to add that, you know, I think the guidelines are thorough and there may be some minor inconsistencies with some of the language, but for the most part, since people still have the option of just tearing these buildings down to obviate all of this, we're doing our best with the tools we've got. short of historically designating buildings which were not so I think this is the most we can do and and in light of that do we have a motion to send this on to council I'll make a motion to put this in front of council with some clarification to the public comment tonight

Second.

We have any further discussion? We have a first, we have a second? All in favor? Unanimous. Thank you. Thank you all. Commissioner comments and staff updates. Yeah, thank you.

The next meeting that we'll have queued up for the PNZ will be the 17th. I'm sorry, the 16th of June. But we did want to do a quick check in to see if everybody knows what their schedule looks like in the next month, month and a half, because we'll be running into the middle of summer and sometimes we have quorum issues does anybody kind of know if there's any time periods you're going to be out at this point i don't know as of yet expect to be here okay i'll be out the week of june 22nd and then the week of july 4th and the week after that Okay. Okay. All right. Well, that's helpful. We just kind of wanted to make sure we've got enough for quorums in June and July. We've got some bigger applications kind of in the queue. You've got the Jadwin final plan application that will be coming back to P&Z. June there's also the police department Public Works zoning will be coming to PNZ in late June and and then also the hotel that's proposed on the movie land site will be in for review for PNZ in June and July so those are kind of a preview of upcoming applications that that you'll look at the movie theater it's just about I mean it is adjacent to unincorporated Eagle County but it isn't in the sound of assault

And James, you said that our next meeting will be the 16th. Yes.

And then, you know, some other updates on the general land use code amendment rewrite project that the town has going on. There'll be an open house in early June. I'm sorry, early July that will get you invitations for Also, there was an exercise at Basalt High School with Design Workshop, and Carlton also attended that on behalf of the town, where they worked through some public feedback from the high schoolers. So that was a good session. It was in one of Eric Vosick's classes. So, you know, there'll be more code amendment review coming back in December, probably august or so on that process carlton do you have any other updates you'd like to provide to

We have landed on a date, the 27th of June, right, for the e-waste. Yeah, 27th of June, that's a Saturday, for the e- and hazardous waste pickup event, again, at Salt High School in collaboration with Eagle County. So get your electronics, batteries, hard to recycle items together for that. Paint? Paint? believe paint as well yeah um and then i will note that the town's local vocals concert series begins at triangle park in willits on the 5th of june that's every friday evening and the summer concert series at the basalt river park begins on june 17th every wednesday starting at around six o'clock

school will be open this weekend. But then we do have to close next week and then we'll be open again because we don't have enough lifeguards there still in school. So we have to wait until they get out of school. So that is the hiccup there that I wanted to let you guys know.

If you guys don't know, we get free access as being commission members.

One of your benefits for giving us your time.

Well, thank you very much. Does anyone have commissioner comments to make? I have a question of staff.

That big...

that Department of Public Works, or not Public Works, Department of Parks and Wildlife made. Yeah, I spent all summer doing that. It's weeping. And I was wondering, I was wondering, is it okay? Because there's a lot of water behind it. You're not the only one that's noticed that.

They are monitoring it.

Yeah, when dams, they spent a lot of time doing that, and it's leaking.

They filled up the lake? Is that why?

I don't know if that's actually the dam or not, but whatever it's doing is leaking.

It's still under warranty, though, right?

I hope so. Because it would really suck if we have to spend another summer not being able to drive through there.

Well has Gloria mentioned that they're monitoring it and so at this point, I don't think we anticipate that they are going to have to do anything but that could change depending on their monitoring.

Bless their hearts.

Where's this like Christine.

On tours road, there's that big thing like Christine that they built. Remember it was one lane for all summer, last summer?

Yeah, right, the wall. Yeah, the wall. Doesn't it have a different color to you now?

Yeah.

Lake Christine is behind that, so it's kind of holding it up. You know Earth of Dams. They're always fun. Makes sense.

It was designed by a dam engineer, so...

So hopefully his liability insurance will protect us. That's all I got. Do we have a motion to adjourn?

I'll motion.

We have first. Second. First and second, all in favor? Aye.

I was going to ask you.

My board meetings have been really quick tonight. The veil is only 30 minutes.

I was curious, too.