ASPEN — Local government officials granted an unusual boon to a native Aspenite this week.

Pitkin County commissioners gave permission for recent college graduate Besha Lou Deane to add the square footage of two obsolete trailers to her planned house at T-Lazy 7 Ranch on Maroon Creek Road.

Deane, who recently graduated with a degree in biology, plans to build a new home on the site of a house that once belonged to Rick and Landon Deane, which burned down in 2001.

The new house, according to original approvals, was to be limited to a maximum of 2,164 square feet. But this week’s action by the county allows Deane to add 666 square feet to the home’s size.

Under the approved plan, two old and decrepit trailers, which were once used for housing, will be demolished and removed. The 666 square feet is what the county determined the size of the trailers to be.

Approval of the plan did not come without some discussion, however.

Commissioner Jack Hatfield asked if the county had ever approved a similar plan; planner Suzanne Wolff said that a similar “movement of floor area over a nonconforming property” had been allowed in the redevelopment of the Elk Mountain Lodge property on Castle Creek Road, south of Aspen.

Hatfield, persistent in questioning the project, called the lodge “a different animal” from the T-Lazy 7’s 40-acre parcel, where there are so many structures with so many different uses that the entire property has been ruled “nonconforming” with regard to the county’s land-use codes.

He asked whether there are other structures on the property that might be used in a similar fashion in the future, predicting that “in a generation, the property is sold, [and] it continues to grow and grow” and declaring that the county should “draw the line somewhere” about any such future “consolidation” of floor area.

But Commissioner Rachel Richards said she felt such consolidations are appropriate, in that they combine smaller buildings into larger ones and reduce the clutter of structures on the property.

None of the other commissioners supported Hatfield in the discussion, and the proposal was approved. Willow Creek Forty LLLP/Wyrick Properties LLC, for whom Deane was the representative at the hearing, has until 2014 to pull the necessary permits to build the house.

jcolson@aspentimes.com