Snowmass Council hears public input on Brush Creek-Owl Creek roundabout

Snowmass Town Council was packed on Tuesday evening as members of the public were called upon to submit input on a proposed $8.5 million roundabout project that would be constructed at the intersection of Brush Creek and Owl Creek roads.

The intersection has been a focus of the council for at least 10 years due to a mix of aging utility infrastructure underneath the road that will need replacing and a more general concern that the current intersection is dangerous — expressed by town council and several local stakeholders. 

The intersection is responsible for the most accidents within the town limits, accounting for 71 accidents in the 10 year period of 2015 to 2025, according to data shared by the Snowmass Village Police Department. The only other area in Snowmass with comparably high accidents is the Town Park/Rodeo lot. 

Accidents at the parking lot generally involve lower speeds than accidents at the intersection. 

Roaring Fork Fire Rescue Fire Chief Scott Thompson weighed in on the public comment session with a letter submitted to the councilors, emphasizing that accident data itself doesn’t tell the entire emergency story.

“During busy times of the year, police officers often must respond to the intersection instead of the emergency (itself),” Thompson said in his letter. “They need to manage traffic in order for emergency vehicles to simply make it to Brush Creek Road. This obstacle lengthens response times and inhibits our ability to provide the highest quality service possible.”

Roaring Fork Fire Rescue’s Station 45 sits at the intersection of the proposed roundabout. 

Thompson said he is strongly in support of a roundabout at the intersection as “it will alleviate the grid lock in front of the fire station and improve our access to Brush Creek Road.” 

Roundabout construction would start in spring 2026, when there is a planned utility update for water and sanitation lines that run underneath the road. The construction, according to a timeline attached to the Tuesday meeting’s agenda, is projected to stretch from spring until fall and will involve various levels of traffic impacts. 

While public comment from the surveys preceding Tuesday’s public comment section was largely supportive of the roundabout construction, with around 80% of the 313 respondents saying that they “would consider a roundabout appropriate for this intersection,” there was a significant amount of concern about the potential project. 

Twenty percent of respondents expressed some level of disapproval for the project. 

“My mental exercise is that if that’s 20 or 30 days a year where we have a significant problem (at the intersection) and it’s one or two hours a day, that’s a total of 60 hours a year,” Planning Commission Member Jim Gustafson said during the public comment period on Tuesday. “Which is half of 1% of the hours in a year. So we’re looking at a pretty significant construction project to address those peak times.”

The concerns largely focused on several topics, from worries that this project could be a misuse of tax dollars to worries about “construction fatigue” in the area, concerns about construction timing, questions about whether the safety issues from the intersection warrant this level of construction and disruption, and more. 

“It seems very wasteful and unnecessary to build a multi-million-dollar round-about (sic) when there is no problem for 99.7% of the time,” read a survey comment written before Tuesday’s meeting. “This project would have terrible impacts and would be a colossal waste of money.” 

The project would be funded using a real-estate transfer tax that funds the “RETT fund.” That fund, according to Snowmass Mayor Alyssa Shenk, cannot be spent on anything else other than transportation and roadway improvements. 

“This money cannot be used for other purposes — it is specifically earmarked for transportation and roadway purposes,” Shenk told The Aspen Times on Friday. 

She added that among the limited roadways, the RETT fund can be spent on Brush Creek road and Owl Creek road but not on other projects brought up during the public comment session. 

Several public comments asked why the construction couldn’t be done alongside the Aspen/Pitkin County Airport construction that will close the airport in 2027. Local businesses and municipalities are planning major construction projects at that time because of an anticipated decrease in visitors due to the airport closure. 

According to Shenk, the Snowmass Water and Sanitation District has made it clear that parts of the utility maintenance and improvement cannot be pushed beyond spring 2026. 

“We have two valves that are currently in the intersection of Brush Creek/Owl Creek, and one of the valves is not functioning,” Snowmass Water and Sanitation District Director Kit Hamby said. “We need to go in and replace that valve. So if you don’t move forward with this roundabout project, we’re still going to need to get to that intersection in the spring to replace that valve.”

With the valve repair mandating the timeline of construction, any potential improvement to the intersection would likely need to take place at the same time to avoid digging the road up multiple times in a short period. 

No decisions were made at the Tuesday meeting, as it was intended for input only. Snowmass will begin considering whether to move forward with the project during a budget review process in October.