Snowmass Town Council asks staff to move forward with engineering study on transit center proposal

The Snowmass Village Town Council directed town staff to conduct an engineering study on a transit center proposal, slowly getting the ball moving after months of mulling over designs for a redevelopment of the Snowmass Mall transit depots.

Nearly a year after a proposed transit center at the mall was shut down by the planning commission, council members began exploring new proposals to update the transit depots at the mall. Most council members agreed a transit center project that would combine the Roaring Fork Transit Authority (RFTA) and Village Shuttle depots would make the bus service to the mall more seamless. But they also recognized that concerns from last year’s transit center discussion, like construction on Carriage Way and disruption to businesses on the mall, might be unavoidable.

The Town Council ultimately directed staff to spend $15,000-20,000 on an engineering study of a transit center redevelopment sketch that would combine the RFTA and Village Shuttle Depots and direct buses back onto Brush Creek Road instead of Carriage Way. It also directed staff to determine what incremental improvements could be made to the transit depots in the interim to address safety concerns.

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“Both business owners and community members with families and kids that travel a lot in our public transportation spaces here in Snowmass said that it’s really the user experience, which is not working with these two separate spaces up at the mall,” said Councilmember Britta Gustafson. “It’s complicated.”

In February, council members saw two proposals for transit improvements, restarting the conversation of improving the mall’s transit center after the Town Council directed town staff to develop a simpler, cost-effective solution for the transit depots in June 2023. During its Feb. 5 meeting, Dwayne Romero, CEO of the Romero Group — which owns the Snowmass Mall — asked the council to consider redeveloping the transit center to allow for expansion and new housing developments on the mall. Snowmass Transportation Director Sam Guarino proposed incremental improvements to the existing transit centers for the RFTA and Village Shuttle stops.

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Council members have discussed the best steps forward several times since the proposals were introduced, and have often been torn on which proposal to pursue. Councilmember Tom Fridstein has been a staunch supporter of a redeveloped transit center that would combine the two transit depots.

“This is probably our last opportunity to improve transit in this town. We heard well throughout the whole development of the previous scheme… how important it was, essentially, to combine the RFTA and the shuttle, and that was really really important for all these things to function,” he said. “My concern if we do the incremental, is we’re going to improve slightly what we have now and we’ll never do anything else again.”

Guarino said one of the priorities in redeveloping the transit depots was to keep RFTA buses coming to the mall at all times, which he said would be difficult to do with a full transit center redevelopment.

But the separation of the two depots is confusing, especially for visitors, Councilmember Alyssa Shenk said.

“I really strongly feel that you have to prioritize the user experience,” she said.

She added that while she supports moving forward with the engineering study, she would like the town to make some incremental improvements to address safety at the bus stops.

The process to fully redevelop the transit center could take roughly five years, Town Manager Clint Kinney said. The process of approving a final proposal and securing grant funding would take a considerable amount of time.

But the Town Council ultimately voted unanimously to move forward with an engineering study to get the ball rolling and include stakeholders in the conversation early.

“I think that’s a really meaningful first step here, see this worked out a bit more, see how we can address some incremental adjustments to safety issues after we see what we might want as an end result,” Gustafson said. “In addition to that, I’d like to start those stakeholder conversations as early as possible, so having something to really discuss around will be really supportive for getting early buy-in.”