Switching to special review process for housing projects could shave years off developments, Snowmass housing officials say

Snowmass Village is looking to change its land use development code to expedite the development process on affordable workforce housing projects.

Town staff proposed using a special review process rather than the current planned unit development (PUD) process for workforce housing developments to simplify the land use review and reduce the number of formal development review meetings otherwise required for a PUD. The changes would give the Town Council much more flexibility as owners to develop housing projects with more community input at the start of the process, Town Manager Clint Kinney said in a Jan. 2 Town Council meeting.

“The process we’re proposing, it’d be less formal, it would look less formal to the public because it would be that, it would be open houses, it would be discussions like this, it would be whatever you want,” he said. “Along with that less formality is more collaboration; you guys can choose how best you wanted to collaborate with whomever was part of the project – whether it’s neighbors, whether it’s other boards and commissions – you could set that tone before the project is even submitted.”

The special review process would allow for developers to work with the Town Council on refining workforce housing development projects before a formal land use review process starts. Under the current PUD process, housing development plans are reviewed in three steps — sketch, preliminary, and final reviews — by first the planning commission and then the Town Council. 

During the first sketch review, the Town Council can only review the plan and make no changes. After it goes through the planning commission, council members may see a much different sketch than what was first proposed. Kinney, Community Development Director Dave Shinneman, and Housing Director Betsy Crum said reviewing plans as owners and not reviewers would give council members flexibility to hear from the community before the plan moves forward and allow for upfront changes to the development.

“The special review standards are very similar to the PUD process standards. It’s just you don’t do them in multiple steps; you go through them in one step,” Shinneman said. “How do you get to that first step? Do you go through three steps — sketch, preliminary, and final — or do you do all of this under the ownership title and then go to the planning commission and then Town Council?”

“It’s no less thorough,” Kinney added.

It would allow council members to discuss the project openly with members of the community outside of the quasi-judicial meeting process. 

“I feel like we’d have more of an idea of what everyone else thinks about (a housing project), and that’s important. I mean, that helps us make a decision,” said Council Member Susan Marolt. “So the more that we can have those conversations before it’s limited – we can’t talk to people at the post office, or it’s in this very formal structure – I think will benefit us.”

Switching to a special review process could shave off years from a housing development, Crum said. 

The town is currently working through a PUD proposal for 80 units of affordable workforce housing, which the town calls the Draw Site, at the Faraway Ranch North subdivision directly northwest of Snowmass Town Hall. The Draw Site PUD was presented to the Town Council in November as a pre-sketch informational proposal. It’s in sketch review with the planning commission, over a year after the town hired its architect, she said. 

It will take at least another year to get through the approval process and another two years to build the units, she said.

“So if housing is our most pressing need and the process requires about five years before you get a (certificate of occupancy) and people are moved in, that in my mind is a problem because that’s about three years more time than where the need is,” she said.

Council Member Tom Fridstein hesitated to change the land use development code for fear of losing checks and balances from the planning commission in the development process.

It was a problem the council faced when reviewing the mall transit center under a special review process, he said. 

“You say it’s a better process. It sounds to me to be just more expeditious,” he said.

He agreed to move forward with the change but asked town staff to include specific requirements to involve the planning commission during the process.

The special review process may require spending more money upfront as the Town Council explores the design. But it would allow the town to chip away at the affordable housing problem in Snowmass, Crum said. 

“Betsy tells us all the time we’re in a housing crisis, so how are we going to deal with this?” asked Mayor Bill Madsen. “We’re being presented with an opportunity to streamline the process, and I think if we can address this crisis in the most expeditious way possible, it’s our jobs to take that on.”