Letter: Parking issues in Snowmass
Dear town of Snowmass Village,
Capitol Peak residential owners request remediation of zoning-created parking issues. First, do not allow any further harm. Second, provide options that don’t require personal vehicle parking.
Capitol Peak owners formally protest the devaluing of our guest and owner parking proposed by Related and Snowmass Acquisition Co.’s planned-unit-development amendment through their removal of protected parking, stripping of all loading-zone spaces, promotion of a navigational nightmare to Capitol Peak and disregard for employee-owner direct access to their building. Further, Capitol Peak recommends a car-sharing program.
First, we ask the town to make the changes shown below to avoid being complicit in causing harm to Capitol Peak owners. Requested actions:
1. Require that existing fencing be retained to provide separation between residential and commercial parking. Protected parking has existed since Base Village opened. Related and Snowmass Acquisition Co. will strip guests and owners of this protection. The Capitol Peak solution will:
• Protect residential parking from commercial-vehicle incursions with automated badge access versus high-cost, less effective, manual management. Badge access prevents problems. Related endorses punitive actions once a parking violation has occurred. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” — Benjamin Franklin.
• Recognize four times higher residential parking cost compared with commercial rates with protected parking versus Related and Snowmass Acquisition Co.’s plan to strip away protection.
2. Require that 40 percent of existing loading-zone spaces be retained. The benefit is continued positive guest and owner covered loading and unloading experience; otherwise, Related and Snowmass Acquisition Co. will strip 100 percent of loading-zone spaces and devalue the Capitol Peak guest and owner experience. This is significant because all Phase 2 Base Village properties have been designed with their own loading-zone spaces.
3. Retain existing traffic flow versus the proposed convoluted maze. The benefits are:
• It avoids devaluing the Capitol Peak guest and owner experience. Related and Snowmass Acquisition Co.’s plan sends only Capitol Peak guests and owners on a navigational nightmare, with four turns across 80 percent of the floor before seeing their destination. No other property owner or guest in the entire town is penalized with this convoluted maze. The existing design has Capitol Peak guests and owners make one turn and transit 20 percent of the garage to see their destination.
• Existing flow supports the town’s “be green” goal by avoiding increasing carbon emissions by 80 percent because all traffic will not be required to wind through the entire second floor to enter and exit. The Related and Snowmass Acquisition Co. plan does not.
4. Revise employee space designations to a single location to give direct access to their building. The benefits are:
• Employees efficiently drive to one place to find an empty employee space. Related and Snowmass Acquisition Co.’s plan requires searching two different floors.
• P-1 employee parking gives direct same-level access to all three employee-housing elevators. To reach two-thirds of the employee housing, Related and Snowmass Acquisition Co.’s plan requires anyone parking on P-2 to wait for two elevators in two different buildings with a walk across the garage to reach their home.
5. Provide Base Village owners with right-to-purchase, taxpayer-supported, numbered-lot parking. All town property owners are allowed use of Base Village facilities — why aren’t Base Village owners allowed access to town facilities?
Second, require the Base Village Phase 2 developer to fund 100 percent of the town’s first five years of a shared-vehicle program. This would be a true communitywide amenity.
P.J. Keefer
Capitol Peak Homeowners’ Association board appointee
