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HomeMy WebLinkAboutminutes.apz.19890418 . ,\ .(r/ I. RECORD OF PROCEEDINGS PLANNING & ZONING COMMISSION APRIL 18. 1989 Chairman Welton Anderson called meeting to order at 4:30pm. Answering roll call were Graeme Herron, Mari Peyton, Jasmine Tygre Colombo and Roger Hunt were excused. Means, Bruce Kerr, Michael and Welton Anderson. Jim COMMISSIONER'S COMMENTS There were none. STAFF COMMENTS There were none. MINUTES APRIL 11. 1989 Jasmine made a motion to approve minutes of April 11, 1989. Bruce seconded the motion with all in favor. ASPEN MEADOWS CONCEPTUAL SPA/GMOS EXEMPTION/REZONING PUBLIC HEARING Welton opened the public hearing. Tom Baker: Introductory comments as in Planning Office memo of April 12, 1989. (attached in records) Bill Kane, representative for Aspen Meadows: I am here on behalf of 5 entities who are partners to this planning process. They are Music Associates of Aspen, The International Design Conference of Aspen, The Aspen Center for Physics, The Aspen Foundation and the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies. We, as a community, have gone through several attempts to trying to organize a long term physical plan for the Meadows with the idea of trying to preserve the campus and to provide a long term economic base for the operation of the non-profit institutions. We have not moved that process very far along in the last 15 years. We have had blue ribbon commissions, P&Z and City Council have made numerous attempts at this. The 85 acres of land is divided to 2 western portion belongs to AspenjHadid portion belongs to the Aspen Institute. 60 acres and 25 acres. general ownerships. The holdings and the eastern That divides it up into PZM4.18.89 The existing uses of the buildings are the music tent, Paepcke Auditorium, seminar rooms, the chalet buildings, the Meadows Restaurant, tennis courts, residences along 8th and Meadows Rd. the Aspen Center for Physics the Boetcher Building and the Health Club and the 8 trustee houses. Introductions: Harris Sherman, attorney, representative for the non-profit group. Betsy Chaffin from the Aspen Foundation, George Stranahan, Aspen Center for Physics, King Woodward, on behalf of the Aspen Institute, Fritz Benedict, Chairman of the Music Associates for Aspen, John Sarpa and Parry Harvey and Joe Wells for AspenjHadid and Gideon Kaufman, attorney representing the Aspen Institute. Bill then gave an historical and philosophical educational presentation. Welton opened meeting for public comment. Betsy Chaffin, Aspen Foundation representative: The Aspen Foundation is a public foundation that has existed since 1980. Last Spring a year ago we convened the Aspen Meadows Consortium. At that time there existed a great deal of uncertainty about the fate of the Meadows. The uncertainty also existed among the non- profits, the cultural organizations and what their future was going to be. And uncertainty about the intentions of the developer, Hadid Holdings. The Board of Directors of Aspen Foundation felt that the Meadows represented the cultural zone of Aspen and it was our belief then as it is now that that was certainly a key to maintaining Aspen as we know it. We also feel that Aspen Meadows Consortium represents a uniquely co-operative spirit. For the first time they were looking at their future as a joint effort--not each individually walking down a different path. It is a joint effort between these organizations and the developer. The co-operative spirit has resulted in the plan that we are looking at now. It is a plan that is workable. It is a plan that maintains the entire Meadows and it is a plan that is certainly a compromise. A compromise in which we all give a little bit but in making a small sacrifice it is obvious that the community gains a great deal. Bill Kane: Access to the property: The proposal is simply to try to find a form of development that provides the least impact in terms of people at one time. The single family form of development doesn I t seem to be getting used too intensively. 2 PZM4.18.89 Then organize that development in a way so that there is the least amount of change in terms of the historic open spaces and visual quality of the Meadows campus. What is proposed here is the construction of compounds so that each one of these residences in a cluster gains access at a common access point and a common arrival. The advantage to that is it allows single family form to proceed but it clusters it in a very tight kind of clustered manner so that you don't get large lots and lack of control and a sprawl that is associated with single family development. On the public side there are 3 new buildings that are proposed. A building will replace the trustee houses which are proposed to be removed to allow a roadway to be constructed. Then a series of units that would be organized to replace the housing that is currently provided by trustee houses. A second building will be a MAA guest facility. That building is designed to try to provide housing for guest artists and faculty who are having an increasingly hard time competing for the rents that are being paid for residences in Aspen. A third building is a proposed rehearsal facility for ensembles and large groups that can't be occupying the tent because they only have one performance space. The Physics Institute has not changed. outline of our plan. That gives you a rough Fritz Benedict: The present lease which the Music Associates has from the Aspen Institute is only for the 4 or 5 feet outside the tent. This proposal would acquire around 8 acres in the southeast corner of the property. And then we get the use of the parking lot behind there. I would like to remind you that in 1981 during the commission proposal that we were going to build a auditorium with 1,000 seats on the grass around it. to have the general approval from the west side. talking about 500 seats around it now. blue ribbon 2,000 seat That seemed We are just The 24 bedroom apartment building is extremely important for us. It is getting harder and harder to accommodate staff and students. Hopefully we are going to be able to get some housing out at the Marolt property for students. But we still have this big housing problem with depending on the private market for faculty and visiting artists. 3 PZM4.18.89 King Woodward, Aspen Institute: I have been associated with the Institute for 25 years. In 1954 this A building, B building and C building were built and also the Health Center. At that time they were new as a commercial development. We cannot, as the institute, rebuilding of these buildings. as possible. keep postponing the upgrading and We have to have a change as soon Mr. Hadid, at our request, upgraded the buildings last year to a standard where we could use them for our participants. He is going to upgrade again this year so we can re-occupy the buildings. But we just can't keep doing this. We are not asking for any more accommodation than we have at the present time. That is "exactly 100 units. If this plan goes through Mr. Hadid will give back to the Institute all these buildings. George Stranahan, The Aspen Institute: This year the Aspen Institute will be in it's 28th year. In order for us to go on we need to know that we can use our campus year after year for our own purposes. Our campus is sufficient to house 80 scientists working. For these people to work it is necessary that they have what we call our circle of serenity. We need to be isolated from traffic, etc. in order to work and continue our program. This land will allow us to do that. Bill Kane: There was an issue raised in Alan's memo regarding the appropriateness of the actual idea of deeding land back to these non-profit institutions. Harris: One of the most important things that can be done here is to give particularly to music and physics is the chance to be an equal partner in the future of the Meadows. The best and only way that they can be equal partners was to have control over their own destiny. For that reason the allocation plan results in music having about 8 acres under it's ownership and control. And Physics having 3 to 4 acres under it's control. The impact of that is enormous on the future of these institutions at the Meadows. As Fritz says if he wanted to do anything relating to the use of the facilities just outside of his lease line he could not do so. Or if Physics wanted to protect it's circle of serenity but the land owner wanted to locate a building immediately adjacent, George had no control over what would happen there. And in turn with west Meadows, if Hadid elected to sell that to somebody else 4 PZM4.18.89 to subdivide it or to fence it or whatever he might choose to do we would have had no control over that. So this allocation of property we think will make a tremendous difference. In addition to that in the past Physics having not contributed as much to the maintenance and the operation of the programs of the Meadows as they could have. By virtue of this reorganization they will do that. I also emphasize that there will be a series of joint use agreements, restrictive covenants etc. to make sure that the quality of the use of the Meadows is retained and maintained. Debra Murphy, International Design Conference: The International Design Conference feels this proposal not only preserves the existence of our institutions, it preserves the unique ambience of the Meadows campus. The permanent dedication of the property to the institutions guarantees our future in Aspen giving us the security to be able to engage in long term planning and improvements that will enhance our program. John Sarpa: This has been a very unique process for us as developers. Normally we are in a situation where we are negotiating with one other entity on a property and in this instance there were 5 of us simultaneously negotiating. It became clear to us early on that the priority had to be given to things that had nothing to do with us. The priorities were preservation of the campus and the institutions that were there and some development of a program that would accomplish that. Then after those things were accomplished the economic of what was left for us was to be addressed. We have long since concluded that these non-profit organizations are programs are the heart and soul of the community. Also so as not to have people believe we are here for only philanthropic reasons, they have very strong economic support for this community. It is in many ways what makes the value of this community, in all senses of the word value, what they are. So as a major real estate holder in the community we are concerned about their ability to stay, to thrive and to keep Aspen unique and to keep it different from everywhere else in the world. So we have engaged in this project. The properties will be deeded back. These negotiations were very arduous. There were a lot of tough concessions that everybody had to come up with. otherwise we weren't going to reach agreement. 5 PZM4.18.89 There is a time problem for the institutions. They have been struggling with ways to meet their simple economic needs. They have not been successful in finding much of a formula. And this is no hype here whatsoever. This is a closing window that we have--all of us working together--the City, the community, ourselves to figure out how to make this work. And that window is closing very rapidly. Time is running out. I know what most of you would feel would be the consequences if this thing fails. Parry Harvey: This is zoned Conservation now which allows 1 resident per 10 acres. This is a 28 acre parcel that is being dedicated to the residential component. Of that through the clustering we are using 10 acres for the actual homesites and the roadways and 18 acres or 60% being left as open space. By clustering we can define the areas where someone can have a lawn or walkway or driveway entrance and leave the majority of the land as open. In addition to that we have left a preserve area for wildlife and additional open space. The goal was to conserve the campus and put the housing down below where the majority 17 of the 23 units would be down below and out of sight from the campus area and would create a demarkation of the campus by the Meadows road so that with the exception of the restaurant and pool which would stick out. We chose the single family residential form because of the low impact that that kind of density creates. We chose to access it strictly through an internal roadway. Trail access: As you know now there is a walkway between Paepcke and the Music Tent and the lodge facilities, the campus housing facilities and restaurant. We wanted to keep that as internal for the participants who are staying and using these facilities. What we have done then is to create a way to ring this property with a trail system that would hook it into the Rio Grande that would allow the people from the west end to get to the Rio Grande and people from Pitkin Green to get up to concerts. We feel that is going to cut down on some of the traffic. There will be an 8ft paved trail which is the Rio Grande Trail. Where it will go across the river will depend on the grade up to the Rio Grande and the best spot for a bridge crossing. We will put a bridge across where it will come up to the Rio Grande. We feel there is some community impetus for another trail that would link in somewhere in here, come up the bluff, out along by the current Paepcke parking lot and hook back into 3rd street to create a loop around it. As we go through the process, we are 6 PZM4.18.89 going to refine that trail location. We are committed to providing as much linkage as we can into the trail system. Bill Kane: I don't think we could represent to you that Aspen is going to be a better place to live because there are 23 new residences here. The fact of the matter is though that those residences are the economic vehicle to make sure that we have a viable music program and a flourishing institute and physics with a long term fix on this land. That is what they are about. Tom Baker then went through threshold records) with the members of the Commission were taken from many members of the public. issues (attached in during which comments Welton then continued the public hearing to date of April 25, 1989. Meeting was adjourned. Time was 7:00pm. '\ Jani e M. , y Clerk 7