Steamboat Pilot & Today

Worried about proposed changes to a stalled condominium development at the base of the ski area, the city Planning Commission tabled its amended plans Thursday.

The Planning Commission said the amended plans for The Chadwick, which would have changed the style of the roof and exterior finishing, were not in line with what the city approved in 2002 for the six-story, high-end development at Village Drive and AprÃs Ski Way.

"My primary consideration in approving six stories (three years ago) was excellence in architecture. Roof design was supposed to really mask or hide one whole story," Planning Commission Chairwoman Kathi Meyer said.

After a motion to deny the plan failed, the Planning Commission tabled the plans to May 12.

The Chadwick, which has been renamed the Highmark, has had a difficult past. In February 2002, the City Council approved the building design for a 77,000-square-foot, 23-unit condominium building with two commercial units and an underground parking garage. The project was proposed for the intersection of AprÃs Ski Way and Village Drive.

The project also came with a three-year approval.

In August 2003, the developer of The Chadwick, Richard Friedman, submitted a foundation-only building permit to the Routt County Regional Building Department. The permit was approved, and the foundation was built.

The developers then experienced financial difficulties and construction stopped in January 2004.

Last summer, a new investment group, Mountain View Development, took over the project and submitted a full building permit application for the vertical portion of the building in January.

"We changed the name to Highmark from The Chadwick (to indicate) we were new, we were different, we were going to try to make this project happen," Mountain View partner Jeff Arnold said.

When the city planning staff reviewed the building permit, they said it was not in conformance with the major development permit the city approved in 2002.

The revised plan did not change the height of the building, the floor area, the number of residential units or the amount of parking. However, the revisions changed the architecture and materials, which city staff contended made the building look more massive than what was approved previously.

The amended plans called for changes to the roofline to better hold snow and house mechanical equipment underneath the roof. The redesign reduced the height and area of the roof, which changed the proportions of the building, staff said.

The permit also changed the snow removal process in the outside parking area from a concrete snowmelt system to having an asphalt surface and hauling the snow off the site.

The amended plan also altered the center of the planned façade from a continuous glass element to a series of windows and stucco. The window area and the amount of transparency at the pedestrian level were reduced to accommodate for residential instead of commercial units.

The Planning Commission had concerns that the revised plan involved too much stucco, did not have more transparency on the pedestrian levels and that the roof changes made the building look too massive.

"Initially, this project was proposed as a world-class project. In fact, I even called it world class. The materials proposed, the architecture proposed was, in fact, very high-quality materials and architecture. That is what we expect at the base area," Planning Commission member Dick Curtis said. "The sustainable changes in architecture are considerably less than what was proposed and approved."

One Planning Commission member, Scott Myller, didn't worry about the proposed changes and said he thought some were better than the original proposal.

-- To reach Christine Metz call 871-4229

or e-mail cmetz@steamboatpilot.com