Base Village Building 12 Designs, Dubbed “Aura”, Gain Snowmass Town Council Approval
The Town Council of the Village of Snowmass gave the green light to a resolution approving the final architectural plans for Base Village Building 12 at a regular meeting on Dec. 6. The building, dubbed “Aura”, is slated for construction on Lot 7 along Assay Hill, just south of the Viceroy.
Aura’s 21 units will be among the largest in Base Village’s residential inventory: each unit has four or five bedrooms and averages approximately 2,655 square feet per unit.
That’s more than double the size and less than half the number compared to Electric Pass Lodge, which is currently under construction with 52 two- and three-bedroom open-market units averaging about 1,135 square feet. squares, plus a restricted act unit.
Aura’s unit size is more on par with the 10 stand-alone Havens at Fanny Hill homes also under construction, which each have three or four bedrooms plus a flex den and images of living space ranging from just under from 2,500 to over 3,300 square feet.
Like Electric Pass Lodge, Aura’s plans consider environmentally responsible practices as well as the relationship between residents and their environment.
The project will be largely electrically powered once built (although a few components like spa pool heating and snow melting still require natural gas), and the building will be a “mass timber” structure. which relies more on wood than on the most carbon. – concrete and steel-intensive, according to Ellen McCready, project manager for developer East West Partners.
“The building itself – excluding the thermal pool and snowmelt – should have a zero ongoing carbon footprint and I know there were articles a few weeks ago about to have similar goals and the race to zero (initiatives) and carbon reduction strategies, so I think we’re aligned there,” McCready said.
The housing mitigation for this project has already been completed off-site, so the developer is not required to build any new rent-limited or rent-limited units indoors when they inaugurate Aura, as requested. submitted to the city.
“It’s not that it doesn’t mitigate employee housing, it’s that housing has already been mitigated,” McCready said.
But as the lack of affordable housing for local employees reaches crisis levels, city officials have raised concerns about the long-term impact another luxury new building will have on concurrent housing shortages. and manpower.
“You guys, I’m sure, are as aware as anyone – I mean, employee housing in this village is getting harder and harder,” Mayor Bill Madsen said. “And as you said, a lot of that mitigation was done a long time ago. We find ourselves today in a difficult situation: what are we going to do to solve this problem? »
Andy Gunion, Roaring Fork Valley’s managing partner for East West, acknowledged that housing is a “community-wide issue” and noted that an existing housing mitigation matrix is part of the project acquisition so developers can anticipate mitigation and plan accordingly as they planned base village.
“In some ways, time hasn’t been in our favor, hasn’t it, because all of these mitigations were taken a long time ago,” Gunion said. “Now the projects under construction required this mitigation, but we cannot be penalized for this time discrepancy.”
“I realize that,” Madsen said, “but as a community, how are we going to address this? I mean, it’s the biggest development in our town, and we have to find a way to house the employees.
Gunion noted that phase two of the Viceroy development will have a “significant housing component” and that East West is evaluating “all strategies” for potential housing mitigation in the future.
“There’s nothing we’re looking at that’s a definite go-ahead, but it’s a priority for everyone,” Gunion said.
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