Proposed New Regulations Get On-the-Ground Airing

OURAY COUNTY – The Ouray County Commissioners led an informal tour around the county on Tuesday to familiarize themselves, and members of the community, with on-the-ground ramifications of proposed new visual impact regulations.

The small caravan, which included members of the county staff, planning commission, and the media – as well as members of an ad hoc citizens group that has been contributing to the county’s draft plan process – stopped first along Highway 550 below the prow of Log Hill Mesa.

Long-time country building official Paul Christenson set a spotting scope on the roof of his pickup and invited everyone to take a look at some story poles atop the escarpment. These represented the roofline of a proposed new home. The story poles were visible in openings between the piñon-juniper on the edge of the cliff and slightly below the skyline, where blue sky meets the green line of the forest.

“It’s not unusual, “ Christensen said above the traffic noise, “for story poles to be reset three or four times before the building complies with our regulations.”

Just to the viewers’ left of the proposed new home sat the once-controversial Sink house, clearly prominent where it breaks the skyline. The home was the subject of much debate in the years preceding the county’s adopting visual impact regulations. None of the current staff were working for the county then, and some stories about the Sink house were as likely myth as fact. Approval might have involved a bottle of whiskey, the rumors went. There might have been tall aspen trees trucked in temporarily to meet a skyline standard.

The current set of visual impact regulations have been a part of the land use code for more than 13 years, with the goal (from the Master Plan): “to balance right-to-build and private property rights with maintaining scenic values county-wide.” Most agree that they have been fairly successful in preventing another Sink house controversy.

The effort now to revisit and possibly revise Section 9 (on visual impacts) began, commissioner Heidi Albritton said, when the county received, during the relative boom years of 2002-06, “tons of informal complaints” from both sides of the visual impacts coin. On one hand, owners and realtors weren’t happy when regulations forced changes in their building plans. And on the other hand, citizens griped (and Albritton paraphrased): “How dare you let that monstrosity be built in my precious view?”

A second impetus came, Albritton said, from the debate in the last year about potential development on mining claims in the alpine zone. The commissioners decided that a “code-cleaning” was in order, started the process in October 2009, and have since conducted 26 workshops leading, they hope, to a draft plan which would lead in turn to more public discussion.

“These are complicated issues,” Christensen said on the walk to an undeveloped lot in The Ridge subdivision off County Road 4. County Planner Mark Castrodale measured off 50 feet from the escarpment, the current standard setback. Then he wheeled off 200 feet, a number that has been proposed as a possible new minimum setback for ridge-top structures. The latter measurement would have the house situated down almost out of the trees near the edge of a meadow with none of the dramatic view it might have had.

Participants then began questioning the precise location of the escarpment, the measuring’s start point. It wasn’t clear. Commissioner Lynn Padgett brought out maps that showed where the grade exceeded 50 percent, one way to define the edge. But was this actually an escarpment? Or just a steep bench? Christensen’s “complicated” was beginning to look like understatement.

The caravan rolled on. There were stops at the top of Log Hill, in Pleasant Valley, and up on Miller Mesa. No one doubted the basic wisdom that unspoiled views are one of Ouray County’s greatest assets. The questions were all about how to achieve the goal.

How to define compliance? How to achieve blending with the landscape? How to utilize screening of buildings? What roads in the county should be considered view corridors? All of them? Only some? What happens to the skyline rules when a visible structure has another ridge behind it, as background? How do you protect, even enhance, property values when regulation would seem to limit building options?

A group of architects and builders made a presentation to the board recently that all sides found productive. A realtors’ group is slated to make a presentation to the board on Aug. 12.

“Our job,” said planning commission member Sheelagh Williams, “is to listen.”