Gunnison Area Plan adopted by city and county

The City of Gunnison's Lazy K affordable housing development under construction in 2022. (Times archive)

A flurry of agreements and approvals by Gunnison County Commissioners and Gunnison City Council on Tuesday has substantially reduced the regulatory friction faced by potential housing developers in the valley.

On Tuesday morning, Gunnison County Commissioners unanimously approved the Gunnison Area Plan — capping three years of planning and public engagement. The document is a “shared roadmap for how the City of Gunnison and Gunnison County will collaborate to guide growth over the coming decades,” the plan states.

Gunnison City Council also approved the plan on Tuesday evening.

Specifically, the document sets joint goals for how and where development may take place in areas in unincorporated Gunnison County that are within a three-mile radius of Gunnison city limits. It also aims to streamline the approval process, particularly for housing projects. 

In support of the plan, commissioners also approved Special Area Regulations meant to set targets for development density within the Area Plan’s boundaries and, in many cases, to dramatically simplify and shorten the approval pipeline. In one example presented to commissioners, the timeline for approval for a theoretical 10-unit housing project dropped from as much as two years to eight weeks.

“The Special Area Regulations are a more precise tool than countywide Land Use Resolution amendments,” county staff wrote in a memo to commissioners. “They provide specific development and design standards that reflect the area’s proximity to the City of Gunnison and their access to a more urban level of service. These tailored standards are not appropriate for the entirety of Gunnison County, where much of the private land is extremely rural, lacks access to infrastructure and where the County seeks to maintain the distinct character and function of its rural communities.”

The city council also heard a first reading of an ordinance to repeal its Gunnison Land Development Code (LDC) and reenact it — with revisions — as Title 15 of the Gunnison Municipal Code. Council is expected to approve the resolution at a regular meeting on Dec. 9. 

The city’s current LDC was adopted in 2014. In 2020, city council approved a comprehensive plan, which identified a number of strategic objectives concerning development within the city. Those included expanding housing opportunities; encouraging economic vitality; and modernizing and simplifying standards.

State law requires municipalities to plan for future growth within the three-mile radius, anticipating infrastructure needs and zoning changes. The Gunnison Area Plan marks the first time the city and county have collaborated to this degree on setting goals and regulations in those locations where the two interface.

“Three miles around Gunnison is a huge area,” Gunnison City Manager Amanda Wilson told the Times. “It’s not reasonable that the city of Gunnison would grow three miles out. If we were in Loveland, then it’s pretty reasonable and we’d better start planning that wide.”

Therefore, rather than being driven by geography, she said, city planning is focused on areas that can be served by city utilities at a reasonable price.

“To get city water all the way up to Garlic Mike’s, for example, would be really expensive,” she said. “We’d need booster stations.”

Then, within the broad boundary of feasible access to utilities, planners identified areas that are most likely to be attractive to future developers. These are locations that are eligible for annexation by the city in the future and could reasonably be served by city utilities. The Gunnison Area Plan identifies these places as within what it calls the Urban Growth Boundary.

Anticipating growth and possible annexation in UGAs, the city and county have agreed to let city permitting rules apply to future development there, even though the land presently lies within the county. In a significant change to the LDC, the city proposes zoning categories within those areas, ranging from single-family to high-density residential use.

“If we’re going to annex and we’re going to serve utilities, then it kind of makes sense that those properties, when they’re building, are following city rules, instead of county rules,” Wilson said. “ I say that because the density or the type of roads that we would expect in a municipality are obviously very different than we would expect in a county.”

An intergovernmental agreement spelling out the details of that collaboration was also approved on Tuesday by the city and county.

All about housing

Strategic and comprehensive plans adopted by both Gunnison County and the City of Gunnison place housing among their top priorities. 

“We came up with this area plan to enable more diverse housing opportunities, to help things be more financially feasible for local developers or for other developers,” Gunnison County Community Development Director Cathie Pagano told commissioners. “By reducing the process requirements, giving them predictability and certainty of an outcome and helping them understand what they need to do in order to be successful.”

Both jurisdictions have opted to participate in the State Affordable Housing Fund — created in Nov. 2022 when Colorado voters approved Proposition 123. It sets aside a portion of the refund due under the Taxpayer Bill of Rights for funding housing efforts across the state.

To be eligible for funding, local jurisdictions “must commit to increase their affordable housing supply by a certain percentage annually or a set number of units,” according to a staff presentation to commissioners. 

“A key requirement is that local governments must implement a fast-track system by the end of 2026 to review affordable housing projects (at least 50% affordable units) within 90 days.”

According to the 2024 Housing Needs Assessment prepared by consultant Western Spaces, 1,300-1,550 new homes are required in the Gunnison Valley by 2029 to catch up with existing demand.

“What we’re trying to do is a quite substantial change in how Gunnison County has done business before,” Commissioner Laura Puckett Daniels said. “It’s a change in process. We’re moving from the land use resolution, which is a process-heavy document, to trying to create something that’s more streamlined in response to what we’ve heard from the public over many years. It’s also a change in product. We’ve never been prescriptive before about the kinds of design we want to see, or the kinds of density we want to see.”

(Alan Wartes can be contacted at 970-641-1414.)