TELLURIDE – On Tuesday, members of the Telluride Town Council, acting as the Historic and Architectural Review Commission, granted approval of a small residential addition to the historic building located at 221 Colorado Avenue.

The 5-0 approval (Councilor Brian Werner abstained from the discussion because of a conflict of interest, Councilor Chris Myers was absent) comes after more than two years of HARC hearings on the matter on the addition, a subsequent council call-up of a HARC approval, and a bias hearing involving councilors Myers and Bob Saunders.

Tuesday’s hearing was a continuation of the June 15 special hearing where council conditionally approved 221 Colorado, LLC’s proposed plan. Before achieving final approval, the developer of the project had to go back to the drawing board to satisfy seven conditions council deemed necessary for approval.

One of those conditions was that the applicant is to preserve the 18-foot brick portion of the building council deemed to be erected before 1913 as part of its contributing structure. In doing this, council’s June 15 conditional approval allowed the applicant to modify its plans to decrease the current 19-foot building setback near the rear of the property towards the alley but still must respect the Telluride Land Use Code’s setback requirement of five feet.

On Tuesday, based on the applicant’s modified plans, town planning staff member Michael Davenport recommended approval, as the new plans, he said, satisfied all of council’s conditions.

“Essentially, what you have is the same character and size of the previous project,” Davenport said. “It’s below the maximum allowed space.”

Basically, he said, the mass of the project has been transferred to the back part of the site.

Because Tuesday’s hearing was a continuation of the June 15 meeting, public comment and applicant comments were not taken.

Representatives of the New Sheridan Hotel expressed frustration before and after the hearing that they were unable to comment.

For Mayor Stu Fraser, the approval is a compromise.

“I am so pleased we came to a resolution,” Fraser said. “This is a compromise that worked well for council and well for the applicant. It was not easy to get to it, and it took a while and a lot of patience. I think it will make the building a greater building, and I believe our involvement did not hurt but rather helped it.”

Dirk de Pagter, a representative of the applicant, declined to comment after the approval.



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