MOUNTAIN VILLAGE – The ill-fated Telluride Apartments may be one step closer to redevelopment, as a Texas-based group forges ahead with plans to demolish the existing structure and build for-rent professional housing in its place.

The 129-unit workforce housing project proposed by Adams Ranch MV LLC (ARMV), a division of the Dallas-based investment and development company Eastern Partners LLC, is currently under review by the town’s Design Review Board. Among a handful of other variances, the project seeks to increase the density of the lot, as well as adjust and modify certain lot lines, to make way for the proposed new structure, called the Adams Ranch Apartments.

“We feel like we would be creating a really nice, upscale place, at a time when people really need it,” says Randy Edwards, a partner with Eastern Partners, of the proposed project.

The current application seeks to construct a two- and three-story complex on Adams Ranch Road in the area of Mountain Village known as the Meadows, already home to a majority of the town’s for-sale deed-restricted housing projects, as well as Big Billies Apartments, a for-rent Telluride Ski and Golf Company-owned complex. The 98,000 square foot structure would encompass 2,500 square feet reserved for offices while the rest would house the 129 units of “professional workforce rental housing,” with the majority (65 percent) designated as two-bedroom. The rest would be a mix of one-bedroom and three-bedroom apartments.

The Project does not require a height variance, as it complies with the Town’s 48-foot maximum height and 48-foot average height requirements for multi-density buildings outside of the Village Core.

Parking for the development would be mostly underground, with 70 percent of the proposed 194 parking spaces located in a subterranean lot beneath the structure.

The application also outlines the creation of two parks on the site. A “dog park” would be created on the hillside behind and to the east of the structure, and would entail a small, fenced area. Some of the apartments would allow dogs.

The park that currently exists on the site would be improved, pending a Great Outdoors Colorado Grant, pursuant to a joint application with the Town. The developer would provide a 25 percent match of those Grant funds to construct other amenities, which could include a community garden, a gazebo, playground equipment, picnic tables, horseshoe pits, and a volleyball court, plus a play field for soccer, baseball or football. The Park would also have a pedestrian path that serviced east/west foot traffic along Adams Ranch Road.

Eastern Partners’ Edwards said many of the elements of the current design came out of previous work sessions with the DRB and neighbors in the area. The design was also influenced by Adams Ranch Apartments’ would-be competitors, Shandoka Apartments in Telluride and Village Court Apartments in Mountain Village.

“The concept is to attract a more stable, family-oriented environment,” Edwards says of the current design. Rental rates would be priced similarly to other rental housing projects in the area, he adds.

If approved, the Adams Ranch Apartments would represent the first public rental housing development built by a private developer in Mountain Village in over two decades, representing a perceptible shift in an employee-housing market that has historically been dominated by for-sale deed-restricted projects.

According to Eastern Partners’ Reiner Brasch, the current financial climate could no longer support a for-sale project, which would be very difficult to finance or capitalize.

On the site currently is the 20-year-old Telluride Apartments, which was condemned by the town in 2010 due to mold and other code violations. That development had 30 units and also provided for-rent affordable housing.

The site (Lot 640A) was identified in the 2010 Mountain Village Comprehensive Plan as the primary location in the Meadows Subarea for a significant density increase, primarily due to the size of the lot – over 2.5 acres – and its relatively flat surface. The Comprehensive Plan also directed the preservation and expansion of the “pocket” park located there, which currently exists on a portion of Lot 640A and portion of a Telluride Ski and Golf-owned tract zoned as Open Space.

As the application states, if approved, the project would result in the modification of the existing TSG Open Space Lot via the creation of a separate lot, which will designate the new Park so that its ownership and maintenance responsibility would be transferred to the Town. A new lot for the Adams Ranch Apartments would be created, as would a separate, smaller Open Space Lot for the hillside area where the proposed dog park will be located. The remaining development rights for the roughly 2.5-acre area that was previously reflected on the current Lot 640A will be transferred to TSG, as compensation for the replat and the easement modifications.

“TSG has been instrumental in helping us realign the lots, in an effort to make our site more efficient as well as to provide better views for the Northstar neighbors and provide an improved park for the town,” Brasch says.

A public hearing for Town Council is scheduled on the site at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday Sept. 20, after which the public hearing will continue at the Mountain Village Town Hall Conference Room.

A public hearing for DRB will take place the following week, on Sept. 27, with a 10 a.m. site visit followed by a meeting at Town Hall.

The developers of the project encourage any feedback and questions; they will be in Telluride this week. Email any questions or comments to redwards@easternpartners.com.

The project’s application and sketch plan is available online at mountain-village.co.us; search for “lot 640A.”