San Miguel County may have something to say about a proposed development in Mountain Village, thanks to the 1999 settlement of a lawsuit establishing that certain restrictions imposed by the county when the Mountain Village development was first approved in the early 1980s still apply to the town, despite its 1995 incorporation as a home rule municipality. Among the key provisions of the settlement agreement are restrictions on ridgeline development and the retention of specified amounts of open space, rights that are, in effect, retained by the county.

The proposal under question, which could impact both the ridgeline and open space, was set to be reviewed by the Mountain Village Design Review Board on March 24, but has been continued at the request of the applicant, the Telluride Ski and Golf Co. and developer John Horn, to late April or May, to allow time, according the applicant, for concerns raised by neighbors to be addressed. The complex application entails two proposed hotels, one at the Mountain Village gondola station and another at the top of the gondola, and a road from the Mountain Village Core halfway up the ridge accessing 28 new home sites and a parking lot. The road, parking lot and home sites are necessary, according to the application, in order to subsidize the hotel rooms, which the application characterizes as meeting longstanding community objectives to provide more bedbase.

Neighbors have hired legal counsel to represent their interests and to question the appropriateness of rezoning what is now active open space to allow the road and the new homes to be built on the ridge. Under Mountain Village zoning, the road itself may be permitted on active open space, and new open space may be designated to replace open space that is rezoned to permit development. But that does not mean that approval is assured.

The San Miguel County Commissioners, at the request of the applicant, have tentatively scheduled a work session to review the application and the county's possible interest in it on April 20. That date could be pushed back, however, at the request of Mountain Village officials.

"I'm sure we'll be revising some aspects of the application before it gets to DRB," Horn said in an interview this week. "That's how the process works."

"I'm focusing on the settlement agreement and what it allows and doesn't allow," said county attorney Steve Zwick. "The court retained jurisdiction over the case indefinitely for the purpose of enforcing the agreement."