Basalt Town Council showed apprehension on Tuesday during the first public hearing for the development of 54 commercial storage units and 47 residential housing units at 555 Basalt Avenue, citing concerns about traffic and necessary amendments to Town policies.
The development, located just south of the Basalt Avenue/Highway 82 intersection, would be on the current site of Myers & Company Architectural Metals. Housing would be located on the north side of the property, nearer to the Park & Ride, and the storage units would be located further south.
The residential portion of the development would consist of three, three-story apartment buildings primarily consisting of one-bedroom units. Eleven of the 47 units would be deed restricted — a 23% proportion in keeping with the Town’s 20% minimum affordable housing requirement.
Basalt’s 2020 Master Plan identifies vacant parcels in the Southside — the area south of the Basalt Avenue and Highway 82 intersection on the way to Basalt High School — as an ideal area for development to address housing shortages. While 555 Basalt Avenue falls within the Master Plan’s urban growth boundary, the property is currently occupied, and the Master Plan will need to be amended to change the site to mixed use in order for development to proceed.
Traffic management is one of the Town’s primary concerns regarding this new development. The Master Plan states that, should the Southside area be further developed, an additional access point onto Highway 82 will have to be constructed in the area to accommodate for increased traffic. While that isn’t yet considered necessary, the Town has identified that creating a traffic circle or mini roundabout at the intersection of Basalt Avenue and Cody Lane could serve as an interim improvement in order to ease traffic in the area. The Town therefore expects developers in the Southside area to contribute to the estimated $1 million toward constructing the traffic circle.
In addition, Fiou Lane — the public street which runs along the south side of the property — narrows from a two-way to a one-way street. Basalt Planning and Zoning (P&Z) discussed extensively whether this road should remain as-is or potentially be expanded to be two-way in its entirety. The majority of P&Z members wished for it to remain the same, and Jim Charlier of transportation planning firm Charlier Associates, Inc is presently evaluating alternative options for Fiou Lane and will present a recommendation before council makes a final decision on the application.
Engineering and design consultants from Kimley-Horn prepared a traffic study which concludes that the proposed development generates no net increase in traffic above the current level generated by operations at Myers & Company. This report is based off of one day of operations at the company in May 2025.
“We’re all a little incredulous on the data,” Mayor David Knight said regarding the traffic study. “The numbers don’t seem to add up to us.”
Town Staff asked Charlier to prepare a third-party review of this traffic report, and found that the applicant must be able to ensure that, in order to mitigate traffic, the storage spaces as part of the development are not used for business and are kept only as storage. The applicant responded that the HOA could potentially enforce such a rule.
Councilors Andrea Dupre-Butchart and Hannah Berman pushed back on the plan, citing the number of concessions necessary to make the development work — including traffic adjustments, amending the master plan and a height variance for the residential units.
“As desperate as we as a town and a valley might be for affordable housing … it is not worth the trade-off for 11 affordable housing units,” Dupre-Butchart said.
Councilor Ryan Slack also disliked the concept and pondered whether the project was closer in spirit to a mixed-use commercial development like other parts of Southside.
“That’s not my ideal,” Slack said. “There’s no green space. To me, there’s not one benefit to this community from this development.”
Despite criticisms from a majority of town council members regarding the existing plan, the council voted unanimously to continue the public hearing to April 14. The applicant indicated, however, that more time may be necessary.
In other news…
Councilors approved a 12-year lease agreement of Town-owned, unoccupied space on East Village Road in Willits, paving the way for a new education facility under the umbrella of arts nonprofit TACAW.