During a public work session on Tuesday, Aug. 26, Basalt Town staff met with the council to seek direction for the development of a potential housing complex and community center in Willits. The potential development would be located on a town-owned parcel on the corner of Willits Lane and Lewis Lane.
Town staff was directed to explore the creation of a community center and affordable housing space on the parcel in the summer of last year. Since then, staff has been performing outreach at schools and public events, seeking feedback from community members, students and stakeholders. After compiling feedback, staff identified a desire for a youth recreational space, including lounges, study spaces and a half-sized basketball court.
Staff is presently between a conceptual design phase and collecting additional feedback, and has drafted several plans for how the community center/housing complex might look. Each plan includes five buildings: a four-story building on Lewis Lane, a two-story apartment building beside Willits Lane and three rows of two-story townhomes. Every dwelling unit on the property would be designated as affordable housing
The preferred design includes a community center as well as a residential rooftop gathering area and green roof on the Lewis Lane building. Forty-four dwelling units in total would be built according to this plan.
The subsequent two designs eschew features in the main building in favor of creating even more units for housing. The second plan trades the rooftop gathering space for 11 more apartments, and a third plan exchanges the community center as well as the rooftop space for 29 more apartments.
Ryan Honey, the executive director of The Arts Center at Willits (TACAW) came to the work session to present a potential Youth Empowerment Center which could be hosted in the community space. The center would provide student-driven programming for creativity and connection, such as summer camps, film screenings and student showcases. Honey also said the community center could host teen nights and other already successful programs in order to expand beyond TACAW’s current scheduling and space limitations. While the program would require funding and staffing, Honey said that TACAW would be prepared to step in on day one and provide a coordinator for the space.
In response to funding concerns from Mayor David Knight, especially considering that the Town of Basalt is also looking to construct a new public works building and police headquarters, Town Planner Sara Nadolny assured Knight that the funding streams for housing and municipal buildings were separate. In addition, Nadolny stated that providing a community center would open new streams of grant funding which could in turn supplement housing funding.
Councilors all supported the community space. However, variances for height were a concern. As part of the Sopris Meadows PUD, the four-story Lewis Lane building would require a variance in order to be built and would exceed the height of adjacent single-family homes. Councilors Ryan Slack and Angela Anderson agreed that even more outreach should be made within the neighborhood specific to height and density.
Councilor Angele Dupre-Butchart noted that in the summer of last year, council directed staff to pursue the development of as much affordable housing as possible on the parcel, as it was one of Basalt’s last municipally owned properties on which it could do so. However, she noted more opposition to high-density than was initially anticipated and encouraged staff to explore designs that include a community center but decrease the overall height.Council concluded that the community space would be a must, but density would likely be the main element of opposition from community members. At the direction of the council, staff will continue to organize outreach in the Sopris Meadows and Willits communities in order to gather more feedback with regard to height and density, and to refine the offerings of the community center, before any sketch plans or entitlements are drawn. Interested Basalt residents can offer feedback remotely on letstalk.basalt.net