Town Council approves Comprehensive Plan amendments

After a two-year process the Mountain Village Town Council approved amendments to the 2011 Town of Mountain Village Comprehensive Plan on Thursday, December 8.

The Comprehensive Plan, adopted in 2011, was written to be a 30-year roadmap envisioning the future use and needs of the community. Mountain Village Town Council's goal at the time was to encourage future development while controlling growth within reasonable boundaries.

However, since its adoption, Town Council and the community have noted that the plan is overly prescriptive and complicated in certain respects. The Town’s goal in amending the plan was to make it more flexible and a better reflection of current economic conditions.

“The community helped us refine the Comprehensive Plan in a way that better reflects current community values,” said Assistant Town Manager Michelle Haynes.

The Town, and MIG, the firm hired to facilitate the process, conducted a significant engagement period that included a community-wide survey and interviews with community stakeholders as well as input from residents, second homeowners, lodgers, Telluride Ski & Golf Resort, restaurants, other merchants and the community as a whole. The Town also held three public comment periods to allow the community time to share feedback on different drafts of the amendments.

“Revising a Comprehensive Plan is never an easy endeavor and this effort was made more challenging by Council’s desire to open the process for as much public input as possible. We have never received more public input and that is something we all appreciate and take pride in facilitating,” said Mayor Laila Benitez. “I think that effort is also why this revision so thoroughly incorporates the feedback and vision of the community and not primarily consultants, staff, and Town Council. We want to truly thank the public for sticking with this process for two years and continuing to write us and show up to meetings throughout the revision procedure.”

The key changes to the amended plan include an expanded section dedicated to affordable housing which includes the new housing mitigation methodology and identifies key parcels for future housing opportunities; a new dedicated Meadows Subarea Plan that was the result of several months of hard work from the volunteer Meadows Resident Advisory Board, a revised look at high-priority proposed hot bed sites and more.

Haynes was the Town’s Community Development Director and introduced and oversaw much of the amendment process, but current Community Development Director Amy Ward will now be tasked with putting the amendments into action for future planning and development.

“The next step will be to edit portions of the Community Development Code to reflect the amended Comprehensive Plan,” Ward said. “After that, my priority for Town staff will be to review and begin implementing some of the action items listed as near-term goals in the Meadows Subarea Plan.”

The amended Comprehensive Plan is available to view digitally below or on our long-range planning page.