Boulder County Property Valuations Up 41%, ADN

With average new home size in affluent Boulder County exploding past 6,000 square feet last year, county officials there have turned to Pitkin County and other Colorado mountain communities for ideas on how to preserve homey, rural character through house-size limits and transferable development rights (TDRs).

"When you go to do something like this, you always look around to see what other people have done," said Michelle Krezek, manager of special projects with Boulder County's land-use department. "Why reinvent the wheel?"

When Krezek began working on an overhaul of Boulder County's land-use code two years ago, meetings revealed that locals were concerned about the impact of big developments on local energy use and Boulder Valley's pastoral character - concerns that have a familiar ring in the upper Roaring Fork Valley. Research led her to meetings with Pitkin County planning staff and others who had already begun wrestling with the problem.

Pitkin County limited new homes to 5,750 square feet in 2000, the first Colorado county to do so. But homebuilders can buy transferable development rights, which must be pulled off of land elsewhere to preserve open space, to expand past that threshold up to 15,000 square feet, a house cap the Pitkin County commissioners signed off on in 2006.

"It's been great to have that feedback from someone that's already implemented a plan like this," Krezek said.

Even so, Boulder County's plans are tailored differently than Pitkin's. The Boulder area is affluent, but less disposed to second homes and estates topping out over 10,000 square feet than in Pitkin County, Krezek said.

Yesterday, Boulder County land-use staff presented three alternatives to community members and Boulder County planning officials that involve different combinations of house size thresholds, green building requirements, and transferable development rights aimed at preserving open space.

Two of those discussion proposals involve 4,000-square-foot limits for houses on the plains, and 2,600-square-foot limits for mountain homes. Those numbers, based on median house sizes for those areas, are "very, very preliminary," Krezek said, and were mainly a starting point for discussions, which began with an uproar over property rights earlier this month.

Homeowners could build beyond those sizes by buying TDRs severed from mountain or plains land for a fixed price from a community bank, or by taking extra steps to increase the home's energy efficiency, she said, a system similar to Pitkin's. There is no actual limit on house size.

"It's not about stopping large homes, it's about putting them in places where they're appropriate and preserving rural character and open space," Krezek said. "Pitkin County did a great job with that."

The proposed regulations have met with vocal opposition from many Boulder-area builders and real estate agents, she said, but tiny, unincorporated communities like Gold Hill and Eldorado, as well as longtime rural county residents, have quietly supported the proposal.

Pitkin County went through a similarly negative response from local builders in 2000, according to Lance Clarke, the county's assistant community development director. But local builders were comfortable enough with the TDR system by 2006 that there was hardly a ripple of negative comment when the county instituted its house-size cap.

"What you're seeing is that counties like Pitkin, like Eagle, like Boulder, are all feeling extraordinary pressure from these large developments - we're all looking for ways to mitigate those things," Krezak said, noting that comparing notes on what works may make transitions less painful for communities.

Eagle and Summit counties are also wrangling with house-size related programs.

"It's always great to network with other counties and towns. There's a lot of coordination between many of the mountain resort communities in Colorado," said Pitkin County Community Development Director Cindy Houben, who discussed Pitkin County's TDR program at length with Krezek. Because the communities face similar obstacles, she said, "we find it productive to informally gather on issues that are important."

Pitkin County has been at the forefront of resort communities on issues from affordable housing to growth management, she added, so it has a lot to share in discussions with other communities. And those discussions don't stop at state lines. Houben recently received an e-mail from a city official in Brattleboro, Vt., looking for advice on affordable housing, and she regularly exchanges ideas with a city planner in Missoula, Mont.

___________________________
Tim Estin | testin@masonmorse.com | www.EstinAspen.com | 970.920-7387 office