January 2003

Planning

Copyright by American Planning Association

How Aspen Does It

By Ruth Knack, AICP

What does a town do when it has 6,000 year-round residents — and 30,000 "when full"? In an interview during the APA state conference in Grand Junction, Colorado, last September, Aspen community development director Julie Ann Woods, AICP, talked about some of the problems and solutions connected with such an imbalance.

Providing affordable housing is first on the list. In the mid-1970s, Aspen and surrounding Pitkin County (permanent population 15,000) passed a landmark growth management plan that linked growth to mitigation. A subsequent law required developers to contribute to a housing fund that has resulted in the construction of hundreds of for-sale "affordable" units, says Woods.

A 1993 master plan for the city proposed that 60 percent of the workforce should be housed "upvalley" (in Aspen and Snowmass). That goal was revised in a 2000 update; there are too many workers today to make it practical. Now the focus is on infill development, including some 300 potential units on the last big parcel within Aspen's boundaries.

The infill program is controversial, says Woods. One reason: a recommendation that the city rescind the zoning "merger law" passed in the '70s. The law was aimed at lowering density by allowing owners to build one sprawling house on several lots, resulting in the loss of some small but historic houses.

Now the emphasis is on encouraging denser development and redevelopment. The city is proposing a Historic TDR Program, which would allow owners of historic properties (including cabins left over from the days when Aspen was a silver mining center) to transfer development rights to builders.

Aspen's preservation efforts are now focused on the post-World War II ski lodges. After hearing the old hotels dismissed as "trash," Woods hired a consultant from Arizona who specializes in the period and who helped the planners rewrite the historic preservation ordinance. "Now," she says, "we have clear criteria for what makes a lodge historic, and we have a series of incentives for saving them." The incentives include a zoning bonus for adding affordable housing for workers.

The affordable housing incentives have worked, says Woods. Today there are more than 1,700 deed-restricted affordable units, rental and for-sale, allowing hundreds of workers to stay in Aspen. But there's a downside. "The high cost of mitigation is part of the reason that we have not seen a lot of investment in our commercial core in recent years," she says.

In response, the city initiated a downtown enhancement and pedestrian program to carry out a variety of physical improvements. Phase one set aside $1 million for narrowing streets, widening sidewalks, and adding amenities like benches and brick pavers.

A second response is a revised service, commercial, and industrial zoning district, which makes it easier for everyday service businesses to find space in the central area. "That's to ensure that we won't continue to lose services to downvalley communities," says Woods, "so we won't have only architects left."

In the fall of 2001, stirred to action by the September 11 terrorist attacks and their effect on tourism, the city created an economic sustainability task force. Local consultant Stan Clauson reported at the APA conference on the major question the task force is seeking to answer: What should we be doing to position Aspen for the next decade? A key trend, he noted, is the shift from a ski economy to a real estate economy, which affects both the ski lodges and the retail sector.

Clauson said he expects the recommendations to include expansion of Aspen's Sardy Field to accommodate regional carriers, modifying zoning to prohibit first-floor offices in the downtown, more incentives for historic lodges, more infill housing, the development of more locally owned retail businesses, and increased promotion of the summer music festival. Both Clauson and Woods concluded with a reminder of the features that make Aspen different from other resorts and the need to preserve that difference.

Ruth Knack is the executive editor of Planning.