Topside Business Park development location. Image from Page 10 of the October 10, 2023 BV BOT meeting packet.
In the lead-up to their April 9 discussion of the Topside Annexation, the Buena Vista (BV) Board of Trustees (BoT) held a work session to hear answers to questions posed during their Tuesday, February 27 meeting.
At that February 27 meeting, the BoT voted to continue the conversation, intending to revisit the topic during the upcoming April 9 BoT meeting. While the trustees unanimously found the property to be eligible for annexation in February, their concerns prevented them from approving the annexation itself outright.
After a lengthy discussion, the trustees voted to continue once their questions were answered and an acceptable annexation agreement was reached. Town staff compiled a list of questions during that meeting and worked with Dormie Capital Partners (DCP), the group behind the Topside Business Park idea, to get the answers prior to the work session.
A full breakdown of questions and the Topside team’s responses is included in the March 26 meeting packet starting on page three.
Again, many of the concerns came down to issues of traffic and infrastructure, with the trustees expressing concerns about the cost to the town of improvements necessitated by the proposed annexation.
In their answers, DCP proposed various amounts to help offset town costs. For example:
- They offered to hire consultants and spend up to $25,000 “in coordination with the town” to attempt to secure approval of a fourth railroad crossing at Steele Drive.
- Upon approval of the Steele Drive connection, DCP offered to pay up to $75,000 for design and engineering and match the town “dollar-for-dollar” up to an additional $100,000 for construction. Additionally, they offered their own staff time to help pursue grant dollars.
- DCP offered to contribute $75,000 payable at the final plat of Phase II and again at the final plat of Phase III toward improvements to County Road 317 if they are deemed necessary.
- DCP said they will contribute 50 percent, up to $75,000, for improvements deemed necessary to the Baylor and Railroad crossing after an updated traffic study.
- As required by Municipal Code DCP will pay for and install infrastructure (water, sanitary sewer, gas, electric, telecommunications, stormwater, streets, sidewalks, and right-of-way landscaping).
Mayor Pro Tem Gina Lucrezi brought up concerns about the money provided by DCP (and eventually by the project itself) versus the liability of the town and explained it was difficult to estimate how much the project would benefit the town and how much it would cost. Others agreed it was a difficult calculation to make in such a short time period
Throughout the work session, the Topside team emphasized their desire to work in collaboration with the town and highlighted the fact that this project was still in its early phases and had plenty of room to change depending on Buena Vista’s needs.
“We want our posture to absolutely be that of collaboration. We want to collaborate with you,” said DCP Principal Matt Call. “Like we’ve said a few times, we’re going to be here a long time, well over 10 years, and we want this project to work as well for the town as it does for us and the stakeholders that are going to occupy space in the project.”
To address concerns about traffic increases, DCP altered their original plan for Phase I of the project to focus on building the lowest impact sections of the development first.
On concerns brought up by Trustee Andrew Rice at the previous meeting about the use of the Center, Colorado count station rather than the Johnson Village (JV) one, the Topside Team said their engineer stood by the decision, saying Center provided more similar growth patterns due to the amount of traffic that passes through Johnson Village to locations other than BV.
Rice brought up the point that Johnson Village would more accurately represent the pattern of tourist traffic to Buena Vista whereas Center, Colorado has less of a tourism draw.
“I think, when I looked at the data sets from both traffic stations, I think the growth rate in traffic, now I agree with you, that it’s counting trips heading to Salida, but it’s indicative of traffic that’s coming to and from the Front Range to the mountains. However, we can see a particular growth rate at the Johnson Village traffic counting that tracks kind of closely with our growth rate in tax over the last, six, seven — eight years in town. So I do feel like that traffic pattern at JV is more reflective of the patterns we see. Not the quantity, but just the patterns,” explained Rice.
Rice floated the idea of doing a third-party traffic study completed by the town to increase their confidence level but acknowledged that this likely would not be possible to complete before the April 9 meeting when the annexation would be considered again.
The BoT seemed to maintain their previous mixed feelings about approving the annexation, acknowledging that there were many things to like about the project, but also a number of concerns to consider due to the location.
“There are a lot of good things about this, but it’s also a lot of unknowns which makes it difficult to make an educated decision, which we’ll figure out on the ninth [of April],” said Rowe.
Before the ninth, it was determined there was more research to be done and questions to be answered.
A full recording of the work session and regular meeting is available on the Town’s YouTube channel.
Topside is expected to be a major topic of discussion at the April 9 BoT meeting. The regular meeting is scheduled to begin at 7:00 p.m. and can be attended in person at the BV Community Center (715 East Main) or by Zoom. The agenda will be posted on the Town’s website later this week.
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