Council Chronicles: Where’s there’s smoke; Miles to go; LDR loopholes

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

By Jake Nichols

Up in smoke
It’s not easy trying to convince the town of Jackson to go smoke-free when the mayor declares November 10-18 “Burn Week” two seconds after you just finished a snazzy presentation on the dangers of secondhand smoke.

The Teton County Tobacco Prevention Coalition did manage to touch on one universal truism. While explaining that smoking was especially dangerous for teens, they said it was because “their brains are not fully developed yet.”

Today’s teenager will never know the joys of boozing it up in the dregs of a smoke-filled bar like the Log Cabin. The end of an era arrived officially with a whimper when the Wagon Wheel surrendered their liquor license to Johnson Resort Properties. Goodbye Bud tallboys, hello ginger mojito.

Miles from approval
Greg Miles must feel like he has been waiting since he was a teenager to get a go-ahead on his Millward Street Townhomes at 650-668 S. Millward. “Let’s finalize this,” Miles pleaded when the Council ran through some options that would make his project compliant with affordable housing regs. “I don’t want to hold things up any longer. It’s been costing me a lot of money.”

Miles and Walker had hashed out a handshake deal for the affordable housing requirement with Miles retaining ownership of an old onsite cabin worth $130,000 and renting it out for five years to the tune of $900 a month, with 5 percent annual increases, until the Housing Authority had the dough to take it off his hands.
The whole arrangement served only to confound Vice-Mayor Mark Obringer. “I find this very confusing,” he admitted. “We have caused the applicant $25,000. Another [$22,722] fee-in-lieu would have seemed fair to me.”

Obringer eventually voted against pursuing the unique affordable housing deal, wishing not to delay Miles and his townhomes any longer. The rest of the Council approved the arrangement while Miles stated, “If the council deems that to be fair and equitable, then that’s where we gotta go with it.”

A Cottonwood cluster
The proposed 68-unit development known as Cottonwood Park neared an amendment to their master plan ever so slightly. Seeking a rezone from commercial to residential, developers were also hoping to prove a decrease in density and thereby qualify for loophole in the LDRs, which, if anyone were to ask Abe Tabatabai, consist entirely of loopholes.

Convoluting any chance of approval of the future community to one day border Ellingwood Townhomes to the north is the fact that the master plan for the 6.7-acre development was approved in 1983. Only Tabatabai was alive back then and only he had the original paperwork. The town had lost theirs when Eric Bedford went looking for it.
Bedford, representing the applicant, Chimarra, LLC, and the Council agreed on the rezone and reached the conclusion that Cottonwood “Sims” would most likely shop at Smith’s.

But no one – not the town Shawns, Hill and O’Malley, not Bob McClaurin, not Pathways coordinator Brian Schilling, nor any of the countless experts and engineers Chimarra hired, including Lillian Bowen – could figure out how anyone was going to get in and out of the site.

Ingress and egress was bandied about, and just when it looked like the whole affair was taking the slow boat to China attorney Chris Hawks appeared out of nowhere and spelled it out.

“What we’re seeking is an amendment to change commercial to residential on the northern end of the lot,” he said. “Then we will go through the Design and Review [Committee] concerning traffic, street frontage, and mass and scale. This application was submitted 18 months ago. We have been through the washing machine and meat grinder.”

When Obringer said access in and out of the complex was inexorably tied to the design, Hawks again became frustrated, explaining they had already hired some of the industry’s top planners to sketch their previous 18 versions. “We would be a little miffed to have the council ask for redesign for a 19th time, quite frankly.”
A motion to approve the zone change and table the site plan was approved unanimously.

In other business
The Greg Prugh project between Rancher Street and Nelson Drive in East Jackson, sometimes known as Daisy Bush, received sketch plan approval. The Council did want to see Prugh think about a poor man’s, cul-de-sac type turnaround on the 3.5-acre site which will feature “green building” single family and duplex lots.

“I really like the way you pulled the third floor in on the sides and the front; thanks,” Bob Lenz told award-winning architect Steve Dynia. Dynia’s design for Bald Eagle, LLC passed muster for a pre-application after Tabatabai was convinced it wouldn’t block views of Snow King for downtown shoppers.

“The case of the missing 109 feet has been solved,” cracked Jeff Noffsinger in reference to the coverage Four Timbers Residence Club Condominium received from the last episode of Council Chronicles. Apparently, someone was measuring from the INSIDE of walls while someone else was measuring from the OUTSIDE. Thick walls aside, Housing Authority ED Christine Walker seemed OK with the whole thing as long as the developer came through with a promised 45-foot closet.
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