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Mammoth Lakes, CA
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Thursday, May 15, 2008
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Two pigs in need of dressing up? |
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Monday, 26 November 2007 |
Mammoth Lakes Housing and Planning Commission hear from public about concrete walls
By Lara Kirkner
Mammoth Times Staff Writer
 The garage at the Aspen Village Condos, now under construction, was originally supposed to be underground parking, but was switched to aboveground at the last minute—much to the dismay of Snowcreek IV homeowners who now have this concrete slab to look at through their windows.MAMMOTH TIMES PHOTO/LARA KIRKNER
The first was the parking garage at the Aspen Village condos, an affordable housing complex currently under construction. While this is not a development for the ritzy tourist, it does abut Snowcreek IV, which has several homeowners, including some second homeowners, who will be looking at a concrete slab out their windows from here on out, instead of the beautiful view of the Sherwins they once had.
Phil Benefiel, a resident at Snowcreek IV, spoke at the Mammoth Lakes Housing Board meeting as well as the Planning Commission meeting last week to express the homeowners' dismay over the development. The crux of the whole thing, according to Benefiel, is that originally the parking garage was supposed to be underground but was switched to aboveground at the last minute, and, as Benefiel put it, “rubber stamped” by the Planning Commission and Town Council when the homeowners filed an appeal.
“We accepted the fact that we were going to have to lose our views,” Benefiel said, “but putting this unsightly building there is like rubbing salt in our wounds.”
After seeing the way the structure was progressing, one of Benefiel's neighbors, who lives in Southern California, proclaimed he wouldn't need to waste his gas coming to Mammoth anymore because now he had the same view here as he does in the City of Industry.
Benefiel stated that if 80|50's garage in the Village is the Berlin Wall, as some in town have begun to call it, then the garage at Aspen Village is the Great Wall of China.
“At least 80|50 intends to cover theirs up eventually,” Benefiel said. “Mammoth Lakes Housing plans to leave their parking structure bare. This garage dwarfs 80|50's project.”
Mammoth Lakes Housing staff reported that there will eventually be some landscaping around the garage, and were excited that the entire project was progressing quickly with crews working seven days a week to try and get it done.
As for that 80|50 garage, the Planning Commission discussed it once again at its meeting last week. The issue with this garage is that it has proceeded while the units planned to be placed on top of it have not. 80|50 wanted to achieve occupancy of the parking structure as soon as possible prior to completing the units, and were requesting they be allowed to provide an interim treatment to the concrete facade, pending completion of the full project. In other words, they wanted their pig spruced up a bit as well.
Their proposal included the request to install the following:
1. Under-treatment for the rock wall facing, as temporary colored and textured “stucco” wall treatment over the existing exposed concrete of all the exterior walls of the parking garage and defer the placement of the rock facing.
2. Soil berming installed to within five feet of the roof deck elevation. The proposal includes a private pedestrian walkway system which will be areas lighted by down-directed fixtures with cut-off shields.
3. Landscape planting of trees and ground cover at the perimeter of the 80|50 Building C parking garage.
The point of doing all of this interim work is to mitigate the unfinished appearance of the structure until such time as the completion of the upper portion of the building is undertaken.
This garage also abuts current residents who live at Fireside Condominiums, and affects some of their views as well. A representative of Fireside, Tracy Spencer, felt very strongly that a conditional certificate of occupancy should only be allowed if there were a “what if” clause to determine what would happen if 80|50 does not complete the project by the extended 2010 date Town staff suggested the Planning Commission allow.
Town staff said the “what if” was that if the project is not completed by the 2010 date then 80|50's permits would expire. The Town plans to have a bond in place so that if 80|50 does not move the project forward, the bond would allow the Town to do so, similar to the scenario currently going on with the Tallus bike path bridge.
The Planning Commission felt that this was sufficient and gave consensus to allow the interim improvements and grant the 2010 extension.
Other MLH and Planning Commission items
The Planning Commission approved tandem parking and mechanical lifts within the Mammoth Hillside parking garage with a 5-0 vote. The Mammoth Hillside project was approved in January 2006 and is moving forward under the new ownership of Cypress Equities. The Planning Commission's vote also granted a time extension of the project approvals for one year.
The Mammoth Lakes Housing Board adopted an appreciation sharing model into their toolbox for trying to help locals get into affordable housing. The appreciation sharing model will be used in the way MLH loans out money.
MLH also gave an update on current projects, reporting that the Jeffreys are 100 percent occupied. San Joaquin Villas—which Board member Rusty Gregory made sure to point out is not an MLH project, but just something they inherited from a guy who just left the country (Benno Nager of Intrawest)—is experiencing some bumps in the road as they try to sell. The Board was astonished to hear from MLH Executive Director Pam Hennarty that the Villas had only received their certificates of occupancy last week even though people have been occupying many of the units for months. Apparently the developers were confused as to what exactly a certificate of occupancy looked like and thought they had the correct paperwork before them, when in fact they actually did not.
The next Planning Commission meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 28, at 9 a.m. in Suite Z.
Visit www.mammothlakeshousing.com to find out the date of the next Board meeting.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 29 November 2007 )
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Copyright © 2008 The Mammoth Times All Rights Reserved
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