Snowmass Village Town Council mulls over transit center proposals

The Snowmass Village Town Council is torn on how to proceed with improvements to transit depots at the Snowmass Mall.

After seeing competing proposals to update the current mall bus depots, the Town Council agreed it was time to explore the proposals – nearly a year after a proposed transit center at the mall was shot down by the Planning Commission. 

Dwayne Romero, CEO of the Romero Group, which owns the Snowmass Mall, asked the council to consider redeveloping the transit center to allow for expansion and new housing developments on the mall. Snowmass Transportation Director Sam Guarino proposed incremental improvements to the existing transit centers for the Snowmass Village Shuttle and the Roaring Fork Transit Authority (RFTA) stop.

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The incremental improvements were presented after the Town Council directed town staff to develop a simpler, cost-effective solution for the transit depots in June 2023, after the Planning Commission and members of the public said a 40-month construction for a transit center was not right for Snowmass at the time. In its March 4 meeting, the Town Council discussed new development opportunities for the mall transit center instead of the incremental improvements.

In Monday’s Town Council work session, Guarino presented a list of design criteria for a potential new transit center to act as a framework for future designs. The criteria was based on Planning Commission concerns from the 2023 project, past public feedback, and past design criteria.

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Some of the criteria included providing public facilities like restrooms and providing an open, welcoming, and visually-appealing experience for bus riders. One of the main concerns that jumpstarted a new transit center discussion was that the separation of the current bus depots causes confusion and an unpleasant arrival experience for visitors.

Other criteria included keeping construction duration and impact as minimal as possible. 

But council members were torn on which proposal to pursue and whether they should seek community input on a new transit center before moving forward with designs.

“What we’re really looking for … is direction,” Guarino said. “If we’re going to enter into trying to design something new, that’s a road we can go down, but it will be expensive. Or if we want to go down the incremental improvements path, we can get something done more quickly – we’ll take that direction, as well – or if we want to do both. It’s really up to you all, of course.”

Some council members wanted to bring designs to the public, including businesses on the mall that said the construction would impact them, to determine if there is community support on the project. But some said there may never be community support on a transit center because it’s not as appealing as other projects, even though it would address improvements that need to be made.

“I have been a strong proponent of combining (the transit depots), but I just really feel like it’s not going to happen, if I’m being honest. I don’t think it’s ever going to be appealing to people; no one’s ever going to think it’s important enough to do it,” Council member Alyssa Shenk said. “It’s kind of like putting a new roof on your house: Nobody wants to do it, you don’t want to replace your roof, but sometimes, you have to do these things, and it’s hard for people to really understand that.

“I feel like with the incremental (improvements), even though I wasn’t a huge fan the last time we talked about it, I really spent some time thinking about the things you could do at RFTA, at Village Shuttle, and the mall to make it a more pleasant experience, and to me, I think it would be helpful to spend some time really thinking about that as a group,” she added.

She suggested exploring how many items of the transit center criteria the town could accomplish by doing just the incremental improvements that Guarino proposed.

A transit center is not a new concept for Snowmass — in the agenda packet for the Monday work session, Guarino included several iterations of mall transit center designs going back to 1984.

“I think it’s a great idea to see how many of these boxes we can check off with incremental improvements,” Council member Britta Gustafson said. “I also think it was fascinating to see that we’ve had designs coming to us since 1984 – and previously, as well – to see that this kind of rears its head every so many years, and then something keeps it from happening.”

She was still in support of presenting a design to the public to gauge support.

“I want to believe that it’s a genuine lack of appetite to do it at all and not just the presentation of the way it’s suggested to be done that is turning people away,” she added.

Mayor Bill Madsen said the feedback he received last year during the transit center process was largely negative, and to spend money on initial designs to present to the public may not be worth the cost.

But Council member Tom Fridstein said it would be worth it to invest in a design to show the public and see if people are in favor.

“To just say don’t do it because we’re not sure it’s going to work or we know what people will say, I just think it’s too important,” he said. “I just think it’s worth spending $100,000 and see if we can come up with a solution that works.”

Town Manager Clint Kinney told The Aspen Times on Tuesday that  the town could spend $100,000 to develop a couple of schemes for a transit center that can be evaluated, but there needs to be support from the majority of council that they want to push the project forward for further evaluation before that happens.

Council member Susan Marolt suggested doing a feasibility study and potentially surveying mall owners and members of the public about the potential for a new transit center. One of the criteria Guarino presented was to avoid shutdowns on Carriage Way. During 2023 discussions of the transit center, several members of the business community at the mall said they wouldn’t be able to survive a shutdown on Carriage Way.

“I want to be able to have something that we can gauge community support and actually build community support for a new transit center,” Marolt said. “I think without the community buy-in, we’re just headed down the same road.”

Developing affordable housing on the mall 

When Romero asked the Town Council on Feb. 5 to redevelop the mall’s transit center, he said doing so would allow the Romero Group to redevelop the mall above the current Village Shuttle Depot, if the town sold him the parcel.

The development would add 22 affordable housing units and 22 free-market housing units to the 20,400-square foot parcel – a big selling point for council members who were in favor of a new transit center.

His proposed transit center, which the town would develop, would reconfigure parking lots five and six next to the upper mall, reroute Carriage Way slightly, and build a two-level bus station. The top level would accommodate RFTA buses and the bottom would accommodate the Village Shuttles. 

During public comment at the work session, he urged council members to go against a “tidal wave of resistance” from the town about a new transit center. Town staff have frequently told the Town Council they recommend against a new transit center, but Kinney and Guarino told council members the town would move forward with any recommendation they have, even if it means moving forward with a new transit center.

In Romero’s mall-redevelopment proposal, the space that is currently the Village Shuttle depot would accommodate about 60 parking spaces for the proposed housing units. Kinney asked him if it would be helpful for the town to remove the parking requirements from the development to allow for the housing project to move forward while still keeping the Village Shuttle depot in its place.

Romero said it was an “appeasement … not a solution,” and the parking would be important for the housing development.

It is unclear when the discussion will be brought back to the Town Council. 

“We’re going to continue to evaluate how best to get this input and whether it’s a community-wide survey or a specific sort of roundtable discussion we don’t know,” Kinney said on Tuesday. “But the fundamental question is: ‘Is there support for a large-scale project?’ And that’s what we’re trying to determine.”