P&Z gives Christiania thumbs up
Hour and a half debate leads
to approval
"This seems like a moveable feast of what’s acceptable. You
are changing the levels of evaluation…It’s schizophrenia."
Tim Eagan, leasing agent
By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer
After completion of three public hearings before the Ketchum Planning and
Zoning Commission, construction of a large new Christiania commercial building appears
imminent. It will replace the existing Christiania Lodge on Sun Valley Road.
The P&Z unanimously approved the proposed 51,570-square-foot,
three-story, 40-foot-tall commercial building Monday night with a condition that developer
Jack Bariteau return for further approval of a corner "tower" element that will
be constructed on the Spruce Avenue and Sun Valley Road corner of the building.
Commissioners Rod Sievers and Baird Gourlay were not present.
The approval followed an hour-and-a-half debate on design and function
elements of the building, during which commissioners said certain parts of the proposed
building should be redesigned. The discussions visibly ruffled Bariteau, who said he
thought he had taken the commission’s comments from the last meeting and incorporated
them into his designs.
"There’s got to be some give. I’m dumbfounded," he
told the commission. "This building is not less—it’s more."
Local residents at the meeting agreed with Bariteau.
"I get a sense of unreasonableness. No matter what they do, you
don’t like it," Ketchum resident Mickey Garcia told the commissioners.
The building’s leasing agent Tim Eagan wasn’t happy either.
"This seems like a moveable feast of what’s acceptable," he
said. "You are changing the levels of evaluation…It’s schizophrenia."
Commissioner Peter Ripsom said, however, that he thinks the commission has
been consistent throughout the three meetings. What’s more, he said, the building is
a high quality project. Particular issues simply needed to be worked out.
Among those particular issues, commissioner Susan Scovell said, she could
not approve plans that channel underground parking through a Fourth Street
entrance—though at meeting’s end, she did.
Underground parking entrances belong in the alleys, she said.
Bariteau and San Francisco-based architect John Davis contended that the
entrance has to use Fourth Street in order to accommodate a loading bay for delivery
trucks and a trash pickup in the alley.
"A full service alley can’t work with the parking access on the
alley," Bariteau said.
The commissioners decided that the underground parking access was an issue
that had been worked out at a prior meeting and elected not to vote based on that
criterion.
Scovell also said she also had problems with the overall design of the
building, which, Davis said, is meant to resemble but not replicate the adjacent
Colonnade.
"I don’t think we want to go through with one whole block with
the same texture," she said. "It just reads too monolithic, and I’d really
just like that tower to go away."
The tower, the one element the commission decided not to approve Monday,
was proposed as a 40-foot-tall stone structure that would be the building’s primary
entrance.
Discussions on the tower will resume next Wednesday at noon at Ketchum
City Hall.
The building will incorporate retail sales on the first floor, offices on
the second floor and single family condominiums on the third floor.
