Wednesday, April 6, 2005

In with the new, out with the old

New developments are changing the face of Main Street in Ketchum


By GREGORY FOLEY
Express Staff Writer

On the south end of Main Street in Ketchum, the old Devil's Bedstead office building and Ski View Lodge cabins are gone. In their place, two new residential projects are under construction.

Further north, in downtown, two high-profile parcels on the west side of Main Street are slated for development with elegant new buildings, both of which are planned to house new bank branches.

In between, an entire city block that was once planned to be the site of a new 80-room hotel has been sold. The new owners have said they would like to build a four-story building that includes a luxury hotel and several penthouse condominium units.

For those who live in and do business in Ketchum, the writing is on the wall: Change is coming.

While the various projects on Main Street are already providing scores of jobs and will eventually serve as home to both people and businesses, some in Ketchum are wondering if they are merely indicators that the city is slowly losing its soul—and possibly its vibrancy.

"I think anyone who has been here a certain amount of time sees that the old is going out and the new is coming in," said Mayor Ed Simon, a former tenant of the Devil's Bedstead building. "It's a symptom of the changing demographics of Ketchum to more and more part-time residents."

The Devil's Bedstead building—an eclectic, wooden structure that once dominated the southern entrance to Ketchum at 500 S. Main St—was destroyed to make room for a project called The Timbers, a 16-unit condominium complex with underground parking.

Simon called the Devil's Bedstead building a remnant of "classic, old Ketchum."

Across the street, at 409 S. Main St., where the 1950s-era Ski View Lodge and its 10 colorful cabins once stood, construction crews are busy grading the land in preparation for building 20 upscale townhouses. The project—a collection of six residential buildings—is called Ski View Townhomes.

Not far north, at 260 S. Main St., another construction crew is hard at work on a project called Trail Creek Crossings. The approximately 47,000-square-foot development—which raised concerns at City Hall because of its proximity to Trail Creek—includes 13 residential units, one commercial unit and a 25-stall underground parking garage.

The three projects on South Main Street all fall in line with a trend that has occurred across the downtown Ketchum core. Residential buildings are the darling of developers in Ketchum, while new commercial structures are few and far between.

At City Hall, officials and residents have repeatedly expressed worry that new residential developments—most of which feature upscale, luxurious units the working class cannot afford—are catering to wealthy part-timers. In the end, the story goes, the units are destined to sit empty most of the time, failing to contribute to the local economy in any substantial fashion.

Nonetheless, two new commercial structures are slated to be built in downtown Ketchum in the near future.

Wells Fargo, the California-based financial services corporation, has gained city approval to build an approximately 10,000-square-foot bank on the vacant lot at the corner of Fourth and Main streets. Wells Fargo acquired the Main Street parcel after the city pressured the corporation to trade it for another downtown lot.

Meanwhile, the owner of an 11,000 square-foot parcel at 491 Main St., at the southwest corner of Fifth and Main streets, has proposed to build a three-story, approximately 19,000-square-foot building on that site.

The project plans call for the first floor of the building to be occupied by a branch of Idaho Independent Bank. The second floor would include two community housing units and retail space.

Simon said it is obvious why banks—which bring business activity during the day but not at night—are looking for high-profile locations in Ketchum.

"It's where the money is," he said.

As for the vacant city block at 151 S. Main Street, the site of the defunct Bald Mountain Lodge, a new ownership group has tentatively outlined plans to propose a new hotel with 60 to 70 rooms.

All of the interest in developing Main Street—and the flurry of concerns that comes with it—has not gone unnoticed by city planners.

Harold Moniz, Ketchum planning director, said that although market forces generally determine what developers propose and build, options do exist for creating a more vibrant business sector.

The city, he said, has started work on drafting a master plan for the downtown that could help shape land-use decisions made by the P&Z and the City Council. The plan—a sort of blueprint for what the downtown could ideally look like—might also foster changes to the zoning code that could encourage projects deemed desirable for various downtown parcels.

"I think we can do a lot better," Moniz said.




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