The design review for a proposed 62,304-square-foot, 48-foot-tall mixed-use building in downtown Ketchum will be continued before the Ketchum Planning and Zoning Commission on Aug. 13, at 4:30 p.m. at City Hall.
Following an hour of deliberation on the downtown building, the commission will move its meeting to the Warm Springs Ranch for a pre-application design review on a proposed hotel-housing project. That will begin at 5:30 p.m.
The initial design review session for the Gallery 260 building was Tuesday, July 31, at a special meeting.
The proposed building is located on First Avenue North on three adjacent lots where the old Sun Valley Heliski building stands. The commission members decided they needed more information, said Chairwoman Anne Corrock.
Twenty-nine housing units are proposed for the complex, and seven of those would be deed-restricted community housing units. An art gallery is also proposed for the structure.
The commission held an earlier pre-application design review on April 23, 2007. At that session the commission told the applicant the roof line needed detailing, that the right side of the building facing First Avenue was not symmetrical with the rest of the building, that the community housing units should be integrated into the project and shouldn't be clustered in one place.
Several mature trees on the site would have to be removed and two buildings would have to be removed or demolished, a staff report said.
The developers of the Copper Ridge building across the alley from the proposed new building have sued the city over its transfer of development rights program, which allows developers to purchase additional building height and density from properties that are deed-restricted to preserve historic character or smaller scale.
Under Ketchum code, downtown developers may build to 40 feet with the potential for an additional 2 feet if they can prove it adds to a building's character or function. With purchased transferred development rights, a building can be built to 48 feet with the potential for 2 additional feet if that added height contributes to character or function.
Copper Ridge developers and managers have, via the lawsuit, targeted procedural flaws in the city's adoption of TDRs, pointed out Ketchum Planning Director Harold Moniz.
Underlying the lawsuit is the issue of preserving Baldy views for condominiums on the top floor of the Copper Ridge building.
