Here's our original story, published on June 14:
The Western Slope town of Mountain Village is officially only 28 years old, but the community situated at the base of the world-renowned Telluride Ski Resort has a growing problem. Unlike the long-established town of Telluride, which is tucked into a box canyon, Mountain Village has room to grow — and it's not uncommon for developers to come knocking with big ideas for one-of-a-kind properties that will complement this high-class outdoor playground.
The 3.5 square miles of former sheep ranches, purchased in 1968 by resort visionary Joe Zoline, were initially envisioned as a European-style resort village; in 1978, Ron Allred and Jim Wells bought the property with the goal of creating a pedestrian-friendly "core" for Mountain Village, with sparsely placed single-family residences and a network of nature trails, walking paths and golf fairways.
Incorporated in 1995, the town is now connected to neighboring Telluride by a free gondola system, which opened in November 1996. It's currently home to approximately 1,500 residents, and developers would like to see that number increase.
In early 2022, the Tiara Telluride LLC team brought forth plans for a Six Senses hotel on a parking lot at the edge of the core. The Florida-based Home Vault Collection, with lead developer Matt Shear, planned to use and amend a 2010 Planned Unit Development that still allows for such a project in the town.
Over the past thirteen years, the Mountain Village Hotel PUD had already been amended twice to extend its vesting period, which was set to expire last December. In August 2022, the Mountain Village Town Council voted to extend the PUD vesting rights for a third time, through September 2023. But that means time is getting short for Shear.
Initially, up to 62 hotel rooms were proposed for the Six Senses, but the mass and scale, particularly the building's initial height of nearly 100 feet, were questioned and criticized. At one point, the town’s Design Review Board listed up to forty conditions the applicant would have to meet in order to gain a favorable recommendation. While that list was whittled down and the board ultimately gave the project its approval last December, the plans still weren't crystal clear and were nearly denied altogether by the Mountain Village Town Council at a March 16 meeting.
Eventually, though, council decided to continue the discussion and postpone the decision, again offering the applicant more time to tweak the plans, addressing such points as on-site parking, employee housing and traffic concerns. The project will again be considered by council on Thursday, June 15, though there currently is no staff recommendation tied to the agenda item.
“In January, council made a motion to deny the application and gave direction to the town attorney to draft findings to support such a denial. In March, council considered the motion to deny. After hearing from the applicant at the March meeting, council directed staff to address the outstanding questions raised in the staff report, as well as concerns articulated by council during the public hearing,” Mountain Village Town Manager Paul Wisor recaps. “Pursuant to council’s direction, staff has worked diligently with the applicant over the course of the last several months.”
While Wisor notes that there’s “not necessarily a typical timeline” for projects like this, he points to a similar plan for a neighboring hotel that moved through the required process in less than a year behind a brand-new PUD.
“The town received an application for the development of a Four Seasons hotel project at the beginning of 2022,” he explains. “That project received its approvals within nine months of the applicant submitting its application to the town.”
So what happened with this Six Senses application?
Vagueness was certainly part of the problem. When asked about the project's height — by then reduced to 88 feet — during a June 2022 council meeting, Shear became visibly agitated and at one point blamed the town staff for not providing enough feedback. Mountain Village Mayor Laila Benitez called him out, explaining that six months was more than enough time to present a more thorough application.
Then in March, she bluntly asked whether Shear and his team were "taking this seriously enough" before voting for yet another continuance.
Cameron Kelly, who lives directly across from the property, believes trying to amend an “extremely old and outdated” PUD is another challenge. “At the time it was approved, neither [the town’s current] Comprehensive Plan nor the Community Development Code existed,” she says of the documents that spell out requirements for potential developments like this. "The mass, scale and height of the building are not compatible with the surrounding area.”
She isn't waiting to see if Shear can come up with a plan that works for council. Cameron and her husband, Winston Kelly, filed a lawsuit against the town in late 2022 to make sure it turns down the project, and are now organizing a public petition.
"From a community standpoint, there is no need for another hotel at this time, especially with another one being just newly approved adjacent to this property," Cameron says.
The Six Senses brand has never been in question; all seven councilmembers have shared publicly that they’d love to welcome such a high-end name to town. But while the minutiae of precisely where the garbage disposal facility will be placed and how semi-trucks will access the load-in dock isn’t sexy, the town has stressed that those details are absolutely necessary in order for the project to be approved.
But officials still aren't sure what they’re going to be getting.
Niki Richards, executive director of the nonprofit Valley Advocates for Responsible Development in Driggs, Idaho, recently had a front-row seat to a similar dog-and-pony show. Shear and his team were promising to create a dude ranch on the Idaho side of Teton County, just outside of Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
“We were hopeful with this team when they came in and said they really wanted a VARD endorsement,” she says. “We thought, ‘Okay, VARD would love to work with you enough to be able to say this is a responsible development.’ Oftentimes our organization will get hit with, ‘Well, you are anti-development.’ No, we’re not, but we are for responsible development or nothing at all."
High Noon Ranch was supposed to be a 532-acre development at the base of the Big Hole Mountains in Teton Valley, but Shear couldn’t exactly articulate just what it was going to be, according to Richards, and the county planning and zoning commissioners denied the application in April.
“This developer came in saying that they want to put a dude ranch here. By the time they put together the PowerPoint and spoke at the public hearing, it was like a Scandinavian spa. It just blew up,” she adds.
In an effort to gain last-minute public support, the Vault Home Collection team hosted a private dinner, then sent an email to the dinner guests asking them to reach out to local officials with some nice words about the project.
“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. It just didn’t pass any of the initial tests,” says Richards, who adds that VARD’s request for a community forum on the plans hosted by the developer were ignored.
But Shear made sure to mention the Mountain Village project during meetings with Teton County officials, and talked up High Noon Ranch with Mountain Village, even though neither development was officially approved at the time. Now the company stands to lose two projects within a couple of months, depending on the outcome of the June 15 meeting.
If Mountain Village officials decide to let the amorphous project continue to drag out, Richards says that VARD would be willing to shed more light on the shortcomings of this particular development team.
“Even though Valley Advocates for Responsible Development lives in Teton Valley, our mission carries beyond the scope of Teton Valley,” she says. "We would never turn our back on a community that’s dealing with the same thing. We will share information. We will help them fight or hold hands or whatever it looks like through any public process or hearing.
“You can’t just blow this much smoke in one town and then go do it in the next one if it doesn’t work.”
