YOUR AD HERE »

Spring Splash returns to Winter Park; town forwards housing study

Sarah Morin
For Sky-Hi News

 

In an effort to identify ways to best meet its affordable housing crisis, the town of Winter Park plans to hire a trio of consulting teams including Willford, LLC, WSW Consulting, Inc., and Urban Rural Continuum LLC.

At its March 1 meeting, assistant town manager Alisha Janes told the board “The town will begin working on the study (this month). They anticipate finishing in time for us to utilize the housing study for the first efforts of the multi-jurisdictional housing authority.”

Aside from the Fire Side affordable housing project, the town has shown multiple efforts to provide additional housing solutions for long-term residents that can’t afford the average rental costs in Grand County.



Town council member Rebecca Kaufman raised a question about the specific scope of work and what questions will be answered.

“Constantly in housing, we keep asking, what is the burden on the community?” Kaufman said. “If there are 10 visitors that come (to town) how many employees are needed to serve (them). We keep coming back, often, to a question like this, so that we could maybe set requirements in place while planning to develop.”



“We are anticipating the town of Winter Park doing a Nexus study to help… I would recommend that we include that particular question in the scope of work because we are anticipating using that information for would be in better fit with the Nexus study. This firm has connected us with a firm that would be able to do that follow up work for us.”

As new developers continue to work on creating more housing, affordability doesn’t seem to be their concentration. The town will need to create restrictions and parameters surrounding development in order to keep local workers in the area.

In other business:

After being canceled due to COVID-19 since 2020, Winter Park Resort’s annual Spring Splash has been approved for 2022 closing day. All of the town of Winter Park’s Spring Bash & Splash-themed weekends have been approved through the city council.

The event will run over four weekends in April. Town clerk Danielle Jardee detailed each of the weekend’s planned events. The first will be the weekend of April 2 with the Big Wonderful Festival, which features a beer festival, live Bluegrass music and various shopping vendors.

The weekend of April 9 Winter Park Resort will host Spring Country Bash and uphill battle. The third weekend, April 16, is the Spring Retro Bash with 80s and 90s music and a themed costume contest.

The final Spring Splash weekend, April 23 and 24, will be back for Winter Park Resort’s closing day. Each event will be held at the base of Winter Park Resort from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Town planner Hugh Bell has submitted a preliminary plat application, Resolution 1951, to begin Phase 1 of Wander at Winter Park town homes. Currently the property contains the mobile home park (located behind The Ditch on Hwy 40) and has a few utilities on the site, creating the plat on 0.87 acres. The proposal is to subdivide the lots into 10 single family homes, including attached and detached units. Staff recommended approval with 18 conditions to be met prior to moving onto Phase 2.

The town has budgeted for a large plow truck as a critical piece of equipment in its snow removal operations. While the bid was over budget, Public Works Director Gerry Vernon, said, “Given the critical nature of the piece of equipment and the length of time it takes to acquire this specialty type of equipment, we want to proceed.”

The town council approved Resolution 1949 awarding the Snow Plow Truck Bid for the amount of $326,888.45. The new equipment should be purchased and received before the winter of 2023.


Support Local Journalism

Support Local Journalism

The Sky-Hi News strives to deliver powerful stories that spark emotion and focus on the place we live.

Over the past year, contributions from readers like you helped to fund some of our most important reporting, including coverage of the East Troublesome Fire.

If you value local journalism, consider making a contribution to our newsroom in support of the work we do.