Aspen’s elected officials last week decided to not make the preservation of locally serving businesses a critical goal due to the complexity of the issue, but they lamented that the town has changed significantly and local residents are being priced out.
“What I mean are places for locals to still enjoy this community, and we’ve seen such a deterioration of it,” Mayor Torre said during last week’s council goal-setting retreat. “Currently, we have several locally priced affordable restaurants that are not in operation because of redevelopment, and it’s impacting us community wide.”
Recognizing that controlling the market is nearly impossible, council members agreed to continue working on the issue with willing partners, like the chamber of commerce and the business community.
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Affordable housing developers are appealing the denial of their proposal for the five-unit housing complex at 1020 E. Cooper Ave. in Aspen. (Kelsey Brunner/The Aspen Times)
Finding that the Historic Preservation Commission abused its discretion in denying an affordable-housing proposal in an Aspen east end neighborhood, Aspen City Council on Monday voted to remand the project back to the citizen volunteer board to conduct a fair and legal review of the land-use application.
After reviewing the record of the HPC’s Feb. 17 meeting, council members in a special meeting Monday were unanimous that commissioners abused their discretion by using subjective and prejudicial factors outside of their purview, and therefore reversed the commission’s decision.