Discovery Land targeting September for first public hearings on Stagecoach Mountain Ranch
- Dylan Anderson
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
Updated: 24 hours ago
Developers are working to address planning application shortfalls ahead of two-month review process by the Routt County Planning Department.
The first public hearings for the closely watched Stagecoach Mountain Ranch development could be scheduled for as soon as September, developers told The Yampa Valley Bugle in an interview on Monday.
Developers with Arizona-based Discovery Land Company first submitted a planning application for the private community in December and added more documents to their submittals in February. Last week, the Routt County Planning Department determined that the application is still, at this point, “incomplete.”
The “Notice of Incomplete Application” letter may sound more serious than it is in practice however, as Routt County planners say it is somewhat common for development plans to need more detail before it can be fully reviewed. In an interview Monday, Kyle Collins, Vice President of Planning and Architecture for Discovery Land, said receiving the letter wasn’t unexpected.
“We’re targeting, from my lips to God’s ears, for September,” Collins said, refereeing to when the development could be first considered by the Routt County Planning Commission. “We’ll see how the next few months go. Based on that [Notice of Incomplete Application letter] and the materials that they are requesting, we should be able to turn that around pretty quickly.”
Stagecoach Mountain Ranch plans to have more than 600 homes as part of the private community built around the former Stagecoach Ski Area, which had a short-lived run in the early 1970s. Plans for the reactivated ski area include six new ski lifts, a new base area and housing targeting the ultra-wealthy on lots all over the mountain. .
Previous Bugle reporting indicates the vast majority of residences will be second homes and that there will not be broad public access to skiing and other amenities in the gated community. While the project plans to eventually include a golf course and more housing on the shores of Stagecoach Reservoir, that aspect of the project will come as a separate development application sometime in the future.
It would be just the latest private community for Discovery Land Company, which owns or operates more than 30 similarly private communities across the globe. Notably, Discovery owns Montana’s Yellowstone Club, which boasts 19 different billionaire members like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, philanthropist Melinda French Gates and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, according to an article published by Forbes last year.
Developers have said they are focused on shepherding the Stagecoach project through the development process before they work to sell lots for the project. Plans include 67 single-family lots that will range in size from five to seven acres and a mix of another 546 units that range from detached single-family housing to condos.
Senior Routt County Planner Alan Goldich said that while the planning department shares submittal checklists with developers, needing to send developers a letter informing them their application needs more work is pretty common.
“Inevitably they miss something or what they submit isn’t adequate or for whatever reason what they submit doesn’t check that box,” Goldich said. “That’s very typical and something that happens all the time really.”
The notice of incomplete application letter instructs developers to make a variety of additions to their application materials. This includes steps like correcting discrepancies between various parts of the application, adding more detail in sections or including reference appendixes that had been left out of the application.
Goldich said that once everything is addressed and the planning department has all the information it needs, it will begin its review of the project. This is currently budgeted to take about two months, Goldich said. From there, there will likely be more back-and-forth between county planners and Discovery until the review is complete.
“We’ll go back and forth however many times we need to until staff is comfortable that alright, we’ve completed our review, you’ve answered all of our questions, we’ve tried to come to agreement on as many things as possible and now it is ready to be scheduled for hearings,” Goldich said.
Discovery’s team is currently anticipating at least four public hearings about Stagecoach Mountain Ranch this fall, Collins said. Two of those would be before the county Planning Commission, which will make a recommendation about approval of the project, and two before the Routt County Board of Commissioners, which will make the final decision.
Collins said that the project was designed to follow the Routt County Master Plan’s goals for the Stagecoach Area. The project also doesn’t need any variances, Collins added.
“We developed a plan consistent with the master plan as well as the [Unified Development Code] that was just adopted. From a regulatory point of view, I don’t think we have too much. We’re not asking for any variances,” Collins said. “I think it is more going to be addressing the public comments at the public hearing phase is really kind of the unknown.”