Existing approvals allow for summer 2015 start
WRITTEN BY: Madeleine Osberger/Special to the Aspen Daily News
Aspen Skiing Co. is poised to start work in 2015 on the approximately 100-room Limelight hotel in Idaho after the planning commission this week approved changes to the building’s roof shape and parking structure.
“Our intention is to start as soon as we can this summer,” said Don Schuster, SkiCo’s vice president of hospitality development.
The hotel, which will be SkiCo’s second of the popular Limelight brand, will be built on an entire city block in downtown Ketchum, Idaho.
Meanwhile, review of the Base Village sketch plan application for Snowmass Village, which also includes an approximately 100-room Limelight hotel, will continue March 4 for the fourth consecutive week. At that meeting, the Snowmass Village Planning Commission will decide whether to recommend the application be reviewed by the town council.
After sketch plan passage would come the more detailed preliminary plan and then final review by town council of the entire Base Village application.
By purchasing an already approved hotel project, SkiCo’s review in Idaho has been brief and relatively easy, Schuster allowed.
“The opportunity that presented itself was fully entitled,” Schuster said, adding that the original Bald Mountain Lodge proposal “took a couple of years to get approvals.”
A Feb. 23 meeting with Ketchum’s planning and zoning commission was a follow-up to a November discussion that took place prior to SkiCo purchasing the property. There, Schuster asked for and received changes to the hotel application that include altering the roof shape (from gabled to flat) and reducing the number of parking levels (but not the number of total spaces).
WRITTEN BY: Madeleine Osberger/Special to the Aspen Daily News
A construction staging plan was also approved for a nearby empty lot. Ketchum’s director of planning and building, Micah Austin, told the Idaho Mountain Express that “there could be some community pushback to the agreement” because the lot has been appropriated as future park space.
But there have been no other major hurdles standing in the way of the Sun Valley-area hotel project that, including land, will cost about $60 million to develop, according to Schuster.
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The Aspen Skiing Company looks to launch the Limelight Brand in Snowmass Village, Colorado.
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