New plan for Lower Gold Camp/Moreno site: 43 townhomes
Vue des Monts (“View of the Mountains”) is the name of a 43-unit townhome development proposal at the northwest corner of Lower Gold Camp Road and Moreno Street. It's the second try for C&A Properties, which has owned the two parcels there (totaling 3.2 acres) since early 2014. A 2015 concept for 72 apartments was never formally submitted after encountering neighborhood resistance that largely concerned height and density. A public meeting on Vue des Monts is scheduled at the Gold Hill Police Substation Thursday, June 1 at 5:30 p.m. The triangle-shaped land is bordered to the north, east and west by single-family homes - with some townhomes in the vicinity - and to the south by Bear Creek Regional Park and the Norris-Penrose Event Center. The new C&A proposal has been submitted to the city by developers Charles Cothern and Mark Long with architect Ryan Lloyd. Cothern and Lloyd were part of the previous C&A plan, which had Eddie Bishop as the lead developer. Bishop is not involved this time, Lloyd said in a recent interview. The switch from apartments to townhomes was partly prompted by money: “Financing for townhomes is much more favorable than for apartments,” Lloyd explained. Another influence was the feedback that emerged from three neighborhood meetings on the apartment plan, indicating that nearby residents “were more amenable to townhomes,” Lloyd said. The Vue submittal to the city requests approval for a zone change to R5 (from an existing zone that would allow light industrial), as well as for a development plan that shows seven fourplexes and five threeplexes, with a detention pond for drainage at the northern point of the triangle. A drawing shows the building height as just under 36 feet. The 2015 plan suggested buildings as tall as 45 feet. In a “Project Justification” accompanying the city submittal, Lloyd writes that “the new townhome development will fit in with the current uses adjacent to the site and help step the scale of the adjacent commercial uses down to the adjacent single-family residential uses… The design takes advantage of the natural beauty of the site, including capturing the impressive views, reinforcing the street edge and providing ample outdoor space for the residents. The buildings are staggered to minimize their scale and mass and give each townhome an 'individual' house look.”
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