Community Plan

Supporting our core community values.

The CP will serve as the community map that touches every corner of Town and will seek to balance the Town’s strategic goals of “enabling people who live and work here to thrive” with “accommodating growth in a way that maintains our rural feel”. This plan will identify zoning and land use tools that impact our ways of living by evaluating, planning, and recommending updates to the Town’s zoning code to support access to attainable housing, affordable goods and services, and a vibrant local business scene. The Town received a $200,000 planning grant from the Colorado Department of Colorado Affairs “Strong Communities” program to develop this plan. The Town is working with Torti Gallas + Partners and Hoffman Strategy Group to support development of this plan.

CP Goal: Improve the livability, functionality, and sense of community in Crested Butte by leveraging the Town’s development regulations and community resources to stimulate free market investment in affordable housing and community-serving businesses and non-profits.

CP Process: How will the Community Plan be developed?     
  • Plan development will follow the Community Compass decision-making framework to establish a goal, define success measures, develop alternatives, and make decisions using informed consent. The general timeline for the plan includes: 
    • Phase 1 – Discovery (March– May 2024):The first phase is focused on data collection and analysis, including a policy review, economic market study, and review of the housing needs assessment, which will culminate in better understanding the challenge and defining the goal.  
    • Phase 2 – Desire and Continued Discovery (June– August 2024): Phase two continues data analysis and adds  Community Outreach through summer Compass Navigation events, surveys and block parties. Targeted stakeholder and focus group interviews will take place during this period as well. Draft success measures will then be crafted by synthesizing community feedback. 
    • CURRENT PHASE: Phase 3  - Design (September– December 2024): In this phase, community outreach continues, culminating in a design charrette. The charrette will interactively sketch alternative future build-out scenarios for the Town, which will be guided by and filtered through the success measures. After the charrette, the Community Plan advisory committee will work through refining alternatives, which will culminate in a draft plan. 
    • Phase 4 - Discussion (January - March 2025): In the final phase, community outreach continues to refine the alternatives and draft plan, which will culminate in recommendations to inform an update to the Town’s Zoning Code and Design Guidelines and Standards in 2025.