P&Z RECAP FROM TODD BROWN
JUNE 26 EMAIL
GREAT NEWS ... and a huge note of CAUTION,
The Southwest Corner project was narrowly approved (3-2) last night at Telluride's Planning and Zoning (P&Z) meeting. As a quick review, this was Meriwether's Conceptual Planned Unit Development (PUD) application to the Town, and having Telluride Arts gain control of the Transfer Warehouse is only one part of this application process. There are many more steps remaining ... preliminary applications to both P&Z and the Historic and Architectural Review Commission (HARC), followed by Final applications to both of these commissions. Until both Final applications are approved, our deal with Meriwether is only an adjunct to the main process, and it could be derailed anywhere along the line. Illustrative of this, every one of the P&Z members last night asked difficult and awkward questions about Town's role in the process, how the Transfer Warehouse might be managed, by whom, what the programming will be, what the costs are, even down to what the architectural finishes inside the building will be. To be clear, all of these are NOT within P&Z's control, but they do represent the depth and breadth of informed community member questions ... and the general population will have many, many more informed and uninformed opinions. Our portion is a yet-to-be-closed real estate transaction, and the details are confidential to us and Meriwether, both ethically and contractually.
One of the many tricky aspects of this is how to keep you, the members of our Board, informed of what's happening without leaking confidential details out to the public ... inadvertently or not, which could cause the whole thing to collapse. Kate's communications with us, both in emails and password-protected communications through the website are important ... she's trying to balance not pushing too much into our inboxes with the desire to keep us all updated with juicy details. We created a stab at the budget for the project, which Kate has sent to all of us, recognizing there are more holes than hard facts. The critical dates and amounts are best guesses taken out of the contract and in-depth discussions with Town Planning staff. The detailed information you have available to you is NOT public information, so please be very careful with it.
Kate has a carefully crafted plan for private, personal, elegant, and effective fundraising with a targeted list of probable donors. Our job is to follow up when asked by Kate, provide details and make contacts, and add to the list ... all through Kate at this point. As with our knowledge of the details of our deal with Meriwether, we all have to be very careful with the fundraising so there's no devastating leak of information to be misunderstood or misused by the public.