After a nearly year-long wait trying to obtain a building permit — a wait the city’s building department admits is too long — the developer of the Boomerang Lodge is hoping that construction on the project will begin this summer.
The Boomerang, a lodge built in the 1950s at the corner of Fourth Street and West Hopkins Avenue, received Aspen City Council approval in the summer of 2006 to demolish part of the 35-room structure and rebuild a 49-room condominium hotel with five additional free-market units and two affordable-housing units.
After a final season in the old lodge in the winter of 2006-2007, Steve Stunda, a developer on the project, said the building was torn down with the understanding that building permits allowing work to start on the new project that summer would be forthcoming. He filed for his building permit in May 2007.
The experience since then has been frustrating, Stunda said. He didn’t receive his access and infrastructure permit until November, at which point he decided it was too late into the winter to start any work. On March 3, Stunda received comments on the project from the building department, which triggered revisions from the development team. Those revisions, which are being drafted, then will need to be reviewed again by the building department.
In the meantime, the lender on the project backed away, Stunda said, requiring him to secure a new construction loan, which he has yet to do.
“The money markets have gone to hell” since his last loan, and the amount of interest charged on a new loan will be “substantially” higher than the cost of the loan secured one year ago, Stunda said.
He added that he is open to selling the project outright, if a buyer approaches him with the right offer.
Stunda said that in his 40 years in the development business, the city of Aspen’s development-approval prerequisites — which have included a 13-month entitlement phase before the Historic Preservation Commission, the Planning and Zoning Commission and City Council, and have mired the project in a year-long quest of the lugubrious and peripatetic variety — constitute “the slowest process I’ve ever seen.”
The Boomerang is Stunda’s first project in Aspen.
“We need a wholesale transformation in the way building permits are processed in this city,” Stunda said.
Denis Murray, a plans examiner and building inspector in the building department, issued a mea culpa on behalf of the city.
“(Permit approval) wasn’t that fast, that is correct,” Murray said. “(The building permit application) did sit there for a while.”
Heather Rousseau/Aspen Daily NewsAfter nearly a year of waiting for a building permit, the site of the partially demolished Boomerang Lodge sits idle Thursday afternoon. A developer on the project hopes that construction will begin this summer.
According to a chart in the building department’s office, the average wait for a building permit on complex projects is 26 weeks — half a year. One of the building department’s goals is to reduce that wait time to 15 weeks by December. The goal is attainable, Murray said.
“We were there before the onslaught,” he said, referring to the development boom spurred on in the past three years by a strengthening economy and “infill codes,” which loosened land-use regulations in Aspen.
Murray acknowledges that “five months ago would have been nice” for the Boomerang’s receipt of its building permit.
The Boomerang’s delayed permit was in part a victim of the heightened work load, Murray said.
“It wasn’t like we were doing nothing,” he said, acknowledging that that is of little consolation to Stunda.
Murray also disputes the suggestion, made by Stunda, that the building department sat on its hands with the Boomerang application as a way of ratcheting down the hectic pace of last summer’s construction.
“It might be perceived that way, but it’s not,” Murray said, adding that any policy to slow the pace of construction would have to come from City Council. “It has never been our intention to regulate building by permitting.”
The Boomerang case has been a “learning experience” for the building department, Murray said. The department’s policies have since changed to allow different types of reviews to take place concurrently.
For example, the Boomerang project was first reviewed to ensure that the plans complied with zoning regulations before it was scheduled for a building review. And in the Boomerang’s case, there were some discrepancies between the plans and what had been approved by the council, Murray said. Thus, reviewing for zoning and building concurrently is a risk, but it’s a risk the department is willing to take to expedite the permitting process, Murray said.
Stunda noted that the building department’s consolations were “refreshing,” but they still do not “mitigate the sting” of the heightened financial cost as a result of the lost loan.
Both parties are ready to put the saga of the Boomerang’s building permit approval behind them. Stunda now estimates that, provided he can secure a permit this spring, the redeveloped lodge will open in December 2009, rather than December 2008.
If there is a silver lining for Stunda, it is that, had he received a permit and dug a foundation before this winter, he would have incurred great expense and significant logistical challenges trying to clear this season’s abundant snow from the site.
“Maybe they did me a favor,” he mused.
curtis@aspendailynews.com
