Eagle County commissioners to take first look at amended River Park plan
Revised plan includes a new home for the Family Learning Center
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The Eagle County Board of Commissioners will have a chance to approve amendments to the Edwards River Park plan following a site tour on Tuesday. The meeting will begin at 4 p.m.
The Eagle County Planning Commission on April 2 recommended approval of the amended plan by a 3-1 vote, with commission member Melissa Brandrup casting the dissenting vote.
The plan for the nearly 105-acre property about a mile west of the U.S. Highway 6 roundabout in Edwards is similar to the one approved in 2021. The property is a former gravel mine. The original plan took nearly two years and more than a dozen hearings to move through the county’s entitlement process, but the property was put up for sale in the summer of 2022, following the 2020 death of lead project partner Don MacKenzie.
Aptitude Development in late 2024 put the property under contract and put a revised plan for the property back into the county’s approval process.
While the revisions take up 87 pages of a county planning department staff report, none are major. The biggest change, essentially, is removing the original plan for 10,000 square feet of commercial space, replacing that space with a 10,000 square-foot daycare center. That space will be leased for $1 per year to the Family Learning Center, which has been looking for a new home since its current home, the St. Clare of Assisi School and Parish, has opted not to renew the center’s lease.
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If approved, the daycare will be built in the project’s first phase and could be completed by 2027.
The proposal maintains the original plan’s 440 residential units, with a breakdown of:
- A maximum of 170 free-market units
- At least 270 deed-restricted units
Of those deed-restricted units, there will be:
- 90 deed-restricted rental units, with nine units price-capped for those earning 80% of the area median income
- 72 price-capped units for those earning 100% of the area median income
- Nine resident-occupied, deed-restricted units for sale with no transfer fee exemption
- The proposal also includes more than 35 acres of open space.
The current proposal also includes wetland and wildlife protection, including at least $250,000 for landscaping at the Eagle River Preserve, which borders the property on the east side. In addition, the developer will also build a roundabout at the intersection of U.S. Highway 6 and Lake Creek Road and pay for transit stop improvements.
