For any of our readers not familiar with the Cole Porter/Robert Fletcher song, ‘Don’t Fence Me In’, Cole Porter had purchased the rights to a poem written by Robert Fletcher, an engineer with the Department of Highways in Helena, Montana, and had worked it up into a tune for a 1934 film musical that was never produced. Ten years later, Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters walked into a recording studio, having never seen the music or heard the song. Within 30 minutes, he and the Andrews Sisters had completed the recording, which went on to sell more than a million copies, topping the Billboard charts for eight weeks in 1944–45.
Just turn me loose; let me straddle my old saddle underneath the Western sky…
Bing and the Andrews Sisters later recorded the song separately (and presumably sold more records?)… and here are the Sister’s singing to a saloon full of military men in 1944. (A movie set of a saloon, that is.)
I want to ride to the ridge where the West commences,
And gaze at the moon till I lose my senses,
And I can’t look at hobbles and I can’t stand fences;
Don’t fence me in…
Noooo…
Pappa, don’t you fence me in.
In the black & white film clip shared above, the Andrews Sisters were, of course, putting on an act. Although Patty Andrews was strumming a four-string tenor guitar, she was not playing any real guitar chords. The sisters were obviously lip-syncing for the camera… and probably not one of them actually wanted to ride to the ridge where the West commences. Surely, what they wanted, in 1944, was to continue performing as America’s most popular female trio. (The act would officially break up in 1953.)
A different type of performance took place last night, January 25, during the Town of Pagosa Springs Planning Commission meeting. Two ambitious development acts appeared, each seeking a ‘Sketch Design Review’ — a preliminary approval process whereby the Planning Commission (acting as the Design Review Board) offers recommendations to a potential developer.
These were not make-believe, lip-synced auditions, however. They were serious discussions about the future of Pagosa Springs, and about how very large, new buildings ought to fit into the semi-urban landscape along Hot Springs Boulevard.
We touched lightly on the proposed 80-unit Springs Resort hotel building yesterday in Part One, and will share more about that performance, tomorrow in Part Three. But the first item on last night’s Planning Commission agenda was for a different, four-acre development on Hot Springs Boulevard, immediately north of the new Rose Mountain Townhomes low-income housing project.
In the application submitted to the Town Planning Department, the project is labeled rather generically as “Hot Springs Mixed Use Development”… and the owner is listed as “Hot Springs Properties LLC”, represented by Stephen DeRosa. Mr. DeRosa attended the meeting, and identified himself as a resident of Brooklyn, NY.
You can download the Planning Commission January 25 packet on the Town website, here.
The developer of the “Hot Springs Mixed Use Development” is proposing — as we might have guessed — a mixed use development, in three buildings.
A residential condominium structure — Building A — will include a mix of two-bedroom (1,211 SF) and three-bedroom (1,434 SF) units, for a total of 36 units. The ground level of Building A is comprised of 22 garages and 23 storage units.
The residential condominiums — Building B — includes 18 two- and three-bedroom condominium units on three levels, with future retail/administrative building proposed along the street frontage. (Shown as a yellow box.) The condos are shown as 1,211 SF or 1,434 SF.
The mixed-use commercial building located along the Hot Springs Blvd frontage — Building C — will include eight residential apartments on the second floor, with 8,000 SF of retail/service on the ground level. The apartments are shown as 715 SF and 980 SF.
The proposal also includes 4,000 SF footprint along Hot Springs Blvd. for future retail development (Also shown as a yellow box).
So then, perhaps 62 residential dwelling units. Because this area is zoned ‘Mixed Use Town Center’ it’s possible that all of these condos and apartments could become Short-Term Rentals.
The dwelling units all have dedicated parking spaces; some in garages, some as covered parking lot spaces. The applicant is considering covered parking (with potential for solar panels) to alleviate snow clearing challenges.
As traditionally happens at these development approval events, Town Planning Director James Dickhoff read through (or in some cases, summarized) his lengthy staff report. During a ‘Sketch Design Review’, Mr. Dickhoff typically lists the ways that the proposed project meets — or fails to meet — the regulations collected in the Town’s 450-page Land Use and Development Code (LUDC).
Much of the discussion about the LUDC regulations, last night, concerned architectural details. The Town government decided 15 years ago that “interesting” architecture would make Pagosa Springs more attractive and economically sustainable. The LUDC specifies a wide range of architectural requirements aimed at preventing homes and commercial buildings from looking like plain, boring wooden or metal boxes.
Some of these architectural regulations are based on the idea that American developers want to build as cheaply as possible, for maximum profit, and that — by requiring, for example, a “modulated roof line” — the government can enforce an urban landscape that reminds people of the good old days, when people actually wanted their own homes and commercial buildings to look attractive.
The regulations have been successful at enforcing a certain type of architectural approach, which sometimes involves slapping functionally-unnecessary details onto the outsides of the buildings — fake stone façades, for example, or extraneous posts that don’t actually support anything.
And one of the results has been to make the town of Pagosa Springs more expensive to build in.
You can find yourself wondering if what we are building here in Pagosa Springs, is actually a movie set for tourists to visit.
The Planning Commission heard Mr. Dickhoff’s presentation, and then listened to explanations (and complaints) from the local architect designing the 4-acre project, Brad Ash. The basic discussion centered mainly around various architectural details, and around parking requirements.
Personally, I was more interested in the way the Town has approached the whole idea of impermeable surfaces.