Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Designers propose Ketchum eco-building

City Council impressed by plans

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By TREVON MILLIARD
Express Staff Writer

The proposed eco-friendly building for the southwest corner of Leadville Avenue and Sixth Street would be used by businesses focused on energy-efficient efforts. Courtesy graphic

Plans for an eco-friendly, four-story office building on city-owned property at Sixth Street and Leadville Avenue impressed the Ketchum City Council at its Monday meeting.

The intent is to create office space for businesses focusing on energy efficiencies.

A group of designers teamed up to create the design and weren't asking the council to approve their project, which would go on a lot owned by the city, now used for a parking lot behind Memory Park on Main Street. Jolyon Sawrey, an environmental consultant, architect and team member, said the team just wants the city to consider its innovative approach for the high-value downtown property, which has a view of Bald Mountain.

"This property is a gem," he said. "Let's put a gem project on it."

Architect Scott Corkery, also a member of the team, said a concrete structure shouldn't just be plopped down there.

"We need to step back and look at this," he said.

And that's what this small group has been doing twice a week for the last couple of months since woodworker and developer Royce Milaskey came to the group with an idea. Milaskey and the others eventually arrived at the current, LEED-certified design, which applies to buildings that meet the "green" standard.

Milaskey presented the group's plans to the council Monday and said the proposed four-story building would be between 15,000 and 25,000 square feet and would cover a two-story underground parking structure providing 160 spaces. He said a side with receding stacked floors would face Bald Mountain and allow 10,000 feet of exterior garden space. He said the stacking design would also give each floor its own roof for solar panels. And the roofs could be green colored, meaning the view from each balcony would be green roofs below extending to the grass of the adjacent park.

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The design group has written a list of energy efficiencies to go along with the design, including wind-power generation on the roof and solar water heating.

All four councilmen and the mayor had words of praise for the designers and their building design.

"There's a whole lot of great ideas here," said Councilman Charles Conn. "And this is the logical location for this kind of thing."

Councilmen Larry Helzel and Curtis Kemp said with this idea being brought forth, it's time to reopen the discussion of a youth hostel. More than a year ago, a couple of designers proposed a hostel at the 411 Building caddy corner to this site, but lack of necessary parking indefinitely suspended the project. Designer Irwin Sentilles worked on the former hostel effort and is now a part of this push for a building at lot of Sixth Street and Leadville Avenue.

He said the new design and its underground parking structure take care of last year's controversial issue for the hostel, and could allow hostel plans to progress.

Sentilles said the group is going to continue defining its eco-friendly building design and has already set up a meeting for next Tuesday.

"This was received better than anticipated," he said. "So, we were kind of caught off guard."

Trevon Milliard: tmilliard@mtexpress.com