The Coos County Planning Board is working to rehabilitate the Colebrook, N.J., resort under its existing zoning regulations, with three proposed amendments up for discussion. The first phase of the expansion plan would include renovating the golf course and clubhouse, while constructing a 500-room hotel and conference center, and creating a ski resort.
Citing the unwieldiness of creating a new development district from scratch, the Coos County Planning Board will instead try to consider the rehabilitation and expansion of The Balsams Resort in Colebrook, N.H., under existing zoning regulations, the Manchester, N.H.-based Union Leader reported.
Toward that end, the board will hold a public hearing on October 21 to receive comment on three proposed amendments to the zoning ordinances for the county’s Unincorporated Places, the Union Leader reported.
In May, Dixville Capital, LLC, a group headed by former ski-industry executive Les Otten, presented a conceptual plan for The Balsams, a shuttered historic property. It included a hotel, the Panorama golf course and The Wilderness ski area and received a warm response from the planning board, the Union Leader reported.
Under the first phase of the project, Otten envisions renovating the Dix, Hampshire and Hale houses, as well as the golf course and clubhouse, while new construction would include a 500-room hotel and a conference center, Nordic hot baths and spa, a performing arts center and an open-air marketplace. The centerpiece of the $145 million Phase I, however, is to transform The Wilderness into what Otten has called “the largest and most technically advanced ski resort on the East Coast,” the Union Leader reported.
Otten has said the Balsams would entail multiple phases, which could take potentially decades to fully build out. After Phase I was finished, market demand would dictate future phases, each of which would have to be approved by the planning board. But when Otten’s development team asked the planning board for a one-time approval of the conceptual plan, several planning board members expressed concerns about giving up future oversight authority, the Union Leader reported.
As the two sides studied the situation further, the planning board on September 9 decided to amend the current zoning ordinance by adding a resort district and converting the Planned Development District ordinance to the more common Planned Unit Development, the Union Leader reported.
According to the minutes from the planning board’s September 29 meeting, the resort-district ordinance addresses “different aspects of the development project over time” while the “large-scale development” that would be the new and improved Balsams is covered by the state’s Innovative Land Use Controls law, the Union Leader reported.
Each subject to approval by the planning board and also by the County Commissioners and the County Delegation, the first proposed zoning amendment that will be discussed later this month would create a new Resort District in the area of the former Balsams Resort and surrounding recreation areas, and would “encourage further patterns of compatible development,” the Union Leader reported.
Amendment No. 2 would “remove Planned Development as a type of subdistrict requiring County Commissioner and County Delegation approval for a zoning change, and create instead a process whereby the Planning Board can issue a Conditional Use Permit for a Planned Unit Development” as currently permitted by the Innovative Land Use Controls law, the Union Leader reported.
Amendment No. 3 contains “numerous changes to clarify existing wording and requirements, to remove inconsistencies from the Ordinance, and to update the Ordinance relative to changes in state law.” The amendments in their entirety can be viewed at the Coös County Nursing Hospital in West Stewartstown and also on the county’s website at www.cooscountynh.us.
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