GILPIN -- On April 17, 2025, at 6 p.m., the Gilpin Historical Preservation Committee (GHPC) met online via Microsoft Teams for their fourth monthly meeting of the calendar year.

After determining that no changes to the agenda were needed and approving the minutes for the two previous meetings (February 20th and March 20th), the committee shifted to the primary item on the agenda.

Committee members Bret Johnson, B. Travis Wright, MPS, Rachel Vigil, Robert Gutierrez, and Steve Slawson turned their attention to Paul Ondr, fire chief of the Timberline Fire Protection District (TFPD), and Paul Vanderheiden, designer and project manager of Arete Architects, LLC.

Ondr explained that since TFPD first proposed a design to update Station 3, one of nine in the district, to GHPC, the district had hired Arete and Krische Construction, Inc. for the project. They ultimately started from scratch, keeping the cost-effectiveness of the construction in mind.

Station 3 is hosted in the Fritz Peak Observatory building, which TFPD acquired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2022. Recognizing the structure's historic value, originally built in 1946 as the Severance Lodge, Vanderheiden and the team wanted to keep its integrity.

Vanderheiden proposed that his new design would not alter the original Fritz Peak structure at all, instead emphasizing it as the station's focal point while adding an extension that purposefully contrasts with Fritz’s architecture and takes cost-effectiveness and code requirements into account.

While the GHPC suggested small adjustments to concept exterior views shared during the meeting, the committee agreed that the design plan was essentially complete. They decided that Vanderheiden will make small tweaks to his current design and propose the tweaks in the next GHPC meeting on May 15 to move forward.

Vanderheiden and Ondr were dismissed from the meeting, and Vigil gave brief staff updates for the committee. With nothing else on the agenda, the committee adjourned the meeting.