NEDERLAND - On May 6, 2025, the Nederland Board of Trustees (BOT) voted unanimously to approve Resolution 2025-09, officially adopting the Downtown Subarea Plan, a final component to the year-long process of updating the Town’s Comprehensive Plan.

The process began in September of 2023, when the BOT approved contracting with the firm SE Group for $200,000, half of which was covered by the Department of Local Affairs’ Mineral Impact Assistance Fund grant.

The Town of Nederland had not updated its Comprehensive Plan since 2013, and though they were not required by law to renew it, it became pertinent as the BOT’s developed Strategic Plan encompassed many projects and studies that fell under the purview of a Comprehensive Plan. 

Such plans are defined as long term guiding documents; something municipalities can use to facilitate the desired growth and change in their area. 

“The purpose of this document is to chart a visionary path forward for the Town of Nederland, ensuring future growth and development aligns the community with its values,” the introductory paragraph for Nederland’s Comprehensive Plan reads. 

SE Group was one of two potential candidates for the job and was awarded the contract by a 4 - 2 vote by the BOT.

Principal-in-Charge Mark Kane, who worked previously with the Town developing the 2013 plan, was attached to the project, and the plan was developed by a team of consultants, consisting of SE Group Project Manager Gabby Voeller, along with Ayden Eickhoff, Dillon McBride, and Caleb Schmitz of SE Group; Carly Sieff and Danielle Furuichi of transportation planning firm Fehr and Peers; and Cheney Bostic, owner of urban planning firm Studio Seed. 

SE Group’s association with Fehr and Peers, the firm that the Town had already hired to complete its Multimodal Transportation Plan, was partly why the BOT voted to contract with SE Group, in order to ensure uniformity between the two major guiding documents. 

The firm’s association with Studio Seed, who themselves have 17 years experience in urban planning and design all across Colorado, was considered as an added bonus, as members of the BOT had expressed the need for a Downtown Subarea Plan, which is intended to focus on the growth of Nederland’s Central Business District through boundary expansion, housing development, and code changes.

SE Group’s expertise in designing ski resorts and their specialization in community planning and design, with a particular focus on resort towns, trail and recreation planning, and environmental impact assessments, were also factors taken into consideration for the BOT’s vote to hire the firm.  

During the September, 2023 BOT meeting, SE Group provided examples of their work, including the Town of Fruita’s Comprehensive Plan, which saw a focus on allowing different housing types and on trail connectivity, and the Town of Minturn’s 100 Block Subarea Plan, which also involved a design standard guideline for their downtown.

On January 23, 2024, an Open House event was organized at the Nederland Community Center, which officially launched the community engagement campaign for the development of both the Comprehensive and Subarea plans. 

The event was led by members of SE Group and Studio Seed, with Town staff, sitting members of the BOT, of the Nederland Downtown Development Authority (NDDA), and of the Planning Commission, which is the governing body responsible for adopting the Comprehensive Plan due to its advising on land use matters, were also present.  

Public engagement for the project was extensive and ongoing throughout the year-long development. In order to gather input from the community on the variety of subjects covered in the Comprehensive Plan, firm representatives, along with Town staff, attended several Town events, including farmers markets. 

SE Group provided constant updates on their progress in public meetings with the Planning Commission, BOT, and NDDA, and, in their continued efforts to curate public input, led “workshops” with the public, local business owners, and stakeholders on the development of the Downtown Subarea Plan. 

During these workshops, the invited group would discuss some of the bigger challenges facing the Town, in regards to potential downtown development, such as maintaining and enhancing local trails and connectivity, deciding which types of new businesses the community most desired, indicating preferred design standards for downtown Nederland, and ascertaining which infrastructure and land use improvements were most important. 

 On October 10, 2024, SE Group hosted a Draft Presentation, presenting their near-final drafts of both the Comprehensive and Subarea plans for one last public review.

There was a formal review of each of the Comprehensive Plan’s eight chapters, as well as a breakdown of content, which indicated that each chapter would focus on the existing conditions and key issues of the chapter’s topic, a summary of public engagement on the topic, and a vision statement related to the topic; followed by recommended objectives, strategies, and actions that the Town’s government can consider. 

One major difference from the previous 2013 version of the Comprehensive Plan was that the current plan was built on a “resilience” framework, as opposed to “sustainability.” While the plan includes the same operating tenets of a sustainability-based framework, there is also an emphasis on “adaptability, hazard preparedness, response capability, and community cohesion.”

The four major tenets of a resilience-based framework are Health and Wellbeing, Economy and Society, Infrastructure and Ecosystems, and Leadership and Strategy, all of which are viewed through a lens of hazard mitigation and emergency response. 

A resiliency-based framework was chosen due to the Town requiring direction in matters of water conservation, wildfire mitigation, affordable housing development, the creation of community equity, and building resilience in the face of climate change.

The presentation of the Downtown Subarea Plan detailed four “pressing topics,” Economic Development and Housing; Growth and Character; Circulation, Gateways, and Parking; and Recreation, Tourism, and Placemaking.

Several “Catalytic Projects” were also listed, including East 1st Street redevelopment considerations, redesigned intersections at the Town’s major gateways, a potential second bridge across the creek, and waterfront recreation and amphitheater development. 

As development of these plans was coming to a close, final reviews by the Planning Commission and by the BOT indicated a divide between the entities in their interpretations of the intention of the document. 

The Planning Commission felt that the recommendations made within both plans, for possible action to be taken and code changes to be implemented, were too detailed and “tactical,” for what were supposed to be “visioning” documents. 

The BOT, on the other hand, wanted that level of strategic detail implemented into both plans as they wanted to create a planning document “with teeth,” so to pave a smooth path towards achieving actionable results.  

Though many initiatives across Nederland’s advisory boards were on hold due to their expected integration with the Comprehensive Plan, including the BOT’s own strategic planning process, collaborative efforts between the BOT, NDDA, and Planning Commission continued, resulting in another 29 in-depth changes being made to the plan, which caused an increase in the total contract amount with SE Group by $5,850, bringing the total to $205,188.

On April 23, 2025, before giving their final approval on the Downtown Subarea Plan, the Planning Commission repeated their belief that it was more strategic than it needed to be for a planning document. But when presented with a proposal to consider one of the recommendations made within the plan, the Commission stated that they required more detail.

Immediately following the approval of the Subarea Plan, the Commission was to have a discussion on the first proposal for action to come from the plan, which was to consider pursuing the use of overlay zoning in specific areas of Nederland’s downtown in order to “apply additional or modified standards to a specific geographic area without changing the base zoning.”

Commissioners were also asked to specify which “form-based standards” should be adopted in conjunction with the pursuit of overlay zoning. Such standards would dictate any new downtown-located development’s height and massing, permitted setbacks, “façade articulation and transparency,” permitted building materials and architectural features, and the preferred design of public-facing spaces and amenities.

 On the prospect of pursuing the development of a Downtown Overlay Zoning District and setting specific standards, Commissioners expressed that more information and public input, and “months” of review in public meetings, was required before they could discuss the issue in-depth. 

There is more work yet for SE Group, as the next steps for the two plans include the NDDA officially adopting the Downtown Subarea Plan as their Plan of Development, more public outreach to be scheduled in order to further educate about the plans, and the implementation of a three-to-five-year review cycle to ensure the plans continue to be effective.

The complete drafts of the Comprehensive and Downtown Subarea plans, and additional information regarding their development, are available for public view through Engage Nederland on the Town’s website, here: https://engagenederland.us.engagementhq.com/comp-plan .