Brandon Leuallen, The Business Times

The Business Times reviewed a letter sent to Grand Junction City Council via email from local housing developer Kevin Bray, lamenting ongoing delays in the process for getting approval for multiple projects.

The letter, addressing Mayor Abram Herman and City Council members, starts out:

“As a land developer that has worked on projects in the City of Grand Junction for over 20 years now, I am writing to you to share perspective on the length of housing applications through the city zoning and subdivision process. The requirements and timeframes have increased significantly over the course of the last 5 or so years, making it more risky and expensive to provide housing inventory within the City of Grand Junction.”

“I did not engage with the new consultant that was hired to fix this process, in part, because I have learned to not trust the consultant process from past experience. I’m not in support of hiring a consultant to fix this process as I believe the consultant was hired for a specific outcome and because I believe that the City has the resources to address the problems, which are not new but have become increasingly more difficult for the past 5 years or so. The consultant will likely conclude that is the lack of quality in the applications from housing providers as well as lack of control of City internal departments. I do think the process can be made better, but I’m concerned the consultant’s recommendations will likely be more control for the community development director and more burdensome requirements for housing applications.

“Below I’ve provided some timelines for recent projects I was (or am) involved in. There is not a provision in the code that requires the City complete a review within a specified time period, although there are requirements for applicants to provide responses. There used to be a timeline for City Review that was provided on the website that was 30 days for review of initial submittal and 2 weeks for subsequent submittals.”

The letter also says later, “In these few examples, you can see that our total review time can be as long as 251 days, in excess of previous ‘guidelines’ by as much as six months. This does not include the time that we spend in addressing and responding to comments. This is especially perplexing at the moment when we are hearing that subdivision submittals are down 70 percent.”

The Business Times reached out to Bray and City Council member Cody Kennedy for comment on the letter.

Bray said he wanted the council to at least have the information and the perspective that the delivery process of one of its core services isn’t functioning as well as it could. He said that’s causing a barrier to housing in the community.

“The other thing is that a lot of the things that have been the focus, these ‘wants’ that we’ve been pulling from the comprehensive plan, those are things that maybe aren’t as much of a priority as good quality housing,” Bray said. “And many of those things actually add a lot of cost to housing or regulatory barriers.

“I think it’s a good idea to do your chores before you go out and play. And we need the core service to be functioning before we’re out adding luxury to that.”

Bray said it feels like there’s a lack of priority on something that seems so obvious: the need for affordable housing in Grand Junction.

“It’s been sort of almost counter to our housing issues,” he said. “You only have so many resources, and if you’re putting those resources towards things that are adding costs to the housing and not towards fixing that process …”

Bray said there was a time when Fruita was the hardest place to get a project through the process, but Fruita made some changes to make it easier.

“There’s still room for improvement in any process, but right now, the most difficult one is with the City of Grand Junction,” Bray said. “You know, something close to 70 percent of the housing in Mesa County is within the City of Grand Junction, which is another reason why it’s so important that we get that process right.”

The Business Times asked City Council member Cody Kennedy about the letter and he pointed to his blog post where he and City Council member Scott Beilfuss discussed the development-review process with local builders at a meeting organized by the Housing and Building Association of Western Colorado on Nov. 19.

The blog post provided some potential solutions.

“One of the recurring themes,” Kennedy wrote, “was the inefficiency of current city procedures, particularly in the rezoning and development review processes. Developers shared concerns about lengthy timelines, repeated review rounds, and high costs caused by delays. To address these issues, the group proposed several practical solutions, such as implementing clear performance guidelines for city departments, creating a pre-application process to identify and resolve potential problems earlier, and considering the use of outside consultants to streamline planning and review. These steps could help reduce costs and increase predictability for builders, which ultimately benefits the community by lowering housing prices.”

Kennedy also said, “I’ve brought up the idea of allocating more resources and even having a concierge to follow these projects through to help them get completed in a timely manner at council meetings. And all of these suggestions have fallen on deaf ears.”