An update from Chelan Basin Conservancy

Save The Butte - February 21, 2023 - Update #6

Hello supporters of the Chelan Butte,

We have a few items related to the effort to preserve Chelan Butte that we would like to pass along. First, the Trust for Public Land just completed their official submittal of the Chelan Butte Acquisition Feasibility Study grant request to the state legislature on behalf of themselves, the City of Chelan, the Chelan-Douglas Land Trust, the Lake Chelan Trails Alliance, and CBC. If approved, this would provide funding for a study (managed by TPL) to assess various approaches to funding, owning, and maintaining a significant portion of the north face of the Chelan Butte. We believe that District 12 state representatives Mike Steele and Keith Goehner are co-sponsoring this request, so we would like to pass along our thanks to them! We anticipate that we will know whether or not this grant will be funded by the end of April.

We have had a second conversation with one of the individuals who holds the option to purchase the roughly 875 acres on the Butte currently owned by Golden Gate Ventures (GGV). While we continue to try to maintain a dialogue, it is not clear how much common ground we will ultimately find. As pointed out in the letter we sent to the option holders (provided in our last update and again here), the potential development of a small parcel of land in the northeast corner of the GGV property to build attainable housing has long been discussed as part of the effort to preserve Chelan Butte. However, it is likely that the option holders will want to do more than this, creating more expensive parcels in other portions of the GGV property to fund any attainable housing planned. We will continue to monitor this planning to the extent that we can.

Recently, the current GGV property owner submitted a land use application to complete what is known as a boundary line adjustment. This is allowed under Chelan City code without public comment. This would take the 30 existing parcels that are spread across the Butte and create 29 ten-acre parcels in the roughly northwest portion of the GGV property, with one large lot left over. This is a plan that GGV has talked about for a while as it quickly creates 29 parcels up on the Butte that could be sold. We don't know what the next steps will be for these parcels, but here is a map showing the new boundary lines that have been requested.

Outside of these updates, we also wanted to announce that we would like to collect your favorite photos of the Chelan Butte. This effort is part of a video display that we will be putting on in our booth at the Chelan Earth Day Fair on Saturday April 15th and elsewhere. So if you have taken a photo of the Butte (or with the Butte in the background), please email it to us at SaveChelanButte@gmail.com (one photo per person please). We will randomly (we're not art critics!) select some of the photos submitted for prize awards. If you're in Chelan on April 15th, please come visit us in the CBC booth at the fair! Additionally, CBC will be on KOZI radio at 8:25AM on Wednesday February 22nd, so please listen in if you get a chance.

Thank you for your continued support,
Brian Patterson
Chelan Basin Conservancy President

on behalf of the CBC board:
Lisa Garvich - Vice President
Tony Crosetto - Treasurer
Mary Bider - Secretary