Breckenridge Town Council got an early look at potential site plans for the first building intended for the nonprofit campus on the McCain property.

The McCain property is a 128-acre parcel of town-owned land along Colorado Highway 9 and Coyne Valley Road that is under development on the north end of town. On the property, 3.5 acres has been set aside for what could be a nonprofit and community services campus. The Family & Intercultural Resource Center and Building Hope Summit County have expressed a keen interest in the nonprofit campus, claiming one of three potential building sites on the parcel for themselves.

In the proposed building, the two nonprofits would make a new home for their offices, and the resource center would open a thrift store and food market for the community. The plan is for the building to be two stories, with the store and market on the ground floor and offices upstairs.

Also included in the McCain master plan is additional housing west of the nonprofit campus, and Peter Joyce, a board member at the resource center, said they tried to design the building to keep circulation smooth.

“That site has evolved with all the different groups, and everybody seems super happy,” Joyce said. “I think it works really, really well. There’s not going to be any confusion really for anybody showing up to this location.”

According to the staff memo to council, site circulation would allow for separate access for delivery trucks and thrift store donations to avoid traffic challenges. The food market and thrift store were designed to accommodate “customer access, space-specific receiving and storage circulation, and a general efficiency to minimize wasted space.”

Joyce and Breckenridge Town Manager Rick Holman discussed the presence of a specific pull-off for large trailers making deliveries to the food market. There is also a separate space designated as a drop-off area for the thrift store.

“It was really important to try to minimize the trucks and keep the trucks and the cars away from each other, which is why we created that access point,” Holman said.

Town Council has previously discussed the possibility of reserving one of the spots on the nonprofit campus for a child care facility, and members directed town staff to continue moving in this direction. Council member Kelly Owens said it became “painfully obvious” how much additional child care will be needed when more families move into the new Alta Verde housing developments.

“When I saw that enormous development, I just was like, ‘How are we going to put all these people and families into Breckenridge and not build a child care facility immediately?'” Owens said.

The only other concern from council was regarding parking and the site’s harmony with the rest of the nonprofit campus and surrounding areas. Should the town move forward with a child care center, this would require a specific parking lot and drop-off setup that would work smoothly for the facility.

“I think their building is excellent and serves their needs, but … I think we do need to think about it holistically and how is this going to work with parking requirements for child care for the potential third building,” council member Carol Saade said.

Council gave the nonprofits the go-ahead to move forward with submitting planning and building applications based on the plans they saw Tuesday, but town staff will look further into the parking issue. Joyce said if the organizations continue moving forward as planned, they would hope to break ground next summer.