Superior council rejects Marshall Road annexation
The council voted 0-7 against annexation and planned development zoning for 74 and 94 Marshall Road after renewed debate over wildfire evacuation modeling.
Superior’s Town Council voted 0-7 on June 22 to reject proposed annexation and planned development zoning for 74 and 94 Marshall Road after reopening a continued public hearing that focused in part on wildfire evacuation modeling. In a separate action the same night, council approved LIV NailSpa’s entertainment-facility liquor license for 404 Marshall Road on a 7-0 vote.
The Marshall Road land-use hearing had already been continued once. On June 8, council continued the annexation and planned-development hearing to June 22.
At the June 22 hearing, the applicant presented updated wildfire evacuation modeling that it said was voluntary and not required by town code. According to the meeting transcript, the applicant said the study was meant to test whether the project would “materially degrade evacuation performance relative to existing conditions”. It also said it revised scenarios after the June 8 hearing, including adding closures affecting westbound Marshall Road and westbound U.S. 36 in some scenarios.
Council members and residents questioned whether the model could reflect real wildfire conditions such as poor visibility and chaotic driver behavior. The applicant said visibility could not be modeled in the software it used, and staff and advisers said the town had no fixed numerical threshold for what counts as a material degradation of evacuation performance.
Council closed the hearing and rejected the ordinance unanimously. The hearing record reviewed for this story does not show council adding conditions before the vote.
For the separate business item, town staff’s preliminary report said LIV NailSpa’s license application was accepted May 6, found complete, circulated to town departments and scheduled for a June 22 public hearing. The report also said the business was properly zoned and not within 500 feet of a school.
The licensing paperwork contains some ambiguity. The staff report describes the request as a new entertainment-facility license application, while the application packet includes transfer-related fields and checklist language. Still, the June 22 hearing record shows council approved the application before it without special conditions.
The application materials say the license still depends on final approval from Colorado’s state liquor licensing authority.