Great sustainable buildings are a choice that requires the right people in the room in order to realize them.
That was the throughline of a recent Mountain Towns 2030 webinar hosted by Jamie Wolf Jamie W. of OZ Architecture, who brought together engineers, energy modelers, and developers to talk candidly about what it actually takes to deliver ambitious, high-performance buildings in mountain communities. The conversation covered energy modeling, entitlement realities, infrastructure constraints, and wildfire resilience, but the deeper subject was always collaboration: who’s at the table, when they show up, and what happens when they don’t.
The Gap Between Design Intent and Real-World Performance
Mountain towns are not generic places, and they don’t respond well to generic solutions. They face seasonal occupancy swings, constrained power grids, short construction windows, high material costs, wildfire exposure, and groundwater surprises, all of which are variables that standard building codes and energy models weren’t designed to capture.
“Are we unintentionally limiting solutions by who we’re inviting into the room?” Wolf asked. It’s the question that started this whole conversation, one that emerged from a chance exchange with Aspen policy writers at the Mountain Towns 2030 Summit. One conversation led to another, and a clear pattern emerged: the gap between a building’s design intent and its real-world performance almost always lives in the handoffs, and in who was missing from the table early on.
Chris Vandal, Associate Principal at OZ Architecture, framed it this way: the most successful projects aren’t successful because of a specific technology or design direction. They succeed because the right experts found alignment from the start. OZ frequently runs multi-day “charrettes” at the outset of a project, bringing every relevant subject-matter expert into the room early on to inform decisions. This helps avoid the expensive and demoralizing experience of retrofitting both design and budget later.
Energy Modeling as a Collaboration Tool, Not Just a Compliance Box
Libby Middleton, PE, BEMP of Group 14 Engineering offered two case studies from a large condo+hotel in Steamboat Springs that illustrated what collaborative energy modeling can actually do when it goes beyond code compliance.
The first involved glazing. The design team had selected low solar heat gain coefficient glass, following the conventional wisdom that less solar heat means lower cooling loads. Reasonable in theory. But Steamboat is a heating-dominated climate, and with the right model and the right questions, the team discovered the opposite was true for this building, in this orientation, on this site. They studied five different glazing options and landed on the highest solar heat gain coefficient, the exact opposite of their anticipated selection..
The second example was about occupancy assumptions. Standard energy modeling protocols assume a building is 100% occupied year-round. That’s fine for a downtown Denver apartment but is not the same mountain condo+hotel that empties out between seasons.
During a team meeting, Wolf spoke up: “that’s not how this building is actually going to operate.” The team worked with the developer to pull real occupancy data from their portfolio, updated the model schedules, and found a 17% reduction in predicted energy use intensity (realized annually due to seasonal swings), and accurate heating and cooling load profiles. Testing an assumption led to a clearer picture of which design decisions actually moved the needle.
“Garbage in, garbage out,” Libby said. The earlier expert opinions and data are integrated and inform the model, the less you’re guessing. And in predictive modeling, where you’re trying to understand how a building will actually perform against Colorado Building Performance Standard targets, AIA 2030 commitments, or net-zero goals, accuracy isn’t academic.
The Real Constraints Mountain Towns Face
OZ Architecture Partner, Rebecca (Becky) Stone (Rebecca Stone), AIA, NCIDQ, has worked in mountain resort communities for nearly 30 years, and brought the conversation down to earth with a series of case studies that illustrated just how interconnected mountain town development really is.
On community housing: entitlements in resort communities almost always require developers to contribute to workforce housing, sometimes by directly building it, sometimes by funding it in partnership with others. Burlingame in Aspen, Vail Health’s staff housing project, and Wintergreen in Keystone weren’t charity projects. They were the cost of doing business in a place where you can build a world-class building while ensuring there is a community there to support its operation.
On infrastructure: Becky’s team is currently working on The Stockman in Steamboat Springs, CO where they wanted to go all-electric. The local utility’s response was grounded in the reality of their operational capacity. It would necessitate a new power plant for this to be a viable option. Alterra is working on a geothermal system for the broader mountain, but it won’t be ready in time for this project’s construction timeline. The result is a building that can’t yet be what its designers want it to be, not because of any failure of ambition, but because the infrastructure simply isn’t available yet. Policy and infrastructure have to move together, or sustainability mandates just strangle development.
On wildfire: fire departments are an underappreciated early stakeholder in mountain construction. On a Snowmass Village project, the team worked with the local fire department and ultimately purchased them a new truck with the right ladder and rescue equipment to support the building type they were designing. At Deer Valley’s new East Village, the design team worked with mountain operators to cut strategic tree gaps in the runs, wide enough that a wildfire couldn’t jump them and reach the village. The Forest Service was at that table too since they own the land.
On groundwater: on a current Jackson project, geotech work revealed an environmental plume underground. The city was relieved as a developer willing to clean it up is not something you take for granted. The team turned the remediation into a foundation strategy, creating a waterproofed bathtub structure for the parking garage as they removed the contaminated soil.
Sewer Heat Recovery and the Art of Finding Common Ground
Chris Imperato, Associate Principal at AECOM, walked through the National Western Center in Denver’s sewer heat recovery system. The project took over a year of financial modeling and feasibility work before a single design drawing was made, and required buy-in from the City and County of Denver, Denver Water, Metro Wastewater, Xcel Energy, the National Western Stock Show, Colorado State University, Saunders Construction, and Centrio as plant operator.
Nobody woke up one morning and decided to build a sewer heat recovery system. It happened because every one of those organizations shared a common sustainability goal, and because the team was patient enough to find the financial and operational structures that made it work for all of them.
His advice for bridging the gap between feasibility study and built project: find partners who share a common vision, who prioritize sustainability as the driver, and seek the funding that follows when enough people are genuinely committed to the project’s success. “In mountain communities, that’s how they all stick together,” he said. “They share many common goals.”
Key Takeaways for Mountain Towns
• Bring stakeholders in before decisions are finalized. The cost of early collaboration is a charrette. The cost of late collaboration is redesign, budget overruns, and missed opportunities you can’t get back.
• Energy modeling is a design tool, not just a compliance checkbox. Collaborative, predictive modeling, informed by real occupancy data, local climate conditions, and actual operational plans, improves energy-use predictions, significantly informing final design decisions.
• Mountain town occupancy is seasonal. Generic code assumptions about year-round full occupancy will produce inaccurate models. Push back on defaults and use real data from comparable properties.
• The power grid is a constraint, not a given. All-electric ambitions require utility conversations early. If the grid can’t support the load, the strategy has to adapt, and advocating for grid capacity upgrades is part of the work.
• Fire departments are design partners, not permit reviewers. Engage them early, understand their equipment and staffing constraints, and design (and sometimes fund) around them.
• Wildfire resilience extends beyond the building envelope. Tree gap design, site access planning, mechanical ventilation for air quality events, and coordinated land management with the Forest Service are all part of a complete approach.
• Shared goals make the impossible possible. The most ambitious projects get built when every stakeholder at the table can point to a reason it matters to them. Find that common ground first.
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Jamie Wolf is a Project Architect at OZ Architecture and a longtime participant in the Mountain Towns 2030 community. Panelists included Rebecca (Becky) Stone and Chris Vandal of OZ Architecture, Libby Middleton of Group 14 Engineering, and Chris Imperato of AECOM.
This article is part of the Mountain Towns 2030 webinar recap series. The next webinar is part of our new Wildfire Resilience Series, beginning May 23rd – details at mt2030.org.