Steamboat Springs — A 32-unit condominium project that was originally approved for development six years ago but was never constructed is going back to the drawing board tonight in front of the city Planning Commission.

Base Meadows South Lot 7 Condominiums at the corner of Village Drive and Medicine Springs Drive will be reviewed in a pre-application hearing meant to give the applicants direction before they draw up their final plans.

After letting the property sit dormant since its last approval, the developer, Anvil Properties, hired Lee Fischer of Eric Smith Associates to bring it up to the city's architectural guidelines. The development permit the applicants received in 1994 has since expired.

Fischer said the current state of the application is almost identical to the originally approved project, but, because the city has imposed new stricter architectural guidelines the old design may have to be altered.

"The city's architectural guidelines have changed since then," Fischer said. "Without that, we would have been OK, but we do understand that changes will need to be made."

The applicants are taking the project in front of the Planning Commission to get some feedback on how to change the design, Fischer said.

"Rather than spending a lot of time designing the buildings just to have to turn around and change them, we're going to go to the commission to see what they have to say," Fischer said.

Among city planner Leif Myhre's concerns are the mass and scale of the project, which he feels could be lightened by adding more variation to the building's fae. Myhre wrote in his report that the building has too little variation in its fae and is not graceful enough for a complex so close to the skiing area.

"The institutional look of the ribbons of windows and flat expanse of stucco may be more akin to the look of an office complex or housing project rather than resort condominiums close to the base of the mountain," Myhre wrote.

Myhre did, however, like the underground parking structure offered by the project.