The Aspen City Council on Monday expressed support for prioritizing people who work in the city of Aspen for units at the Lumberyard affordable housing development, but were undecided whether to extend priorities to certain employers or categories of employees.
During a work session, council members supported applying a similar lottery priority to the approximately 277 Lumberyard units that was used on for-sale units at Burlingame Ranch Phase III, which gave applicants who worked within the Aspen-area urban growth boundary priority in lotteries. They initially supported partnering with employers to give priorities to certain employees, but the public-private partnership with Gorman & Co. to operate the units might complicate the type of priority program the city can pursue.
Under the contract with Gorman the city council approved last week, the city has six months to determine what priorities it wants to establish when the units are ready to lease.
Mayor Rachel Richards suggested reserving a certain number of units for employers in Aspen who can lease them to their employees. She views a priority system as a partnership to recoup costs from the project and put that money toward future affordable housing programs.
“I think working toward a financial formula that the partnerships would feel is reasonable and be willing to buy in with this is a critical element of this,” she said. “For me, the purpose of partnerships is to bring in some money that can be rolled over into supporting additional affordable housing, and I think that the fee needs to be something reasonable to an employer that they renew every year.”
Because the project will be operated by Gorman, the priority system would only apply to lotteries for units as they become available rather than priorities for specific units, said Chris Everson, the city’s affordable housing project manager.
“The developer, being the owner and the operator of the facilities, which has debt service to pay, has operating costs to pay, they need to know all of that in advance how the lottery priorities will work, and not in a manner where we’re setting aside a quantity of units for employer A or employer B or employer C,” Everson said. “Because all of those scenarios run the risk of a unit going empty and that being a risk to the debt on the project.”
If there is no employer to rent an open unit to and no one within the urban growth boundary has applied, the unit would then go to a general lottery, Everson said.
“If the city owned and operated the facilities on our own, we could tweak it however you like. But we’re trying to find a scenario that works together with the developer,” he added.
The city council has to notify the developer of its intent to establish an employer partnership in six months, but it has much more time leading up to the completion of the project to forge partnerships and outline the program.
Gorman plans to begin building in 2026, with completion and unit leasing tentatively planned for 2028 through 2029.
Richards requested Everson return to city council at a later date with more specifics on the lottery priority process for the Lumberyard. The city council also will need to determine whether it wants to establish priorities for certain categories of professions, like hospital workers or teachers.
“One of the things I think we can think about is perhaps, where are the greatest needs?” said Councilwoman Christine Benedetti. “Some of the sectors, the hospital, the school, RFTA, they have the means to address or start to address housing on their own and have already done that. But are there sectors that have gaps we could potentially address and have a bigger impact?”
During its Aug. 12 meeting, the city council will vote on whether to place a $70 million debt issuance question for the Lumberyard on the November ballot. Council members reviewed the ballot language during Monday’s work session.
The city will be responsible for $250 million of the $360 million project. The $70 million debt issuance would not raise taxes.
Note: Christine Benedetti is married to Aspen Daily News publisher David Cook.
