Where can Vail build a ‘continuum of housing’ for its residents?
Town Council discusses where and what housing is needed at a joint meeting with the Vail Local Housing Authority
Ben Roof/Vail Daily archive
The town of Vail is preparing to enter into a strategic planning session in February. The goal of the two-day retreat is for the Town Council to identify its top issues and priorities so it can adequately align time and resources to address them over the next four years.
In preliminary discussions about what the newly seated Vail Town Council wants to accomplish, all council members have expressed a desire to focus on community. Ideas to do so include crafting priorities around developing housing and other amenities, supporting entrepreneurship as well as focusing on culture and identity.
While council members share differing opinions on some of the details, there has been agreement that community is critical to everything the town does.
“As we’re talking about secret sauce… I think that having a community with people living in it is a huge differentiator,” said Vail Mayor Travis Coggin. “And it’s in our power to help more people experience that.”
In preparing for the strategic planning session — scheduled to take place on Feb. 26 and Feb 27 — the town hired a consulting company to help guide the planning. Managing Results, the contracted company, has been meeting one-on-one with the council members and organizing focus groups — including a resident focus group and a business group — to get a feel for community sentiment.
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The full focus group results will be shared at the upcoming planning session, but Town Manager Russ Forrest shared a snippet of the findings with the Vail Town Council and Vail Local Housing Authority at a joint meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 6.
“There was a very strong message that a strong community supports a strong resort,” Forrest said. “Recognizing this is a tough place to live, you’ve got to be gritty to figure it out, but yet at the same time, there are things we can do between the town and the housing authority to make this a more livable community and to increase continuity and succession.”
At the top of the list, Forrest added, was housing, and more specifically, creating a “continuum of housing,” from seasonal rentals to homeownership opportunities.
The timing of the joint meeting allowed for the two boards to ensure their priorities were aligned ahead of the strategic planning retreat and heading into the next few years.
The Vail Local Housing Authority is a five-member board separate from the Vail Town Council that focuses on housing initiatives in the town. The partnership between the two entities is referred to as Vail Home Partners.
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“Each has a uniquely different statutory role and responsibility within local government when it comes to addressing the housing need,” said George Ruther, Vail’s outgoing housing director.
Steve Lindstrom, the housing authority’s chair, said that the sentiment from the focus group aligns with the authority’s mission: “To maintain and sustain a community.”
“You can’t have a community if you don’t have residents, you can’t have residents if you don’t have housing,” Lindstrom said.
During the joint meeting, the two boards discussed challenges, opportunities and goals around housing. At a high level, the Vail Town Council encouraged the local housing authority to continue pursuing every opportunity and idea.
“The reason we’re here, I think, is that for a lot of time, people were seeking out perfect, and the enemy of perfect is nothing. We got a whole lot of nothing because we were spending a little too much or it just wasn’t the right fit, and now unfortunately we’re playing catch-up,” Coggin said. “In order to meet that spectrum of housing, the continuum of housing, we will have to evolve. … Until we chase down every idea, we’re just missing opportunities.”
Where should housing go?
However, where these opportunities are was one of the bigger discussions that the Town Council and Authority had.
“Obviously, we’re trying to sustain a community here, in our boundaries, but we have to recognize our community is larger than just Vail, it goes to Glenwood Canyon,” Lindstrom said, asking the council if it had any “thoughts on in town versus out of town?”
While all council members expressed an interest in pursuing both, each expressed a differing opinion on what the right split was.
Council member Reid Phillips was very supportive of looking for cooperative opportunities and partnerships to create housing downvalley.
“I think we need to look for more opportunities … because real estate and square footage is finite, certainly here in Vail proper,” Phillips said. “I do think (housing is) a valley-wide issue and Vail, for a little while, has been a bit myopic on what we can do between East Vail and Dowd but I think the opportunity will continue to present itself and we need to look around the corner and look downvalley. “
Currently, Vail is working on two regional housing partnerships. The first is on a State Land Board-owned parcel in Dowd Junction where several Eagle County municipalities are working to create housing. The second is the creation of a regional demand and housing action plan for the entire county.
And while most agreed that Vail shouldn’t turn its back on partnerships and downvalley projects, other council members expressed a desire to keep the primary focus in town for now.
Council member Dave Chapin agreed that partnership and seeking downvalley opportunities was important, but also added that he “struggle(s) going past Edwards.”
Both Coggin and Jonathan Staufer expressed a desire to do more in Vail as well.
“I’m far more bullish on what Town Council can do in our own town and I want to make sure there are more kids at Red Sandstone (Elementary School) that live between East Vail and West Vail,” Coggin said. “I’m not opposed to downvalley things … but I think that I’d be 75% focused in Vail and 25% focused outside of Dowd Junction because I think there’s huge opportunities here.”
Some of the Vail-based opportunities that council members expressed an interest in pursuing included Ever Vail, a Vail Resorts-owned property between Lionshead and Cascade Village that was previously entitled for housing, as well as looking at redeveloping West Vail and Cascade Village for potential housing.
An additional opportunity lies in East Vail on a parcel owned by the Colorado Department of Transportation that the town is in negotiations to purchase. Here, Ruther said, is an opportunity for another Chamonix Vail-type development, “providing that for-sale housing project that can expand that continuum of housing options for people living in the town of Vail.”
In discussing these opportunities, Coggin expressed a desire to re-evaluate the metrics by which the town considers its success in housing. In its 2027 housing plan, the town set a goal to acquire 1,000 more deed restrictions by 2027 — a goal it is on track to hit.
“The thousand units by 2027 was great, but I think it’s better if we come to a percentage (of community) that we want to get to and work toward that in the town,” he said. “To say, to have a healthy community, we need to have X number of people here to not just work, but to have vibrancy.”
