To judge by the documents provided to the Town of Pagosa Springs for its January 23 Planning Commission meeting, the partners planning the ‘Pagosa Views’ subdivision west of the Pagosa Springs Elementary School have spent a bundle of money on geotechnical consultants and traffic engineers.
There’s more to developing a subdivision, however, than drilling test holes and counting cars.
For one thing, you have to install a subdivision’s worth of infrastructure. Streets, sewer lines, electric lines, water lines, street lights, possibly natural gas lines?
And permits fees. Lots of permit fees. Capital investment fees. Connection fees.
When we saw the Pagosa Views map in 2022, the plan mentioned “675 rental and ownership residential units at all price points and sizes from 340 SF to 1,900 SF… 252 Apartment units which will be owned, operated, leased, managed, and maintained by the developer… 133 Condominium units will be managed by an HOA established for the condo units…
Basically, about 1,000 dwelling units, spread over about 80 acres. But that was in 2022.
The plan shown to the Town Planning Commission on January 23, 2024, was a bit ‘scaled down’, you could say.
From the application considered on January 23:
The applicant proposes a major subdivision in 4 phases, with 15.7 acres in Phase 1 to include 47 lots and an apartment, along with associated tracts for community amenities and open space. Future phases are included in the concept plan for the overall property and this phase is reviewed for its continuity with future phases as laid out.
The apartment would have 11 units. So a total of 58 units… 37 of which would be townhomes in configurations of three or four connected dwellings. The estimated prices would be in the $300 ,000 to $400,000 price range.
So, 58 dwelling units now, in Phase One. Not 1,000. Maybe more later?
During the presentation, Carl Bommarito and Phil Williams represented the development group, with Mr. Bommarito claiming that a large portion of Phase One would be built as “workforce housing.”
Do we know what that means… after a decade of discussing “workforce housing” here in Pagosa Springs? I suppose it has some connection to “working”? And possibly, to “working in Pagosa Springs”?
According to Region 9 Economic Development District, the median household income in the Town of Pagosa Springs is about $32,500.
That’s not the median “wage” for each worker, mind you. That’s the income for the entire household. Mom, dad, teenagers, grandpa. The whole family.
And that’s the median household income… meaning that half of Pagosa Springs families take home less than $32,500 per year. That’s the half who are finding it hardest to live and work here, I would assume.
A family with an annual income of $32,500 can afford a mortgage for a home (according to real estate website Zillow) costing about $141,000. (With a $50,000 down payment.)
Town Planner Cindy Schultz represented the Town staff at the January 23 meeting, and she quoted the median household income for “Archuleta County” which is substantially higher than in the “Town of Pagosa Springs”.
Closer to $67,000. More than double the $32,500 household incomes within the town limits.
Ms. Schultz felt confident, she said, that households in this income range should be able to qualify for mortgages for the types of homes being proposed. That range, being? Mr. Bommarito stated that the goal is for the single-family homes to sell in the $300,000 to $400,000 range.
Ms. Schultz is a well-paid planning professional, so I imagine a lot of people would be willing to accept her assurances, that a household with a $67,000 income could qualify for a $300,000 house. Or even a $400,000 house.
But I’m not like a lot of people, and I like to double check what I hear coming from the mouths of well-paid planning professionals. So I ran the numbers through the Zillow calculator… with a $50,000 down payment. It took me about 30 seconds.
It seems that the homes proposed by Mr. Bommarito’s team do not “fit comfortably” within the budgets for most people living in Archuleta County… and almost no one living and working within the town limits could afford them. Apparently, Mr. Bommarito is planning to build homes for the wealthiest residents in the community.
But he wants us to believe it’s “workforce housing”?
Mr. Bommarito told the Planning Commission that Phase One of the development would be the launch of a larger “master plan community of hundreds of homes” eventually coming onto the market, but that Phase One’s main emphasis is on building homes that would sell “in the price range that will qualify as workforce housing.”
Do folks find this kind of misinformation, and disinformation, coming from planning professionals and developers, to be frustrating?
At the meeting, Planning Commissioner Chris Pitcher reminded Mr. Bommarito that the Town Council re-zoned the property in 2022 to allow for this development, but that the Town had been promised the access to the development would be from a new traffic roundabout built on Highway 160. The 2024 proposal has all the traffic coming through a residential South Pagosa neighborhood. Commissioner Chad Hodges agreed that the new plan does not align with the promises made in 2022.
Other concerns were expressed.
Mr. Bommarito noted that “there’s been about 20 or 30 topics tonight that we really need to think through, and figure out, now that we are seeing and hearing all of these concerns.” He requested a continuance, which would “give us some time to spend with your town planners in trying to figure out and improve, and think through how we can make this more acceptable.”
The approval decision was tabled, and a future date was not set for another public hearing.