Photo: The vacant “Trails at Pagosa Springs” parcel, looking west from Alpha Drive.
At today’s scheduled 5pm meeting of the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) board of directors, the agenda includes these items… and a description of the monetary value of each item.
6. Consideration of The Trails at Pagosa Springs Request
7. Consideration of Revisions to Affordable Housing Water and Wastewater Surcharges
The two items are closely related.
At the PAWSD Board meeting in April, the directors adopted a policy that granted a waiver of Capital Investment Fees (CIF) for housing that serves our local workforce and other low-income individuals and families, if the household income falls below 80% of the median household income in Archuleta County. This was a slight modification of a policy dating from 2020.
You can, if you are so inclined, think of CIF payments as “new development helping to pay for infrastructure expansion and maintenance.” To help fund the projected loss of CIF revenue that will not be paid by workforce and low-income housing projects, the board continued a policy of adding a surcharge to customer water and sewer bills, and also asking high-end residential and commercial development to help pay for workforce and low-income housing as part of higher CIF fees. The final approval of that surcharge is scheduled for tonight’s meeting.
Also tonight, a proposed Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) housing project at 116 Alpha Drive, near Walmart — “The Trails at Pagosa Springs” — is applying for the waiver of CIF fees.
The waivers, if granted, would be substantial. About $900,000.
More about that later.
Disclosure: I currently serve as a volunteer on the PAWSD Board of Directors, but this editorial reflects only my own perspective and opinions, and not necessarily those of the PAWSD Board as a whole.
When you are looking for government cooperation to help subsidize workforce and low-income housing, it’s advantageous to have “community buy-in”.
It also helps if the project is close to bike trails and bus stops. Government funders, these days, are encouraged by the possibility of alternate transportation options. The Trails is indeed close to a Mountain Express Transit bus stop, and a relatively new walking/biking trail connected to shopping and employment opportunities.
From the “9% Housing Tax Credit” application for LIHTC subsidies:
Generation Housing Partners, a Historically Underutilized Business (HUB), is pleased to present The Trails at Pagosa Springs (“The Trails”), a 50-unit, new construction, development, consisting of 3.5 acres, in a master planned community in Pagosa Springs. The master planned community is anchored by an existing adjacent Walmart and is planned to include restaurants, retail stores, a hotel, walking trails, a small community lake, and a pocket park…
…The Trails is located on a newly constructed hike and bike trail connecting the development to other parts of the city…
…The Town of Pagosa Springs, as well as Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District have taken steps to incentivize the development of new affordable housing. Both entities have provided letters, indicating their support of the project, as well as their intent to provide tap, impact, and permitting fee waivers for the development. Additionally, the Town of Pagosa Springs has offered to provide expedited permit review….
The developers of the proposed Trails at Pagosa Springs are hoping for local government support, as well as $1.45 million in annual tax credits from the federal government.
As currently presented, the Trails project will consist of one 26-unit apartment building and one 24-unit building, a new street, landscaping, and parking lots.
The property currently looks like this:
Sketches previously presented to the Town Planning Commission look like this, for example:
The Town Planning Commission gave their approval of this design on May 14. But first, the Commission and the audience engaged in a lengthy conversation about traffic.
The current plans indicate about two parking spaces per apartment unit. So then, about 100 cars, with each car making maybe two round trips per day (once to work, once to shopping.)
But we also have to remember that this project is called “Trails” for a reason. It will be situated near walking/biking trails and a transit stop.
Ideally, the cars will mostly sit, unused, in their parking spaces… while the residents use other means of transportation.
That ideal did not stop the developers of the Aspen Village subdivision from expressing their concerns about traffic.
The Trails at Pagosa Springs is not part of the Aspen Village subdivision. But all the “Trails” traffic accessing the Aspen Village stoplight at Highway 160 will travel through the subdivision, on Aspen Village Drive.
Here’s a map showing, in yellow, the location of the proposed apartments, relative to Aspen Village subdivision. The big white building is Walmart. The pink oval indicates the lighted intersection that provides the Aspen Village subdivision with its only opportunity to make a left turn in or out.
The light blue ovals indicate “right-in-right-out” access to and from Highway 160. No left turns allowed.
If you were heading east from the proposed “Trails” apartment complex — toward downtown Pagosa — you have your choice of three intersections. If you’re heading west, your only option is the stoplight at Aspen Village Drive and 160.
In 2005 and 2006, Aspen Village spent millions of dollars building their interior roads, and these three Highway 160 intersections, with the design based upon the estimated traffic that would be generated by the all the businesses and homes within the subdivision at “full build-out”.
The roads were then deeded over the the Town and became public roads.
We are not even close to “full build-out”. But when Walmart bought several parcels at the west end of the subdivision, and proposed a 90,000 square foot store with a massive parking lot, the projected traffic estimate changed significantly, and Walmart was required — by the Town government — to pave part of Alpha Drive, and improve the lighted intersection at Aspen Village Drive and Highway 160.
At the May 14 Town Planning Commission meeting, developer Dan Sanders presented his concerns to the Commission.
If the 100 cars from The Trails apartments start using Aspen Village roads and intersections, next door, and add that traffic to the impacts — will the Town then, someday, force a future development within Aspen Village to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars improving the roads and intersections to accommodate the increased traffic — when some of that traffic is, in fact, coming from outside the subdivision?
Darn good question.