Photo: Heidi Dragoo helps clarify the intentions of development company ‘Colorado Outdoors’ during an August 20, 2024, work session with the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners.
I suppose most people — myself included — assume that the Future will be similar to the Past, with a few minor adjustments. Here in Archuleta County, for example, we will continue to see occasional wildfires in our vast, forested backcounty, but we hopefully won’t experience the kind of devastation a Boulder, Colorado suburb experienced in December 2021… the event known as the Marshall Fire. Nearly 1,000 homes and businesses destroyed in a matter of a few hours.
Steps are being taken by various Pagosa Springs organizations to minimize the risk to homes and businesses here. One particular grant-funded organization — Wildfire Adapted Partnership — has been helping property owners clear trees and vegetation from around their homes. They offer a variety of incentive programs to support residents with slash removal and with planning and mitigation efforts.
And if the Future is going to be similar to the Past, I suppose we should expect our local government leaders to continue spending our tax revenues, occasionally, in questionable ways.
One opportunity for questionable expenditures was discussed by the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners at their August 20 morning work session. The opportunity was presented by Colorado developers David and Heidi Dragoo, who are part of the team behind a 165-acre mixed-use development in Montrose, Colorado… and who would like to facilitate something similar on a 99-acre parcel near the Pagosa Springs Medical Center.
The Dragoos’ development company goes by the name ‘Colorado Outdoors’ but was listed in the work session agenda, for whatever reason, as “Arena Labs LLC”.
The property in question is being represented by Shelley Low of EXIT Realty. Commissioner Veronica Medina is an agent with EXIT Realty. So we have that little issue.
Another issue might be the $2.1 million price tag attached to a 5-acre parcel being offered to the commissioners. That price tag puts the cost of the undeveloped vacant land (without any current infrastructure) at $10 per square foot… when the Dragoos apparently will be paying less than $2 per square foot for the full 99-acres.
The commissioners are being offered a parcel directly across from the Medical Center on South Pagosa Boulevard, shown in the map below in gray.
The Dragoos explained that they plan to build a subsidized apartment complex on an adjacent parcel, outlined in teal blue. The state of Colorado has millions of dollars in grants currently available to facilitate ‘lower income’ housing.
Last week, I spoke with a couple of local realtors with expertise in commercial property sales, about the idea that our BOCC might pay $10 per square foot for a non-commercial parcel. Both realtors (who were not associated with EXIT Realty) expressed dismay at the offered price, and wondered why the BOCC would even consider paying that amount, when the community has so many other vacant parcels available.
But maybe there’s method to their madness?
David Dragoo also shared a map showing proposed streets and subdivision parcels, with most of the parcels facing Highway 160 dedicated to commercial uses, and the residential lots dedicated to market rate and luxury homes. The Pagosa Springs housing market reflects the same inflated home prices found all across Colorado, with the median price for a home here above $600,000. If we can believe housing activist and engineer Chuck Marohn, founder of the Strong Towns movement, the current housing bubble is going to burst sooner or later, as he argued in the column we shared yesterday.
Here’s the Dragoos preliminary site plan as shown to the BOCC.
David Dragoo:
“Our plan is to start at the west and work eastward, and start with the County building, which is really where the utilities are, and work our way east.”
The Dragoos have been working closely with the Town planning department — the 99-acre property is within the Town boundaries — to apply for state housing grants. Reportedly, the Dragoos have also established working relationships with the Pagosa Springs Community Development Corporation (PSCDC) and with the Archuleta County Housing Authority.
“The utilities are sized sufficiently for these first two projects.” That is, the County Administration Building and the proposed “lower income” apartments.
I’m putting that phrase — “lower income” — in quotes, because it’s not clear who, exactly, will be able to afford these apartments, even with state and local subsidies.
A mile farther down Highway 160, PSCDC is overseeing ten subsidized “workforce housing” units being built by BWD Construction. PSCDC is a non-profit corporation, itself heavily subsidized by the Town and County governments. BWD is a private company, so we assume they will be making a profit constructing these ten homes. But PSCDC — as a non-profit corporation — is not allowed to make a “profit” facilitating these homes.
It’s easy to believe that private, for-profit businesses keep the American economy going. In fact, here in Pagosa Springs, most of the best paid employees are working for local governments. The Town, the County, the School District, Pagosa Springs Medical Center, Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation, the Fire District, the Memorial Library.
Our local economy would fall apart without our (comparatively well-paid) government employees.
According to David Dragoo, these government employees would be the primary type of workers served by the housing his development company hopes to build. He illustrated that idea with a graph.
Unfortunately, in Pagosa’s tourism-recreation economy, the vast majority of local workers — who are not employed by government — earn less than 80% of the Area Median Income (AMI). In the graph shown above, they do not earn enough to qualify for “Workforce Housing” as Mr. Dragoo describes it.
So, although the Dragoos appear to be proposing to build tax-subsidized “workforce housing”, what they they are proposing may end up serving only the highest paid local workers, most of whom (as mentioned) work for local governments.
I’ve made this argument repeatedly at BOCC meetings and Town Council meetings — that Archuleta County tends to do a poor job of helping those most in need of help, where housing is concerned.
It could appear — if you happen to be cynical — that the BOCC will buy overpriced property from the Dragoos, to help subsidize housing for… mainly government employees.
And with an EXIT Realty agent, Commissioner Veronica Medina, leading the charge?