Photo: A somewhat ambiguous map of the proposed ‘Pagosa West’ subdivision, as presented on August 19, 2025.
About a dozen Archuleta County residents showed up at the Ross Aragon Community Center on Tuesday afternoon, August 19, to hear about a revised plan for the controversial ‘Pagosa West’ subdivision development at the west end of town, across the highway from the City Market shopping center.
The presentation was hosted, not by the proposed developers at ArenaLabs LLC, but by the non-profit Pagosa Springs Community Development Corporation, represented by Executive Director Emily Lashbrooke, and by the for-profit architecture firm, Reynolds Ash & Associates, represented by local architect Brad Ash.
The same presentation was shared on Thursday evening, August 21, once again at the Community Center, and once again by architect Brad Ash, but to a slightly larger audience, who had more questions to throw at Mr. Ash about the details of the proposed subdivision. Many of the people in the audience appeared to be neighbors residing to the south of the proposed development.
The audience was welcomed by Pagosa Springs Community Development Corporation Executive Director Emily Lashbrooke, who explained that “the experts” were not able to attend the meeting, but that the audience could leave written questions and comments in a basket at the back of the room, and Ms. Lashbrooke would make sure “the experts” received them.
When someone asked Ms. Lashbrooke who “the experts” were, she stated, “The developers.”
She then introduced Brad Ash, who has been working with the Montrose, Colorado-based developers to revise the controversial subdivision. The project had sought ‘sketch plan approval’ last year at the Town of Pagosa Springs Planning Commission. The approval was tabled to allow the developer to bring forward an improved plan. a version of which Mr. Ash was presenting.
Before we get into Mr. Ash’s presentation, we can look at a bit of the history of this proposed subdivision, and maybe the history of subdivisions in general.
The first I heard about ‘Pagosa West’ was at an Archuleta Board of County Commissioner’s meeting in May, 2024, where Montrose, Colorado-based developer Doug Dragoo introduced the idea of building some ‘affordable’ workforce housing on a 100-acre parcel near the Medical Center.
Sitting at the table with Mr. Dragoo were the current County commissioners — Ronnie Maez, Warren Brown and Veronica Medina — with the then-interim County Manager Jack Harper, then-County Attorney Todd Weaver, and local realtor Shelley Low, presumably representing the owner of the 100-acre parcel in question, Kisco LLC.
Mr. Dragoo and his family had not yet purchased the parcel. According to the County Assessor, the Dragoos have still not purchased the land; it is still listed as owned by Kisco LLC.
As I am coming to understand how subdivision development happens in the 21st century, developers try their darnedest to finance the project using other people’s money, and then reap most of the profit themselves, while leaving the ongoing maintenance of the subdivision to local government and the future property owners.
In the case of ‘Pagosa West’ — which in May 2024 did not yet have that label — Mr. Dragoo was promising to build some desperately-needed workforce housing, for ‘working professionals’, at the west end of the property, right next to a proposed County Administration Building.
We had already seen conceptual drawings of the new Administration Building, although the County did not, at the time, own any property suitable for this new building.
Mr. Dragoo and Ms. Low argued that a five-acre piece of the 100-acre parcel would be ideal for the County’s new Administration Building, and although the Dragoo family did not yet own the property, Mr. Dragoo was perfectly willing to sell the aforementioned piece to the County for a decent price.
He made it clear that his family company hoped to create a ‘mixed-use’ subdivision similar to the one their company — Colorado Outdoors LLC — is in the process of building out in Montrose, Colorado, on 160 acres there.
The Montrose project’s infrastructure was subsidized to the tune of $10 million from the City of Montrose, according to former Montrose Mayor David White. The money was funneled through the Montrose ‘Urban Renewal Authority’ even though there was no “urban” to “renew” on the 160 acres. It was just vacant land.
Mr. Dragoo, making promises in May, 2024:
“Our plan is to also build 120 units of workforce housing, which will be AMI-restricted.”
(“AMI” meaning “Area Median Income”.)
“That’s kind of how this whole project started. We realized, in one of the other projects we were doing, that we were attempting to sell sites to other businesses and convince them to move into the community… and they would hire people, and the people would come to town, and they would say, ‘This is great; I’m making $18 an hour. But I can’t find any place to rent…’
“And so that’s how we started doing workforce housing. To create a place, where the people who work in these business, could live.
“That allowed us to be able to sell our commercial [parcels]. So the people who owned the banks and the restaurants and the hotels could have places for the [employees] to live.
“It seems a little unbelievable that this happens in our world today, but the reality is, workers can’t find a place to live. And if they can’t find a place to live, then they don’t move here, and you can’t run your hotel, because you don’t have people to clean the rooms or work in the restaurants…
“So our whole program, then, is to build this whole project around [the new County Admin Building] and around workforce housing, as the beginning.”
Mr. Dragoo and realtor Shelley Low rattled off a list of the types of businesses that would no doubt be moving in — eventually — once the County building and the workforce housing are in place.
Ms. Low: “The whole point is, it’s got to be synergistic with the residential, and with the commercial. It’s something that Pagosa has never seen, and it’s just perfect timing. And we have the perfect developer…”
Well, that’s a bit of a stretch…
…that a blend of residential and commercial is something Pagosa has never seen.
We’ve had a historically synergistic blend of commercial and residential in downtown Pagosa for over 140 years. The mixed-use area around City Market could have remained a synergistic mix, but a huge portion of the residential has recently been converted into vacation rentals. And we have a 90-acre development in Aspen Village, platted in 2006 as a synergistic blend of commercial and residential… but thus far, it’s less than 50% built out, 20 years later.
Ms. Low and Mr. Dragoo seemed to be promising yet another “synergistic” development that will be sitting mostly vacant 20 years from now… with more under-utilized streets and infrastructure that we can’t afford to maintain…