Avon aims to fill the need for upper valley housing
Taking long, broad look, town staff sees potential for 2,800 new units in and around town
Town of Avon/Courtesy image
The Avon Town Council reviewed several plans for building community housing during its Jan. 23 meeting, taking in all the options that might be available in the coming decades.
Eric Heil, Avon’s town manager, and Matt Pielsticker, Avon’s planning director, put together a presentation of every possible location housing might reasonably be built in and adjacent to Avon.
“What we’re presenting you is really a wildly optimistic, best-case scenario,” Heil said.
Many of the properties presented would require planned unit development amendments and a design review process before housing could be built. Several are not owned by the town of Avon or lie outside the town’s boundaries.
“This is very much long-range visioning. This is 20 to 30 years to accomplish this,” Heil said.
Support Local Journalism
‘The bulk of housing opportunity’
“We probably have the bulk of housing opportunity in the upper valley. Vail is very limited, Minturn is very limited. EagleVail residential is pretty much built out. Beaver Creek, Bachelor Gulch, Arrowhead, are more or less built out,” Heil said.
Meeting climate goals by building all-electric, net-zero housing near job centers and access to public transportation is another reason to focus on Avon, Heil said.
According to the 2018 Housing Demand Analysis, Eagle County needs 5,900 units of housing by 2025 to meet the population’s needs. With some locals selling houses to visitors that most locals cannot afford to move into, and business development and the outdoor recreation economy increasing the number of people moving to Eagle County, even more housing is likely needed going forward.
“If (the need is) 6,000 (units) today, what we need to develop in 20 years is probably a number half again higher, at a minimum,” Heil said.
Beyond forecasts, local housing organizations are seeing a greater need for housing now than previously.
“We have received double the number of applications we have historically seen, and there is such a sense of desperation in our workforce,” said Emily Peyton, director of special projects for Habitat for Humanity Vail Valley.
If every parcel presented to the council was developed, and under-zoned properties in town were rezoned and redeveloped for high-density housing, the total number of units of housing that might be added to Avon could be as high as 2,800, Heil said.
Heil noted that there are other options for creating more community housing capacity within Avon in addition to developing new homes, including expanding the town’s Mi Casa Avon program and placing deed restrictions on existing housing.
“It’s a long path to go from an idea of housing to something built that people can move into,” Heil said.
Taking the presented properties from their current state to habitable housing entails identifying properties, zoning, an entitlement process, a site investigation, a conceptual architectural design, a finished design, funding, partnerships, and construction.
Be more informed in 2025.
Sign up for daily or weekly newsletters at VailDaily.com/newsletter
“All of that is a process that can take, easily, two to three years to go from idea to a project actually built and people moving in,” Heil said.
The properties Avon will be moving forward with first include Slopeside, the Wildwood Annex, and the East Avon Preserve. Slopeside, on Swift Gulch Road, has the potential to hold 80 units of housing by 2027. The Wildwood Annex in Wildridge can hold four units of housing for town employees and might be ready by 2026. The East Avon Preserve, on Wagon Trail Road, could hold 120 units of housing and might be completed by 2030.
The Traer Creek PUD
At the same meeting, town staff discussed the Traer Creek LLC planned unit development at the Village (at Avon), a site where the town would like to build nearly 100 units of community housing.
“What’s a little different with the Village (at Avon) is that all property owners in the Village (at Avon) require getting Traer Creek’s consent under the development agreement in order to submit a PUD application,” Heil said.
The town’s two Village at Avon projects are the Avondale Apartments and a new early childhood educational center in partnership with the Vail Valley Foundation. Avon has been talking about adding housing on those properties for “quite a long time,” Heil said. Each property has the capacity for up to 48 units of housing.
For the Avondale Apartments, Avon plans to use modular construction. A contract has been set up with architects, but Avon still needs to contract with a modular construction company. Construction may begin in fall 2024, Heil said, or more likely in spring 2025. The project is estimated to take 18 months from the beginning of site work to move in.
The housing attached to the early childhood center would begin construction, at the soonest, in spring 2025, and would not use modular buildings due to the shape of the land.
“I think it’s innovative, ambitious, and also the right thing to do that we’re looking at housing above the school, but it also makes the project three times more expensive and more complicated,” Heil said.
In talks with Traer Creek representatives, Heil said, it was decided that Avon needed to clarify that housing is a permitted use on the two land parcels, as well as how housing would affect density at the Village at Avon, and the water source for the housing.
Avon cannot move forward with either housing project until Traer Creek agrees to the amendments, and Traer Creek’s representatives proposed three additional planned unit development amendments to be processed concurrently.
The first amendment was to reaffirm within the language of the planned unit development that a cul de sac within the development can serve 280 units, rather than the fire code that says cul de sacs can only serve 200 units.
The second amendment was to increase the permitted density of Planning Areas C and D from 18 units per acre to 30. To accommodate the increased density, permitted building height would likely need to increase, potentially from 48 to 60 feet.
The third amendment would be to extend Traer Creek’s vested rights in the area, which are in place until 2039.
Town staff and Traer Creek representatives asked for the council’s direction, but not a decision on any development application.
“When it does come through the process, you’ll get the full-blown staff analysis, like you normally get,” ” Heil said. “It will go to planning commission first, and you’ll get their recommendation and comments, and then it will come to council.”
Responding to a request from the mayor to work expediently on the housing issue, Heil said, “I am always moving as soon as possible, but sometimes that’s measured in half years and years, not months.”
Heil said that in addition to finding new ways to create community housing, examining whether the post office can serve increased housing in Avon is on the to-do list for town staff. Also on the list? How adding thousands of new residents to Avon might impact the town’s staff, budget and infrastructure.
