The real dirt on Avon’s community housing project
State Land Board project at impasse over lack of funding
Chris Dillmann/Vail Daily
Even using state land and a collaborative approach with the county and other towns, the town of Avon is finding it financially tough to build affordable community housing in Eagle County. Given its geography, the town of Vail is just finding it physically tough to get the job done.
Those two elements of difficulty are converging on the languishing State Land Board parcel in EagleVail near Dowd Junction, where in 2023 a state law was passed to facilitate at least 80 homes where the Colorado Department of Transportation once housed workers in mobile homes.
Now that parcel is home to a growing mound of Vail soil from the town of Vail housing project formerly known as West Middle Creek (now South Face), where approximately 270 homes will be built on the side of slope so steep there’s nowhere to stage soil, materials and equipment.
So the town of Vail inked a lease with the State Land Board to temporarily dump its dirt on the parcel, mixing in sand with the dense clay before returning it to Vail once South Face is built.
“Basically, the dirt is being mixed. The reason there’s dirt there is there’s too much clay and so they’re mixing it on the site … they’re processing the dirt, and then it comes back to (South Face),” Vail Town Manager Russ Forrest said of the massive Vail project anticipated to take several years. “At the end of the day, nothing gets left on the site (in EagleVail).”
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Meanwhile, the fate of the State Land Board project is far less certain. Asked if the town of Vail is still involved at Dowd Junction, where the latest iteration called for approximately 100 units of community housing on 35 acres and annexation into the town of Avon, Forrest said maybe.
“There’s the opportunity for a collaboration around housing on that site, but I would defer to (Avon Town Manager) Eric Heil … they’re really the lead on that part of the relationship with the State Land Board,” Forrest said.
After receiving a request for annexation from the state and the Avon Town Council deeming the parcel eligible for annexation, the next step was to start moving the project through the development process. Then, “the project got to a point of addressing financial realities,” Heil said.
The estimate for a 104-unit apartment project rent-capped at 100% to 110% of Area Median Income (AMI) would require a $16 million public subsidy, Heil said. Corum, the developer selected for the project, proposed applying for $5 million in Middle Income Tax credits, but that application requires $750,000 in schematic design drawings for the project.
“Avon, Vail and Eagle County do not have available funds for the next step of schematic design costs and do not have either the $16 million or reduced $11 million in funds for the required public subsidy,” Heil wrote in an email on Sunday.
“The State Land Board indicated hesitation in annexing into Avon and being subject to a permanent deed restriction for community housing when we do not have regional funds needed to support construction of the project,” Heil added. “I don’t know what is going to happen next.”
That’s where a proposed regional housing authority may come into play, with ongoing discussions on a possible ballot question to see if voters will approve more funding for community housing countywide.
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