High altitude New Urbanism

A new neighborhood in Breckenridge, Colorado, addresses the need for affordable homes for year-round residents and overcomes the difficulties of building a traditional neighborhood at 9,500 feet. Like many other ski resorts in the Rocky Mountains, Breckenridge is struggling with the downside of its popularity. The strong demand for second homes from wealthy city dwellers has pushed home prices to a level where even middle-income families in the community can no longer compete. Local workers commonly travel 40 or 50 miles to find an affordable home. While some affordable housing is being built in Colorado’s resort areas, it is rarely of high quality, says John Wolff of Wolff Lyon Architects, a new urbanist firm in Boulder. “It typically ends up being nothing more than beds and parking spaces ... undistinguished complexes of repetitive housing with very little sense of place or community.” The Wellington Neighborhood, now under construction on a reclaimed dredge mine site one mile from downtown Breckenridge, is the response from Wolff Lyon and developer David O’Neil. Eighty percent of the 122 homes are reserved by deed for people who work full time in the town or in Summit County. Close to 2,000 people live year round in Breckenridge, but at the height of the ski season, the population balloons to above 20,000. “In a normally functioning housing market, the local salaries will set the value of local homes. But in Breckenridge, the influx of second home buyers completely distorts the market,” O’Neil says. Thus, homes prices in the Wellington Neighborhood are tied to the area median income (AMI) and aimed at people who earn between 90 or 140 percent of this amount. The deed-restricted homes sell for approximately $100,000 less than the market-rate homes, and the deeds also limit how much the homes can appreciate. O’Neil estimates that, in the short term, the average home in the area appreciates by 10-15 percent annually. The restricted deeds in Wellington cap the appreciation rate at 3 percent of the purchase price or the annual percentage increase in the AMI, whichever is greater. (In 2000, the AMI in Summit County rose by 6.9 percent). Because of the cyclical nature of property values in resort communities, the gap between deed-restricted and market-rate homes will likely narrow in the long term, O’Neil says. The goal is to create a pool of permanently affordable housing. Among the neighborhood’s first residents are a town manager, a ski instructor, a nurse, and a teacher — such middle-income professionals should still be able to afford a home in the neighborhood 50 years down the line, O’Neil says. Today the deed-restricted, single-family homes sell for approximately $178/square foot, beginning at $250,000. The larger market-rate homes, to be dispersed throughout Wellington, are priced at $335,000 to $350,000. According to Mayor Sam Mamula, the neighborhood is a strong anchor for new development close to downtown Breckenridge. Across the road, the town is about to build a development of townhouses, duplexes, and rental units that will be affordable for residents earning 80 percent of the AMI. Greencourts The Wellington Neighborhood is organized around a series of so-called greencourts. These oblong greens connect to the street network at each end, but are accessible to pedestrians only. The detached homes front directly on the green, and all vehicular access is through the rear alleys. This configuration breaks the large blocks defined by the streets into smaller increments. “We think the greencourt creates an instant sense of place,” Wolff says. “It’s sort of like circling the wagons around a commons, shaping that space so it has a sense of intimacy and a sense of protection.” Low picket fences help make clear distinctions between the public and private realms. Wolff Lyon has previously applied the greencourt model in Poplar Gardens, a 14-unit, low-income project in Boulder. That project achieved a relatively high density, 10 units/acre, in a setting with porches, private yards, and off-street parking. Higher-density housing in the form of townhouses (some of which front a greencourt), duplexes, and live/work units round out the mix in the Wellington Neighborhood. The developer hopes to convert one of the live/work units to a wholesale bakery with a retail outlet and cafe. Residents can walk to an existing supermarket and other retail within half a mile of the new neighborhood. The completed homes and streets will occupy approximately 23 of the total 85 acres on the site. The remainder consists of dedicated public open space and about 40 acres which may be developed at a later date. Challenges of mountain development Removing the 30 ft. high piles of basketball-sized rocks left behind by the dredge mining operation proved to be a minor stumbling block compared to the difficulties of building at 9,500 feet above sea level. The altitude has three main drawbacks: a short building season; a small, noncompetitive pool of skilled labor; and a host of challenges presented by the copious amounts of snow. In response to the first two obstacles, the homes were manufactured in factories 500 miles away in Kansas and Nebraska, and then finished on-site. This has sped up the construction schedule, but has resulted only in minor savings. “It’s not something you would apply unless you have very unique circumstances,” Wolff says. “You have to make compromises on building details and quality control.” The factories produce two kinds of house “boxes.” One consists of four modules, to which the roof is added on-site. A second model consists of two modules with an attached, hinged roof. The latter become one and a half story homes with much of the living space contained within the roof volume. This kind of design is harder to manufacture, but “it really is the right vernacular choice.” Wolff says. The homes are clad in hardboard siding, a common material in the area. Cedar and other wood is used for window trims and porches. When it comes to upholding new urbanist design principles, the snow and the people who remove it are the most prominent adversaries. “When you go through the development review process, it seems like the main reviewer is the snow plow operator. His concerns are significant and are treated very seriously by the planning board,” Wolff says. Wolff and O’Neil fought hard to keep the streets as narrow as possible — town planners eventually agreed to principal streets with a width of 26 feet curb to curb, but with no street parking. Additionally, the right-of-way must include extra space for snow stacking, which makes the streets seem even wider. The standards for alleys proved even more controversial — according to O’Neil nearly a year in the approval process was lost to the negotiations about alleys. But the battle had to be fought, as town planners initially demanded that facing garages be separated by 70 feet of pavement. “They basically wanted us to turn the alleys into streets, and we could not allow that,” O’Neil says. The development team had to settle for a width of 36 feet. Getting the Wellington Neighborhood through the approval process took nearly four years. Despite resistance on the planning staff level, the project enjoyed strong support from the Breckenridge Town Council. “They had the vision, they had the commitment, they provided the density and waiver of various fees, totaling maybe a million dollars, and they were willing to take the risk to make this happen,” O’Neil says.