The Town of Frisco and a trio of state agencies broke ground Thursday on a new middle-income apartment complex that will include 54 rental units for local workers.
The Galena Apartments will be available to residents making between 80% and 120% of the area median income, or AMI. The complex will be built to meet the federal government’s most aggressive energy-efficiency standards, according to a news release from the state.
It’s a solution to a problem Frisco residents told Denver7 about on a pair of recent visits to hear community member’s voices: A lack of reasonably-priced housing options there and in mountain communities throughout Colorado.
Workers in Frisco told Denver7’s Ryan Fish that finding an affordable place to live is like “winning the lottery.” Our Denver7 | Your Voice reporting has featured two solutions aimed at providing what Summit County Commissioner Tamara Pogue called “attainable” housing for residents.
Those two projects, though, created just three-dozen middle-income units and had several hundred applicants.
“I think [that] speaks loudly to the scale of the problem that we have here in Summit County,” Pogue said.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said the Galena Apartments are a step toward providing housing for people at varying income levels.
“Expanding access to housing people can afford is incredibly important for Coloradans, businesses and communities,” he said in Thursday’s news release. “To truly thrive, we need more housing now for people at every budget. I am thrilled we are taking this important step to help workers in our mountain region and Frisco access homes near work, school, and all that Colorado has to offer.”
The Colorado Middle Income Housing Authority (MIHA), the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT), and the Colorado Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) partnered with the Town of Frisco on the project.
Denver7 took residents’ concerns over attainable housing to Frisco Town Manager Tom Fisher, who agreed it’s a top issue facing the community. He told us town leadership is looking at a number of possible solutions to the housing dilemma, loosening the rules around deed-restricted units, which carry an appreciation cap to keep prices lower.
Frisco and other mountain communities face a number of issues when it comes to adding housing options: Short construction seasons limited by long winters, large swaths of federally-protected open space and a significant portion of homes being second properties, to name a few.
