Saddle Sore: Death by a thousand paper cuts

Out on the Woody Creek ranch, sometime in the 1960s, the high school coach approached my dad about moving his trailer from the Woody Creek Trailer Park (That’s what it was called in those days) up to a spot on the ranch. Give the coach credit; he had a great vision. It was a beautiful location, close to the road, running water close by, power, next to an existing, picturesque pole barn, shielding the place from the county road. Even if that vacant land was for sale today, it would be worth multi-millions of dollars. High school coaches, and many others, would be pleased just to have a spot at Woody Creek Plaza.

The other day, I flipped on my usual social media page to see a post from a good-looking woman, bragging about how she couldn’t believe she ended up living so close to Aspen. Where is that, I wondered, like maybe Basalt or Glenwood? Nope, Silverthorne. Wow!

Not that many days ago, a headline in The Aspen Times shouted out that the local school district will need 100 additional employee housing units in the next 15 years. Just guessing, but I reckon the rate of retirement of current teachers in such housing will be a critical factor, as will the declining birth rates and net migration to our state.

Although, look what happened when COVID-19 hit. Many with fat wallets started looking to the wide-open spaces to get away from their crowded, suburban neighborhoods. There was no price too high for those serious about moving to the mountains, and here they came, like the Normans invading England in 1066. Good to plan ahead, I reckon. We can’t keep the schools open without teachers.  

Every institution or business in Aspen is going to need employee housing units going forward, just as they have for years. The hospital, the city, county, SkiCo, fire department; the ski shops, restaurants, service businesses — all of the businesses. And on it goes. It’s next to impossible for most of those working locally to afford free-market housing or even to afford free-market rental units.

How close to Aspen do we wish to keep employees? It would be nice if they could all walk to work, but we know that is out of the question. The Lumberyard development will position many of them close to town, but they’ll need transportation, either cars or busses. Not many can, or are willing, to ride bikes to town. More congestion and stoplights loom.

The elephant in the room, of course, as alluded to in the first paragraph, is where are all the units going to be positioned. We live at the end of a narrow valley, as harped on by fire emergency managers, and there isn’t a lot of “unused” land, as a local reporter mentioned in an article about the Phillips Trailer Park potential for future development.

One local wag has envisioned building employee housing up and down the Castle Creek Valley. Much of that land is “unused”; wouldn’t that be great? Townspeople still drive (or ride) up there to watch the elk migration in the fall, but with the biodiversity of the valley all but destroyed by such building activity, where will the elk go? Or the bobcats? Or the birds?

Let’s face it: We’ve about used up the head start we had on our own capacity. There isn’t a whole lot of land left that hasn’t been either claimed by McMansions or relegated to open space. Vacant land keeps going up in price, where mostly over-sized houses on large chunks will be built. We’ve conserved a lot of land in conservation easements, but you can bet that our conserved land, “in perpetuity,” as the saying goes, will only be saved thusly until a “greater need” presents itself. Employee housing or sprawling estates? The battles are coming, if they haven’t already started. Death by a thousand cuts. Isn’t the airport expansion slated to take a chunk of protected open space along Owl Creek Road?

“Yeah, yeah,” you say, “we know all that.” Maybe we do, maybe we don’t, but one thing is certain: We need to change the paradigm. As one person said a long time ago, “We can’t build our way out of the problems.” You can’t put ten pounds of sausage in a five-pound casing. At some point, we’re gonna start eating each other.

Tony Vagneur writes here on Saturdays and welcomes your comments at ajv@sopris.net.