As Northwest Corridor Grows, It Faces A Housing Shortage
Workforce housing can’t be built fast enough to keep up with the demand from people who are moving to the region’s northwest corridor to fill the increasing number of jobs created by the companies that are choosing to locate there.
That was the sentiment echoed on all three panels at Bisnow’s Future of the Northwest Corridor event May 9 at Broomfield Commerce Center.
Westminster Mayor Herb Atchison said his city needs at least 3,000 owner-occupied housing units to satisfy demand. Without affordable, workforce housing, other development isn’t likely to occur, he said.
“If you can’t build housing, you can’t build retail,” he said. “If you can’t build retail, you can’t get jobs. We will continue to see a lot of growth over the next few years. We’re not just seeing local growth, we’re seeing international growth … because of what we have to offer here.”
Noodles & Co. Vice President of Corporate Initiatives Nadine Rodriguez said employees wanting to live near the company’s Broomfield headquarters struggle to find housing they can afford. Several recently hired executives who relocated to the area found it was a challenge to find housing, she said.
“The most daunting thing is the housing piece,” she said. “That is the biggest hesitation anyone has when they consider relocating to Denver.”
There are plenty of large houses priced at $800K or more. There also are a number of affordable housing apartment projects in the works. But the northwest corridor is lacking attainably priced, for-sale homes, Broomfield Mayor Randy Ahrens said.
“We’ve got to find quality product, not quantity,” he said. “We don’t have enough owner-occupied product. The middle-market workforce is where we’re hurting.”
Oread Capital & Development founder and President Jeff Handlin said part of the reason is that existing residents push back when developers propose building housing that is attainable by more people. Those residents complain about schools being more crowded and traffic getting worse, he said.
“It’s easy to be NIMBY when you’re trying to protect your housing value,” he said.
Handlin said between the 1950s and the 1980s the average size of homes didn’t increase much. Post-war housing averaged about 1,200 SF and had barely reached 2K SF by the 1980s. In the 1990s and 2000s, the average home size grew to 3K SF and has continued to rise.
“We have to focus more on the spectrum and complexion of this housing,” Handlin said. “We have low-income or executive housing. What we forgot was attainable housing that is not the 60% [area median income] that requires subsidies to build. The average house in this corridor is 130% AMI.
“We’ve built apartments and large single-family, and what we’re missing is the large middle. There are plans we can put in place to house our people, but it’s going to take civic engagement.”
