Gunnison residents offer land trade for affordable housing

A swap that can protect land and provide affordable housing

For Gunnison County residents Butch and Judy Clark, leaving a legacy of land preservation and making room for affordable housing aren’t conflicting ideas, as it might seem.

At a special session of the Board of County commissioners Tuesday, December 16, Butch Clark announced that he and his wife were offering to swap the National Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management 960 acres they own in the Fossil Ridge Recreation Area for federal land that would be donated to the county for the construction of affordable housing units.
 “We are very fond of the property and we want it to be preserved as it is for generations. And we also know that in rural western communities, finding space to build affordable housing can be a problem and we think both concerns can be addressed with this arrangement,” said Clark.
The Clark’s purchased the property, with a “well built cabin and a three seater outhouse,” in 1971 from Ben Jorgensen, who built the cabin in 1938.
Although the offer has just been made, Clark said they had been considering the swap for some time. But it wasn’t until his legal counsel, Gunnison attorney Luke Danielson, notified the county of the Clark’s intentions that the process really got going.
 “That is just an incredible, generous donation that will really be a win-win situation for everybody,” said commissioner Paula Swenson.
On one side, the qualifications for the land Clark is looking to gain for the County are very specific: it should be close to a municipality, close to public transportation and infrastructure and have the possibility for irrigation. On the other side the land could be anywhere, as long as it met the base criteria. It will most likely not come as one piece of property.
 “Finding land that met the qualifications was part of the discussion,” said county manager Matthew Birnie. “My mind went immediately to Forest Service land adjacent to Mt. Crested Butte where you could get hooked into a sewer system and there would be a little bit more density.”
Birnie said that John Sale, Crested Butte Mountain Resort director of planning, was “very excited about the idea,” and that he thought a piece of Forest Service property adjacent to the Wildhorse at Prospect subdivision might suffice and be a good place to build workforce housing for the resort.
According to Clark, part of the reason he and his wife came to the decision to swap and donate the land was his academic research into the boom and bust cycles common in the west. He says Gunnison County is vulnerable to those swings, whether it is due to mineral development or resort development.
 “You can mitigate the effects of those cycles if you get in at the very beginning, because nobody wants to know you when the community is going bust,” said Clark. “For our purposes, we like the idea of getting in early and it was a source of motivation for doing this.”
Clark also sees the affordable housing community as an opportunity for a lot of other projects that could serve as a model for the larger community as well. One idea would create community garden areas that each resident could have enough space to grow some of their own food.
 “The ability for the people that live in this community to grow their own food is an important aspect of affordability,” said Clark.
The commissioners determined that the process should start with several letters of intent from the Clark’s detailing their intentions that would give the Forest Service and BLM the freedom to pursue the swap with confidence. The county, meanwhile, will be looking for parcels of property that fit the requirements.
 “It will be a very, very long process that will involve several different entities coming together,” said Clark.