Dillon Town Council opts to hold off on requiring developers to contribute to workforce housing
The Dillon Town Council has been discussing inclusionary housing requirements since this summer

Ian Zinner/Courtesy photo
The Dillon Town Council has opted to hold off on passing regulations that would have required developers building new residential projects in town to contribute to the local workforce housing stock.
The council has been discussing the regulations, known as “inclusionary housing” requirements, since this summer. But on Tuesday, Dec. 10, the Dillon Town Council voted 2-5 on an ordinance that would have enacted inclusionary housing requirements, with only the mayor and one member voting in favor.
Dillon senior town planner Ned West told the council that the ordinance as presented requires all residential land use applications for 10 or more units to provide workforce housing at a rate of 10% of the total proposed housing units.
West said that the ordinance provides options for the developer to provide the workforce housing units on site as part of their planned development or offsite at a different location in Dillon or Summit County.
West also noted that the ordinance included provisions allowing the developer to buy and deed restrict existing housing to meet the 10% requirement or pay a fee in lieu of providing workforce housing. He said that the ordinance does not currently outline what the fee in lieu of providing workforce housing would be, but that the council could set that by ordinance.
The council members who voted to table the resolution said that they required more time to consider the housing requirements.
“There’s a lot of questions that still need to be answered,” Council member Rachel Tuyn said. “There is a lot of ambiguity in the (ordinance), and I think there’s some things that we need to figure out and put down in a more concrete way, the in lieu of (fee) and the cost of developing off site, things like that.”
Council member Dana Christiansen questioned whether the inclusionary housing requirements could hinder workforce housing development in town, since the town has in some cases negotiated greater than 10% workforce housing with developers. Christiansen noted the Sail Lofts development that agreed to closer to 25% workforce housing when it was approved.
West said, however, that he believes that the inclusionary housing requirements could help the town set a baseline so that developers understand what is expected of them when they pitch a project.
“I think the challenge is that every time a developer first comes to us we have to say you better not offer anything whatsoever unless you’re considering workforce housing,” West said. “That doesn’t help people come to the town with prospective concepts. So, that’s perhaps what has inhibited potential redevelopment concepts over the years.”
Council member Oliver Luck described the ordinance as “pretty complex” and asked whether the town raising its $2 per square foot workforce housing impact fee would be a simpler way of raising funds for workforce housing.
West noted that unlike the inclusionary housing ordinance, increasing the impact fee would not only impact multifamily residential projects but would also impact someone building a single-family home or proposing commercial development.
Mayor Carolyn Skowyra expressed her support for the inclusionary housing ordinance, stating, “I don’t think this is complex.” Skowyra said that the ordinance sets the expectation that developers provide that 10% of total units are workforce housing or otherwise pay what the equivalent of what it would cost the town to build those units.
Skowyra noted that the current $2 per square foot impact fee only results in $200,000 for the town for a 100,000-square-foot development. Even if the town quintuples the impact to $10 per square foot, it is only making $1 million on a 100,000-square-foot building, hardly enough to construct even one unit of workforce housing, she said.
While Skowyra said she is not opposed to also raising the impact fee, she said that it cannot replace inclusionary housing requirements.
Council member Kyle Hendricks, who also voted along with the mayor to approve the ordinance, said that he is in favor of inclusionary housing but is not in favor of allowing developers to pay a fee in lieu of building housing.
“I don’t like the in lieu of (fee),” Hendricks said. “If we keep allowing an out, it’s going to be taken advantage of, and we will not improve our workforce housing situation.”
Council member John Woods raised concern that inclusionary housing requirements could pose a “hurdle” for developers and further prevent projects from being proposed in town. He asked developer Jake Porritt, who was in the audience, to opine from a developer’s perspective about what kind of housing requirements are acceptable.
Porritt, who has proposed several major projects in the Dillon town core, said, “We’re happy to pay fees” that provide capital to the town to be used for workforce housing. What matters, he said, is “consistency and predictability” so that developers can forecast costs. He said it is concerning to him that the ordinance as proposed requires the approval of the Town Council, which is less incentivizing for a developer than if there were just a number that he had to pay.

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