The city of Durango recently bought a condominium to temporarily house a contractor working on the Santa Rita Water Reclamation Facility.
City Council approved the $240,000 purchase earlier in June, and the city is expected to close on the condo Friday.
The money for the condo will come from the sewage treatment fund, Assistant City Manager Kevin Hall told city councilors before they approved it.
It is the second condo the city has bought to house employees on a temporary basis, It is directly above the first in Silver Peaks development on Goeglein Gulch Road.
The construction management contract with Dewberry, an engineering and design firm working on the rebuilding of the sewage treatment plant, included housing for the full-time inspector.
The city decided it would be better to purchase a condo for the contractor instead of paying a monthly stipend for rent, City Engineer Gregg Boysen said in an email.
“The housing stipend would become very expensive over (the) two-year span of the project. The city determined that there was an ultimate cost savings if we purchased a condo and allowed the Dewberry employee to stay there during the construction,” Boysen wrote.
The condo was being painted and cleaned in June and it will be available for the contractor in August, Boysen said. It is a two-bedroom, two-bath condo with a garage, Hall said.
The condo is a long-term investment that the city will be able to use as transitional housing for other city employees, Hall said in an interview.
Police Chief Kamran Afzal is living in the first condo the city bought.
He was offered six months of transitional housing in the condominium. After Oct. 15, he has the option to start paying rent, he said.
“I am really glad the city offered me a place, which was a burden off of my head,” Afzal said.
He found it helpful because he moved from Arlington into a housing market he was not familiar with, but it wasn’t a determining factor in taking the job, he said.
The city bought its first condo in 2008 for $205,920.
It is not unusual for other cities with high rental rates and low vacancy rates to own employee housing, especially because it helps with recruitment, Hall said.
mshinn@durangoherald.com
