The city of Durango and HomesFund, an affordable housing and homeownership nonprofit, will conduct a lottery in mid-December to select applicants for purchase of four deed-restricted units in the 22-unit complex dubbed the Animas City Park Overlook Townhomes.
The housing project broke ground in August and is expected to take about one year to complete. The development includes 12 market-rate units and 10 deed-restricted units near East Second Avenue and 33rd Street. Of the 10 units, six will be workforce-qualified units in which residency or workforce restrictions must be met. The remaining four units are to be income-qualified units in which residence qualification is limited to people who earn below a certain income threshold.
More than 50 people submitted applications expressing interest in buying one of the four income-qualified units, said Lisa Bloomquist, executive director of HomesFund.
Eva Henson, housing innovation project manager for the city, said the lottery winners will have their income documentation reviewed in chronological order to verify their eligibility.
Bloomquist said the maximum income applicants can earn and still be eligible for an income-qualified unit is limited to 125% of the area median income, which equals an annual income of $98,125 for a household of two or an annual income of $122,625 for a household of four.
Appreciation on the deed-restricted townhomes will also be reduced, she said.
Mark Williamson of Agave Group, the developer, said in August the four deed-restricted townhomes will be priced around $399,999.
Bloomquist said the city and HomesFund are organizing a lottery because that is the most transparent and fair way to select applicants for review.
“We don’t want someone who has inside information or who just happens to find out about these units first to be given preference over someone else,” she said.
Applications were accepted through Nov. 3, according to the city’s project webpage for the townhomes.
HomesFund and city staff members are finalizing the date of the lottery but they are aiming for a time in the middle of December, Bloomquist said.
The lottery is tentatively planned to be held in City Council chambers at Durango City Hall. Tom Sluis, spokesman for the city, said the 50 or so applicants who submitted forms of interest in the income-qualified units do not have to be present or attend virtually to be entered into the lottery.
Heather Dawson-Snead with Agave Group said the Animas City Park Overlook Townhomes project has attracted “immense interest” and the developer expects to begin receiving certificates of occupancy by April 2023.
“We’ve been very happy working with the City of Durango & HomesFund to assist in our community's affordable housing efforts,” she wrote in an email to The Durango Herald. “Many of these townhomes have been reserved by locals and some are excited to receive a $10,000 reduction in price for meeting the City of Durango’s workforce housing requirements.”
The project is split into two phases with just two units available in the first phase as of Wednesday, and only one unit unreserved in the second phase, she said. The developer expects work on 11 remaining units to be completed by the end of 2023.
Dawson-Snead said people interested in reserving one of the remaining townhomes, all eligible for workforce housing designation, should contact Agave Group at heather@agavedurango.com. Reservations include a small nonrefundable fee; the fee to get on a waitlist for an already reserved unit is refundable, she said.
In March, Durango City Council approved the formation of the city’s second urban renewal area, named the North Main Gateway, to allow the renewal authority, Durango Renewal Partnership, to finance housing and mixed-use development with loans, grants and appropriations from the city, said Scott Shine, community development director, back in March.
The 22-unit townhome project is the first out of the Gateway, but not the last, Henson said. The city is looking for other possible partnerships with several in the pipeline.
“This just shows the true collaboration and partnerships between public, private and nonprofit with tangible outcomes that are successfully achieving the City Council’s and housing’s goals. We’re real excited about this,” she said.
cburney@durangoherald.com
