With its 15 nearly life-size bronze sculptures depicting Jesus’ death, its Spanish Colonial-style adobe chapel overlooking an agrarian spread and its exhibit honoring Mexican priests martyred in a religious battle in the late 1920s, the town of San Luis, 18 miles north of the Colorado-New Mexico border, seems like the perfect destination for a history buff, art historian or spiritual tourist.
If you haven’t been there, Colorado Sun reporter Tracy Ross takes readers to this southern Colorado region today as we mix things up this holiday weekend. There is still more economic news below about jobs and fiscal trends, but first:
Ross, who covers rural development and other issues outside the Front Range, wanted to learn more about a new $500,000 grant to redevelop areas of the town to better attract visitors.
So good, the Vatican took notice
Yet the town, officially founded by Hispanos in 1851 but with roots stretching back to the 1500s, has struggled to get its footing after job growth stalled and economic hard times moved in. Today, according to census data, San Luis’ population of just over 600 is in decline and the poverty rate in Costilla County is 23.1%. And that inflames Susan Sanderford, San Luis’ town manager.
“Our main attraction is the Stations of the Cross, which is so good there’s a second set at the Vatican,” she said, referring to a maquette, or model, of the sculptures created by local artist Huberto Maestas that has permanently resided in one of the Vatican Museums since 1991. “But even though it’s helped our economic viability, it’s not enough. There’s a hard struggle in rural towns because you don’t have enough people spending money.”
That’s why Sanderford, who moved to San Luis in 2006, spent three years on the town board of trustees drumming up ways, with her colleagues, to help the second-poorest county in Colorado become more economically viable. They wanted jobs paying wages that flowed to the families of children eating free and reduced-price lunch. They wanted shops open for business and restaurants with waiting lists. And they wanted the reasons the town is so unique — its art, culture and history — to become the economic driver that would improve its citizens’ quality of life.
But during her second term as trustee, Sanderford realized nothing meaningful was being done to move the town toward financial stability. “So in 2017, I said why not put me on as part-time town manager,” she told me. Town officials did, but she soon realized 20 hours a week was insufficient for the impact she wanted to make. With the town’s approval, she wrote a grant to fund her full-time work for three years, starting in 2018. That job is now funded by the town, and even though Sanderford has no formal training in grant writing, she has transformed herself into a fundraising machine.
She says she has never been turned down for a grant and that her current total amount won is in the neighborhood of $2 million. That funding — almost exclusively for town revitalization — has come from within Colorado. But the list of improvements San Luis needs to make it tourist-ready is a beast always hungry for more money. Which is why San Luis, like several other Colorado rural communities, recently applied for, and received, $500,000 from the Environmental Protection Agency through its Brownfields Multipurpose Grant program funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
The grants are for property cleanup and redevelopment projects in rural communities hoping to make their towns more enticing to visitors and boost the local economy.
EPA cleanup and revitalization grants for Colorado
In May, $4.78 million was spread among Pueblo, Trinidad, Buena Vista, Silverton, Telluride, Norwood and Ophir. The awards are all revitalization-focused, with projects ranging from the removal of asbestos, mercury and other hazardous materials from Keating Junior High School in Pueblo for future use as a theater, apartments and townhomes, to the cleanup of harmful contaminants and restoration of Trinidad’s Holy Trinity property, which will become housing, hotel and rental space. Silverton will use $800,000 to address mining-related contamination at downtown properties and along the Animas River and Cement Creek corridors, and Buena Vista will restore the falling-down McGinnis Gymnasium as a prime recreational, educational and performing arts space.
But Sanderford said getting this much needed funding wasn’t nearly as easy as applying for state grants. For assistance, she turned to Ayers Associates in Fort Collins, whose employees “worked hand in hand with me in our community to identify the projects that would make the best use of these funds,” she said. “Six local business owners walked Ayers through their buildings to see how they could get them back up and running.”
The money arrived in October and now the town has to dial in which projects it wants to move forward. Sanderford said San Luis will certainly retain its “flavor” as the oldest continuously inhabited town in Colorado with the oldest market (currently closed for renovations and owned by a nonprofit so not eligible for the new EPA funding) and the first Colorado water right, for water flowing through the hand-dug San Luis People’s Ditch, which hydrates one of only two formal commons areas in the United States, La Vega, the town’s 633-acre community pasture.
San Luis will have three years to use the money to complete its projects, Sanderford said. Last week, she took me on a tour of the places she and the town hope to assess for hazardous materials, clean up if need be, and restore, revitalize and revive into spots that will make people want to visit San Luis.
That’s all on this story for now, but look for a follow-up in the coming weeks that dives into the San Luis buildings currently under consideration for brownfields grant funding. They’re all beautiful, historic and full of art and culture. There’s a rectory, too, with 15 beds and bathrooms Sanderford hopes one day can be turned into an Airbnb. All of this to encourage people to stay in San Luis instead of driving through to Taos.
Got feedback, story leads or tips for Tracy? Email her at tracy@coloradosun.com.
Colorado needs 3,500 more broadband workers
That’s what it’ll take to get 99% of the state’s households connected at 100 Mbps internet speeds by 2027, according to the latest Colorado Broadband Office report. Nearly 2,000 jobs are needed in construction with another 1,591 in telecommunications. To get there, the state will use some of the $826 million allocated by the federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program and invest in new or existing workforce training programs.
Here are the types of workers that are needed the most by 2026, plus the median annual pay (as of 2021):
>> Read report
Sun economy stories you may have missed
➔ A proposed auction of state trust land sale in Wyoming could start a national trend
➔ Artistic workers at Opera Colorado win their union. Next comes collective bargaining.
➔ A homemade chicken dinner costs 40% more than 5 years ago. Here’s how the price breaks down.
➔ Why a Colorado restaurant is thinking of buying a $10,000 rice dispenser
Other working bits
➔Sweet rent deals: How ’bout a free month? Move-in specials like a free month of rent were back for Denver-area apartment listings last month, according to real estate site Zillow. In October, 43.4% of listings in Denver offered at least one concession, such as a $300 discount, waived move-in fees, or a free month or more. That’s higher than the 34.7% in July and the highest rate since March 2021. It’s also well above the 30% of all rentals nationwide. Anushna Prakash, an economic research data scientist at Zillow, credited the influx of newly opened apartments, as opposed to two years ago when there was less renter demand while the nation was still in pandemic mode. Denver didn’t make Zillow’s top 10 list though. That would be Salt Lake City, with 54.4% of rental listings offering a concession, a rate that was up 26.5% from a year ago. >> Read
➔ This holiday season, Denverites plan to shop more, er, spend more due to inflation. Even as retailers from Best Buy to Lowe’s and Nordstrom’s cut sales forecasts this week, most of the 401 Denverites who took Deloitte’s 2023 holiday shopping survey plan to spend more than last year — an average of $1,902, up 15% from a year ago, and much higher than the U.S. average of $1,652. That shouldn’t be too surprising. It does cost more to live here, right? Retailers expect deal hunters and, apparently, Denver shoppers are counting on it. Due to inflation, locals plan to buy fewer gifts (nine instead of 10), shop at fewer stores (4.5 versus 5.7 last year) and mostly (54%) stick to a fixed budget. >> Survey results
I’m grateful to Colorado Sun members who support independent journalism and reporters like myself and Tracy. Thanks for sticking with me for this week’s report. Remember to check out The Sun’s daily coverage online. As always, share your 2 cents on how the economy is keeping you down or helping you up at cosun.co/heyww. ~ tamara
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