Story first appeared in:
TRINIDAD — In the last decade, public and private investors have funneled more than $150 million into Trinidad, building housing and artist compounds, renovating a hospital, theater and historic downtown blocks, upgrading highway exits and opening Colorado’s second-largest state park.
The investors have championed Trinidad as the new Colorado archetype, where just the right amount of money invested just the right way can spark a cultural renaissance, with art, outdoor recreation, tourism and innovative businesses helping to sand the craggy edges from a historically bumpy economy.
But old traditions are hard to shake. And new paths can be challenging.
As legal weed down the road in New Mexico dismantles the city’s once-booming marijuana industry, Trinidad residents are still waiting for the promises connected to a decade of unprecedented investment led by cannabis taxes and politicians eager to make Trinidad a model for how rural Colorado communities can join a statewide economic evolution.
“There is a lot of frustration here right now,” said Juan de la Roca, who came to Trinidad in 2016 to help develop the region as a gravel biking destination with Trinidad trails anchoring the first edition of the Gravel Adventure Field Guide.
“A lot of attention has been put on Trinidad and we are looking at a whole decade of investment but business is down,” de la Roca said. “Outdoor recreation and creative industries have been talked about for the better part of a decade as new pillars to diversify our economy and … if places can’t survive, where is all this investment going to end up? Money has flowed into this place and kind of disappeared.”
Gravel riding “is kind of the last thing standing out here right now,” de la Roca said. “We’ve lost more than we have gained.”
Kayvan Khalatbari, the founder of Denver juggernaut Sexy Pizza, in 2021 bought the historic Trinidad train depot and opened a new pizzeria. A brewery he leased space to in the building closed last summer. Last month he closed Sexy Pizza in Trinidad and left town, moving 25 miles south to Raton, New Mexico.
The founder of Sexy Pizza, Kayvan Khalatbari, in 2021 bought his popular franchise to Trinidad. Last month, he closed his Sexy Pizza outpost. “I think in a lot of ways, the town has gotten in its own way and chosen not to evolve. It’s disheartening in a lot of ways,” he said. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)
Trinidad isn’t growing, Khalatbari said. There are not enough new residents moving to town. Not enough housing, he said. He had a plan to build 12 units for his employees in Trinidad but did not qualify for state funding.
“I think in a lot of ways, the town has gotten in its own way and chosen not to evolve. It’s disheartening,” he said. “It feels like after all this attention and investment down here, it should be dramatically different but unfortunately the city is thwarting a lot of the progress. The city has not delivered on any promises.”
Khalatbari estimates he spent $3.5 million to $4 million of his own money in Trinidad and he received one $10,000 grant.
This story first appeared in
Colorado Sunday, a premium magazine newsletter for members.
Experience the best in Colorado news at a slower pace, with thoughtful articles, unique adventures and a reading list that’s a perfect fit for a Sunday morning.
“New Trinidad has not grown enough to support new businesses and old Trinidad is refusing to support the new businesses because of philosophical differences about change,” he said, describing a short but vitriolic week last summer when residents flooded a city council meeting to both protest and support a local business hosting a concert by a Kansas City bluegrass band that describes its sound as “satanic.”
“There is a very strong desire to not change in Trinidad and I feel sorry for the residents there,” Khalatbari said. “They have a city that is actively working against making it a better place to live.”
As public and private money have poured in, government and business leaders continue to speak with urgency about the need for Trinidad to diversify, to get away from the boom-and-bust cycles that have plagued it throughout its history — first, as a long-time coal town with a natural gas presence, then as a cannabis border town.
But despite that urgency, the cash infusions, the general excitement about the area, and even some level of success in various projects, Trinidad has not yet overcome its major barrier to economic growth: a persistent lack of good-paying, on-the-ground jobs.
“That’s our Achilles’,” said Karen Griego, the newly elected mayor of Trinidad, where the population has remained flat at around 8,000 for more than 30 years. She was previously a city councilor. “Places for people to work in Trinidad.”
Where are the jobs?
Trailing the jobs problem, community leaders say, is a looming housing supply crunch.
Trinidad’s jobs landscape hasn’t stopped people from moving to the area since the onset of the pandemic. Home sales and home prices in Las Animas County shot up in 2020, when remote work became more widely possible and so many people changed the way they lived or looked for real estate opportunities in more rural areas.
Dawn Richardson, a regional project coordinator for Rocky Mountain MicroFinance Institute who moved to Trinidad from the Denver area during the pandemic, said addressing housing in the next couple years is crucial, especially considering interest in real estate coming from more affluent areas.
The city has an opportunity “to create housing policy that could protect our permanent residents and really be proactive about guiding how gentrification is going to look in our community,” Richardson said, who is also a real estate agent. “Gentrification is on its way.”
Jim Kenton, a real estate agent with Southern Colorado Realty who moved to Trinidad nearly 20 years ago from Castle Rock, shares Khalatbari’s concerns about old Trinidad versus new. The old guard, he said, are fearful of change.
“They just like the way that things used to be,” Kenton said. “It’s like, ‘Well, come on, let’s try to do something different.’”
The challenge involves making Trinidad appeal to a younger set.
“The majority of people that came here that were younger, that were successful up in Denver, and they thought they could bring that same success down here — there’s not enough young people in this town to support what they want to do,” said Kenton, pointing to the new Well Hotel, Bar & Tap Room, which allows patrons to pour their own beer. “It’s a fun concept but none of the old people will do that kind of stuff. There’s not enough young people in town to support that kind of thing, which is really a shame.”
Perennial boom-and-bust continues with cannabis
Perched on the Colorado-New Mexico border, roughly halfway between the Denver and Albuquerque metro areas, Trinidad is picturesque, nestled on the edge of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains with the Purgatoire River running through the heart of town. It’s a history-rich area, first occupied by several Indigenous groups and later settled by Hispanos from New Mexico along the Santa Fe Trail with more Anglo settlers eventually moving in.
Since its formal founding in 1876, a few months before Colorado became a state, it’s been a classic boom-and-bust town, anchored economically first by coal, then by natural gas.
Then came cannabis.
When Colorado launched legal retail sales of recreational marijuana in 2014, New Mexico still only had legalized cannabis for medical use. Trinidad embraced the state line pot-shop economy, with dispensaries popping up all over town, catering heavily to customers driving up from New Mexico.
By May 2021 — a month after New Mexico legalized marijuana for adult use, but before it launched sales — 59 medical and retail licenses had been issued at 41 different addresses in Trinidad, according to the city clerk’s office.
Cannabis was a green rush for the city. Tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue flowed in over just a few years during a period when not much else was thriving.
“Did pot money save a small town from ‘abyss of nothingness’?” one national headline asked in 2016.
City officials say they never expected the marijuana boom to last forever. It was clear that it would only be a matter of time before New Mexico, too, got on the green wagon. The bud has fallen off Colorado’s once-vibrant marijuana industry as more than two dozen states in the past decade have approved legal sales. The border communities have borne the brunt of the national sweep of legal weed.
Statewide, cannabis sales have fallen 32% from the peak in 2021, when dispensaries reported $2.2 billion in sales. The decline in sales from the 2021 peak in Montezuma, La Plata, Archuleta, Conejos, Costilla and Trinidad’s Las Animas counties — all bordering New Mexico — is 47%. Trinidad and Las Animas County have endured among the sharpest drops in marijuana sales in the state.
Ashley Ryan felt the immediate dip when New Mexico legalized recreational weed. The manager of the Native Roots dispensary in Trinidad has cut her staff to 11 from a high of 18 in the last year and watched other pot shops close.
“I don’t know if we are at the bottom,” she said. “But it’s not falling as steadily as it has been.”
The regulations in New Mexico are less strict, with marijuana buyers able to purchase 2 ounces of cannabis at one time, versus 1 ounce per day in Colorado. That’s part of the reason sales in Trinidad are dropping, she said.
“Their transaction limit is per transaction, not per person per day. That is something that hurts us,” said Ryan, noting that the southern state’s rules also allow for more potent edibles for recreational buyers. “New Mexico likes being able to make that money.”
Ryan said city leaders are stepping in to help. She’s part of a cannabis business committee that has asked the city to end late fees on tax payments and consider a new cannabis event to help draw visitors.
“The legalization in New Mexico was a blow … but we are moving in the right direction,” she said. “We are going to market Trinidad for recreation and art and hopefully that will bring more people. We are working on it but it’s just slow going. I bet if you check back in a year we will be doing better.”
Kenton, the real estate broker, said there was a sense that marijuana retailers could help spruce up the town’s often beautiful but aging commercial buildings.
“Their whole idea at the time was that, we’re going to get in the business, we’ll make our money, there’s no doubt about it,” Kenton said. “When the craze or fad is over, then you got a building that’s been remodeled. We’ll turn around and sell it and somebody else can use it for something else.”
Cannabis was not universally welcomed. But city leaders said, when the proverbial rainy day arrived, they were glad to have it.
“Was everyone happy when marijuana came in and we had 15 shops in a block? No, they were not,” said Marty Hackett, tourism and community relations director for the city. “But eventually the income that was generated … was our lifeline during COVID.”
In 2020, the city of Trinidad collected $4.69 million in marijuana taxes and was able to support the local animal shelter, buy tools for police and firefighters, hire an economic development employee and provide $1 million in emergency assistance during the pandemic.
The next year the city collected $4.34 million in marijuana taxes, which paid for things like bike lane striping, new phone systems for city buildings and $450,000 match for a state Space to Create grant.
In 2022, marijuana tax collections fell to $2.54 million. In the first half of 2023, taxes collected from fewer pot shops were just shy of $887,000.
Real estate, downtown redevelopment
In 2015, Trinidad was among the first recipients of the Space to Create Colorado grant to develop affordable artistic space and affordable housing. The $18 million project transformed an entire block of downtown Trinidad into a three-building complex with live-work apartments and a 20,000-square-foot community space. The project — with funding from the Colorado Housing Finance Authority, the Colorado Department of Local Affairs, El Pomar, the Gates Family Foundation, History Colorado and the Boettcher Foundation — also helped build 28 affordable apartments next to the city’s train depot.
There’s a public-private push to raise $25 million to convert the city-owned Fox West Theater downtown into a community hub, with grants from Colorado Creative Industries, History Colorado, the Boettcher Foundation and El Pomar shepherded by renowned developer Dana Crawford. The 950-seat theater opened in 1908 and a restoration partnership involving the city, state, Crawford, historical theater groups and the Environmental Protection Agency launched in 2018.
Last year the Colorado Department of Transportation finished a $12.6 million upgrade to the exit 11 interchange on Interstate 25 with a new bridge, urban streetscape and pedestrian path.
A decade ago, the nascent Downtown Trinidad Redevelopment Group launched a $30 million plan to revitalize the city. In 2016, the city saw $35 million invested in public and private projects that included rehabilitating historic buildings, parks and roads.
The redevelopment group is pushing for a plan to get more interstate travelers to take a break in Trinidad. The group is proposing a transportation hub with electric vehicle charging stations and an improved rail station connected to downtown and access to restaurants and galleries.
ABOVE: In 2023, the Colorado Department of Transportation finished a $12.6 million upgrade to the exit 11 interchange on Interstate 25 in Trinidad with a new bridge, urban streetscape and pedestrian path. BELOW: The Space To Create consortium, which offers office and residential spaces for rent, opened in 2021. (Photos by Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)
The Greenway Foundation, which spent decades reclaiming the South Platte River with parks and paths through metro Denver, has helped Trinidad create a riverfront restoration plan for its Purgatoire River project, which includes an outdoor amphitheater.
The now decade-old redevelopment plan has a checklist of some 70 projects that have been accomplished, with historic buildings converted to housing, a new Hilton hotel and a $36 million rebuild of the Mount San Rafael Hospital, where for years Dr. Stanley Bieber and, later, Dr. Marci Bowers, did thousands of gender confirmation surgeries.
“As you can see, even though we have some short-term challenges Trinidad is made up of champions,” said Jay Cimino, the Trinidad-born head of the Phil Long Automotive Group car dealership chain who has invested millions into his hometown. “As you may or may not know, the city many years ago was labeled as the ‘City of Champions.’ We believe the future is bright with a foundational culture of winning.”
Ironically, there’s an abandoned golf resort community on the edge of town where a half-built 117-room hotel and clubhouse have sat empty for more than a decade. In the late 1990s, developers started the $30 million Cougar Canyon golf resort, with a Jack Nicklaus-designed course, but the project failed in 2010 and has been mired in bankruptcy since.
Lack of high-paying jobs
People moving to Trinidad without their own remote work are likely to find few medium- or high-wage job opportunities.
Health care and social assistance, accommodation and food services, and retail make up the largest private sector employers in Las Animas County, according to recent U.S. census data.
Some energy sector jobs still exist, but not as many as even a couple years ago. In 2021, a new operator revived the dormant New Elk Mine outside town, bringing with it jobs and a plan to ship high-grade coal overseas.
But within two years, the Australian owner of the mine filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for its U.S. operations. In May 2023, the company idled its operations, posting on Facebook that the property would be placed in “care and maintenance” mode while it looked for new investors.
Tracy Gegelman, a labor and employment specialist with the state workforce center in Trinidad, said most open jobs that come across her desk are with local hotels, fast food companies, Walmart and other relatively low-wage jobs. Most middle- or higher-wage positions tend to be with government agencies like the county and Trinidad State College.
LEFT: Trinidad State Junior College’s Berg Administration Building. The school opened in 1925 and was the first Junior College in Colorado. It has an enrollment of just over 1,900 full- and part-time students (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun) RIGHT: What’s left of the once planned Cougar Canyon Resort and Spa. This 117 suite boutique hotel and restaurant was abandoned after the failure of the Bank of Wyoming in 2009. (John McEvoy, Special to The Colorado Sun)
“We do have a lot of jobs that are entry-level jobs that are available,” Gegelman said. “There’s not an abundance of high-paying jobs.”
Some of the best-paying jobs Gegelman saw in early January were construction jobs on a solar farm being installed north of town — but they’re temporary, and will end when the project is built.
Mayor Griego said a company that processes timber into biofuel is considering a location in the area, potentially bringing 100 jobs to the area, but that’s not a sure thing yet.
“Trinidad is a great place to live,” said Gegelman, who grew up in the town. “But … I wish some bigger companies would come in and give us some more jobs.”
Can outdoor recreation rescue Trinidad?
In 2020, Colorado Parks and Wildlife spent $25 million to acquire a 19,200-acre ranch surrounding the iconic Fishers Peak above Trinidad. In November, Gov. Jared Polis opened about 11 miles of new trails at the state’s 42nd and second-largest state park. An 18-month series of surveys, community meetings and task force studies projected visitation to the park would grow from 50,000 people in 2023 to more than 285,000 by 2042. The additional parks and recreation visitors would deliver $4.7 million in tax revenue to Las Animas County in the next 20 years, according to the Las Animas County Outdoor Recreation & Economic Impact Study completed last fall.
“There’s so many assets that we have in this community,” Griego said. “We’re being ‘discovered.’ … Our recreational assets and recreational tourism (are) only going to increase.”
Net taxable sales recorded by the Colorado Department of Revenue show steadily increasing spending in Trinidad from 2016 through 2022, climbing 31% to $208.7 million. Spending stalled in 2023, though, with sales through October pacing the same as 2022.
A year ago the organizers behind the Trinidaddio Blues Fest pulled the plug on their event that started in 2016, citing “financial constraints” and “little support” from the city in 2021 and no support in 2022. Last year, organizers canceled Trinidad’s nationally celebrated Artocade parade — the nation’s second largest art-car event — and closed the city’s Art Cartopia Museum, saying “the financial and human resources needed to continue the festival and the museum were not sufficient.”
Hope for small-scale manufacturing
Pat Howlett, president of the Trinidad Las Animas County Chamber of Commerce and a longtime resident, said the chamber and its city and county partners see a path forward in trying to attract small-scale manufacturers that can take advantage of Trinidad’s positioning: just off the I-25 corridor, about halfway between Denver and Santa Fe or Albuquerque, and with freight rail access.
“We’re not looking for savior businesses anymore,” Howlett said. “You don’t want to have one place where everybody works … and you’re held hostage based on that company’s economic future.”
At least one small-scale manufacturer has made the leap south from Denver in recent months: Colorado Sun Tofu, formerly of Northglenn.
Sisters Lauren Roberts and Hannah Kuehl and their mother, Jennifer Byers, who co-own Denver vegetarian restaurants City O’City and WaterCourse, purchased the tofu manufacturing plant from one of their former suppliers before moving the business to an old Coca-Cola distribution plant on the northern end of Trinidad.
Roberts, who also recently bought a house in Trinidad, said state and local incentives made the move worthwhile.
“There’s opportunity to kind of lower your overhead starting out, which was appealing,” she said.
It’s a small company, with just six employees. Other than the manager and her husband, who does sales, the staff are all from the Trinidad area.
“Hiring in Trinidad has been really positive, I think in part because there aren’t tons of job opportunities,” Roberts said, adding that her company offers competitive wages and workforce development and education. “We right away just got a number of good candidates.”
Manufacturing jobs in greater numbers could also give a boost to Trinidad’s professional service providers.
“With all of those then they need attorneys, they need doctors and nurses,” Richardson said. “So then you can have a more diversified professional economy, not just laborers and service workers.”
Hannah Riccio, co-owner of AlMack’s Kitchen and a COVID-era transplant from Rhode Island who has been in business for nearly four years, said developing a clientele of both newcomers and long-time community residents has been key to her restaurant’s survival.
Riccio, whose restaurant started in The Marketplace food hall in downtown Trinidad before opening its own full brick-and-mortar location, said she’s already seen several businesses come and go in just the past four years, “which is super unfortunate.”
“I think you have to have a very wide appeal,” she said. “You have to be able to not pigeonhole yourself into either being, like, this newcomer who wants to completely change everything about the town … but also you can’t really stick by all the old rules, because these people have been consuming that stuff for so long. You have to kind of find a way to bridge that gap.”
Housing woes
Growing jobs in any meaningful way also means having to house workers. That’s a growing concern in Trinidad, where the home real estate market has remained fairly tight for buyers.
Trinidad’s population was on a slight downward slide for years; census data put the figure at 9,096 in 2010, compared with 8,329 in 2020. But there’s evidence of some level of influx around the beginning of the pandemic — or at least an influx of real estate interest.
Home sales in Trinidad are declining in 2023, following a statewide trend after setting records in 2021 and 2022. Total residential sales volume in Las Animas County reached a high of $57.2 million in 2021 with the average home selling for $198,580, according to sales statistics from the county assessor. In 2022, the average home in the county sold for $276,874. Through November, real estate statistics from the county assessor show only $7.5 million in real estate sales for Las Animas County with the average home selling for $221,870.
But housing inventory is an issue on many levels, particularly for those looking to buy starter homes, seniors looking to downsize or people working in the service industry, according to a housing needs assessment performed in 2022.
“Recent trends in market prices, increasing mortgage interest rates, and land constraints are putting the city out of reach for middle income households,” the report said. “The existing housing products and price points offered may not be able to accommodate the needs of starter families, the growing workforce, or aging residents who wish to downsize.”
Griego, who with her husband has co-owned an insurance agency in town for nearly five decades, said houses under $200,000 are particularly lacking.
“I look at the real estate websites daily, and I’ll tell you, the properties that are in that amount … go almost immediately,” she said.
Howlett, the chamber president, said worsening the housing situation is a risk if Trinidad leans too heavily into tourism and outdoor recreation.
“If you look at any place in Colorado that actually went down that path of ‘outdoor recreation and tourism is the answer,’ they are wishing they hadn’t made that one road the widest road,” he said. “Once they do that, lots of people move in and they bring their economy or their wealth there. … It’s displacement. People now can’t live in Trinidad, they have to move to Aguilar.”
Even now the increasing prices are a problem for many people who already live and work in Trinidad.
“It is probably the most affordable mountain town in the entire state,” Richardson said. “But it’s still not affordable if you’re a minimum-wage worker.”
City leaders have taken some steps to try to encourage growing Trinidad’s housing supply. The Housing Now program launched in 2022 issued grants to property owners and developers to help renovate sites that could be used for workforce housing, according to Griego. And the city is working through the Colorado Tourism Office’s “Destination Blueprint” program to advance tourism, which includes some work around setting housing priorities, said Hackett, Trinidad’s tourism manager.
But, Griego said, overall, she’s not aware of any overarching housing policy or strategy.
Richardson said she’d like to see that change.
“We have an opportunity to really drive that train or it’s going to drive us,” Richardson said. “Either we as a community can create housing policy now to protect our permanent residents and protect a workforce, or (gentrification) is going to happen to us whether we like it or not.”