One of the first complexes funded by a ballot measure intended to increase the availability of affordable housing will start taking shape near the corner of Irving Street and West Colfax next week.
Affordable housing advocates, construction workers, architects and city officials converged in Denver on Wednesday morning to celebrate the groundbreaking of The Irving at Mile High Vista, one of the first affordable housing complexes in Denver funded by Proposition 123 to move out of the planning and design phase and into construction, which is set to begin next week.
When The Irving is complete by mid-2025, the 102-unit complex’s one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments will be available to people earning 20% to 80% of the area median income, or $18,260 to $73,040 for a single-person household.
The seven-story building near the Denver Public Library’s Rodolfo Corky Gonzales branch will use efficient heat pumps for heating and cooling, rooftop solar panels, energy-efficient lighting, low-flow plumbing fixtures, water-efficient landscaping and will have electric vehicle charging stations.
Wednesday’s occasion was an important milestone two years after Coloradans voted to pass Proposition 123, a ballot measure aiming to increase affordable housing stock over the next decade. Two other complexes also broke ground in Denver this month.
The Irving was designed by Studio Completiva and will be built by Pinkard Construction.
“Residents will also have civic amenities right outside their door — Paco Sanchez Park, Cheltenham Elementary, RTD transit and the Corky Gonzales Library,” said Sarah Harman, senior vice president of real estate at the Urban Land Conservancy, a Denver-based real estate nonprofit focused on creating affordable housing and the developer of the Irving complex.
“It will come to life starting next week, as a result of commitment from our 12 financial partners,” Harman said of the building’s construction process at the ground breaking ceremony Wednesday. “These apartments will be priced affordably for a minimum of 99 years — that’s Urban Land Conservancy’s promise.”
The Colorado Housing and Finance Authority, JP Morgan Chase, The Colorado Division of Housing, the city and county of Denver and TD Bank are among the organizations helping to fund development of the Irving at Mile High Vista.
In 2011, the Urban Land Conservancy purchased the 2-acre site where the library and the affordable Avondale Apartments are located. The Irving is the third and final parcel of land to be developed at Mile High Vista.
The affordable housing crisis has worsened since the land was purchased more than a decade ago, Harman said, making the soon-to-be-built Irving units desperately needed.
The last decade has brought some opportunity and refreshed vibrancy to the West Colfax neighborhood, but the area’s changing demographics, rising rents and higher median income have pushed out former residents who once lived in the area, she said.
Leaders at the Urban Land Conservancy hope the new units can help people stay in their community or entice former residents to move back into the neighborhood if they moved to other more affordable areas, Harman said.
Building affordable housing is expensive and time-consuming for the developers who work with limited resources to create them, Harman has said.
Proposition 123 provides additional funds that help affordable housing developers complete their financing, so they can move more swiftly toward beginning construction, Harman said.
City and state officials and the developers and architects who received Proposition 123 funds to create two other affordable housing complexes in Denver — located on 10th Avenue and on Acoma Street — held groundbreaking ceremonies earlier this month and plan to complete the buildings within five to 10 years.
Funds to build affordable housing
Proposition 123, which passed with 52.6% of Coloradans voting in favor, allocates nearly $300 million each year in existing tax revenue to help local governments and nonprofits work on the problem of housing affordability.
Most of Colorado’s population now lives in a community where government leaders have committed to building more affordable housing in the coming years, qualifying them to receive funding from the state.
The communities that have opted in to creating additional affordable housing developments under the measure tend to have the biggest populations in Colorado and are likely to face housing crises and to need financial support to address them.
The success of the program hinges on participation from local governments, according to leaders at Gary Community Ventures, the philanthropic organization that was behind Proposition 123.
Many of the people who attended the groundbreaking ceremony Wednesday were the “original visionaries” who helped create Proposition 123, said Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, who spoke at the ceremony.
“Many people spent hundreds of hours drafting that bill, advocating for that bill and taking it to voters,” he said. “This is exactly what we hoped, that these state funds linked to local funds linked to nonprofit funds, could help deliver this kind of breakthrough.”
All developers who received funding through Proposition 123 were evaluated for their environmental sustainability plans, said Zach Martinez, legal counsel and policy advisor at Gary Community Ventures, who also attended the groundbreaking ceremony at The Irving.
“That is becoming more common because building more sustainably is becoming cheaper,” Martinez said.
Housing and utility costs have risen dramatically over the years and affordable housing advocates expect those costs will continue to rise, especially the cost of natural gas, he said.
Creating affordable housing using solar energy, for example, can help reduce the cost of living in the unit in the long run, he said.
“It feels really great to see the promise that was made to voters coming to fruition quicker than was expected and this will be over 100 units, which is a good first step,” Martinez said.
“But this isn’t going to be solved overnight,” he said. “It feels great to see these beginnings and to know that we have the tools we need to solve the problem. Now we just need the time and the work from so many hardworking people to make it happen.”
MORE: Those interested in living at The Irving at Mile High Vista can use a pre-screening tool that will place them on an “interest list” organized by the Urban Land Conservancy.