Colorado Cities seek to keep workers near home Regional planners target ‘jobs/housing balance’

Facing the challenge of finding money to pay for new roads and for the other costs that come with commuting, cities along the Front Range are starting to examine whether they can draw the right mix of jobs and homes to keep more residents from driving long distances to work.

By Trent Seibert
Denver Post Staff Writer

(Is this the problem that Montana will be facing in the very near future or are we already there? Are we preparing to address it to keep from replicating the problems of other communities?- Russ)

Doing so has proved difficult. Some community leaders have lured low-paying retail stores that bring in sales taxes, or subdivisions that cost more money to serve than they generate in tax – but not enough businesses to fit the job skills of residents.

And that means workers are commuting greater distances than ever, drawn by bigger and cheaper homes far away from their jobs.

They are paying a price for that housing sprawl: an average of $7,423 a year for transportation, according to federal estimates. And the price of long commutes includes stress.

"It was awful," says Sandra Johnson, recalling her 90-minute commute each way from Longmont to her job in southeast Aurora. "The traffic was always really bad. I had to leave at 6:30 to make it to work by 8. And sometimes I didn’t even make it by then."

To help Colorado cities and towns create what is known as a "jobs/housing balance," the Denver Regional Council of Governments is meeting with a group of city leaders from places such as Castle Rock, Brighton and Bennett, in part to see if they can craft alternatives to those long commutes.

A plan could be unveiled in about a year as part of DRCOG’s Metro 2030 plan, a blueprint for how the region should grow over the next 30 years.

Economic experts such as Tom Clark, president of Jefferson County’s Jefferson Economic Council, say the task is not an easy one. But it is possible, he says.

"You can’t stop growth," Clark says. "And you can’t start growth when you want it to, as we’re feeling now, but you can build really cool communities."

Longmont, according to some experts, is the only Colorado city that has pulled off such a balance, attracting a mix of high-tech companies and smaller businesses that match with the skills of the people who live there.

Longmont is a about a 40-minute drive north from Denver. Of the people who work there, 80 percent live in the community, according to a 1997 DRCOG study, the most recent available. Throughout the region, the average is only 36 percent.

Johnson, who cringed over her long commute, is one of thousands who now live and work there. She manages her own store downtown, five minutes from her home, one of 37,273 jobs in the city.

Getting the jobs/housing balance right will not solve transportation problems overnight. But experts say it is one of the few solutions available to alleviate clogged roads during the morning and evening commutes.

DRCOG’s transportation study breathes life into what most commuters instinctively know.

If you live in the northeast section of the Denver metro region, for example, the roads are packed each morning as you join nearly 88 percent of your neighbors in commuting outside of the community to get to work.

The commutes are expensive, too. The combined cost of owning and operating a new car comes to 50.2 cents a mile, when loan interest, taxes, registration, insurance, gas, maintenance and depreciation are included, according to the American Automobile Association.

DRCOG is updating its travel study with census information, and a 2003 version should be available soon, but experts there say they do not believe the results will be dramatically different until more communities work toward a better balance.

"We can’t spend our way out of a transportation problem," says Jeff Romine, an economist with DRCOG who says the best solution for many communities is creating the right mix of homes and jobs.

"There’s a resonance to it that makes sense," he says.

There is also resistance.

Many city leaders, according to some economic experts, do not think deeply about attracting jobs that match the people who live in their communities. Instead, they make great pains to attract big- box stores or malls and the sales- tax dollars that they bring. Other city leaders do not have the expertise to calculate how best to achieve a jobs/housing balance. For some, growth has been pouring into their communities at such a quick pace, there has been little time to plan.

In Brighton, for example, there is too much housing, and in Castle Rock there is not enough zoning for the kinds of businesses that will attract the jobs needed there, DRCOG planning director Larry Mugler says.

But some communities have started tackling the problem.

Jefferson County’s Clark has spent three years preaching the jobs/housing balance gospel.

In Jefferson County, 57 percent of the working population leaves to work somewhere else.

To Clark, that means not only increased travel costs, but it also keeps parents far away from the schools where their kids study, and crushes community spirit.

"It’s now difficult to get attached to a community, because the home is really only a sleeping place," he says. "(The jobs/housing balance is) about kids, family and quality of life."

It is not that the county lacks the right number of jobs or workers, but the mix is skewed, he says.

Based on the county’s population, communities there need more high-paying office jobs and fewer retail jobs.

Clark says that when he began tackling the county’s imbalance, there were only 4,000 acres left in Jefferson County available to accommodate high-paying businesses, and the land was being eyed by housing developers.

Clark persuaded county leaders to set new rules for developers, ensuring the homes they built on that land would attract a wide array of price ranges. Part of their developments now must also include plots for office space and other businesses.

Clark says he will not know for five to seven years if a balance has been achieved, underscoring how long-term the solution is.

Longmont Area Economic Council President John Cody says that is exactly what Longmont did. City leaders made a concerted effort to draw a balanced mix of homes and jobs.

"Longmont made the conscious decision that they didn’t want to be a bedroom community anymore," Cody says. "Balance is something we talk about quite a bit."

Part of the balance stems from making sure developers build enough affordable homes. Part of it comes from the city cutting some of the red tape, attracting both high-tech companies such as Amgen Inc. and small businesses such as Sandra Johnson’s downtown store, In the Kitchen.

"Although quality of life is a fairly elusive term, they’ve made an effort to quantify what quality of life looks like," Cody says. "We didn’t want 100,000 people commuting into Longmont to go to work. We didn’t want houses that sell for a half-million dollars on average."

Even sections of the region that have become catchwords for suburban blight are exploring the jobs/ housing balance.

Highlands Ranch, lambasted by critics as an example of sprawl, is now heralded by some experts as a prime example of how communities should grow.

The community, which will ultimately have 36,700 homes, spreads across 22,000 acres in Douglas County and is attracting businesses, such as Visa and Lucent Technologies, so the people who live there will not need to commute. Today, Highlands Ranch has filled 1.8 million square feet worth of building with businesses. Leaders hope, ultimately, to triple that.

"It’s nice to have amenities close," says Vicky Starkey, a 20- year resident of Highlands Ranch. "It has come to fruition, what we were told when we bought into the community."

Experts warn that communities need to start working now toward a jobs/housing balance to have any hope for solving future commuting woes.

What makes it even more difficult is that there is no one-size-fits- all solution, DRCOG’s Romine says.

"There’s more art to this than science," Romine says. "It’s a moving target. You’ve got to try to improve the way people live, give them options, rather than thinking we can force solutions."

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