Springdale hires consultant to help address workforce housing crunch

SPRINGDALE — Because Springdale continues to grapple with a lack of workforce housing, town officials have hired a housing consultant.

The patio of Porter’s in the Bumbleberry building, unspecified date, Springdale, Utah | Photo by Stephanie DeGraw, St. George News

Tracy Dutson, a 20-year-plus veteran in affordable housing project management and policy, and his company Tin Can, have been chosen as the town’s housing consultant. Dutson also is the former mayor of Rockville.

The newly formed housing committee made preliminary recommendations to the Planning Commission during a recent meeting.

As a private affordable housing consultant, Dutson has assisted several other resort communities with their housing needs.

Dutson is also a resident of the Zion Canyon region and said he understands the challenges of housing in Springdale. Dutson served as a project manager for the Red Hawk housing project in Springdale and is familiar with the regulations impacting the lower-income development.

The housing committee is a working group with members including Mayor Barbara Bruno and councilwoman Lisa Zumpft, Planning Commissioners Tom Kenaston and Pat Campbell, Town Manager Rick Wixom and Community Development Director Tom Dansie.

The town recently concluded a housing study, and a significant portion of the proposed general plan addresses housing attainability. The housing plan and general plan recommend additional strategies and policies the town should pursue to address housing affordability.

Dansie reported at a recent Planning Commission meeting that the housing committee recommended Springdale also needed the guidance of a housing expert to help manage the town’s existing housing resources of Red Hawk and Moenave developments.

In the meeting, commissioners discussed workforce housing issues. One challenge is the potential impacts of increased housing density on adjacent residential property, which could lead to nuisance impacts and possible loss of neighborhood character of an area.

File photo of an aerial view of Springdale, Utah, date not specified | Photo courtesy of Lochner engineering firm and courtesy of the Zion Regional Collaborative, St. George News

“The housing committee also discussed the commission’s concern of changing neighborhood character if workforce housing is developed adjacent to single-family residential property,” Dansie said. “The committee discussed concepts to mitigate this concern, such as designing structures to have more of a single-family appearance rather than an apartment building, perhaps by including a limit to single story structures.”

The housing committee reported to the commission that some ways to reduce potential impacts could include development standards in the ordinance, which could address the following:

  • Increased setbacks and buffering.
  • Prohibition on pools or other outdoor recreational amenities.
  • Stricter standards for lighting, both exterior and interior.
  • Regulations for access and parking lot design.
  • Requirement for each unit in the development to have laundry and storage facilities.

Dansie provided the Planning Commission with an update on the status of the workforce housing zone and asked for the commissioners’ feedback so that he could share it with the housing committee. Dansie stressed that the committee is still gathering additional data and doing further research.

He said the commission and the committee had identified some data to be collected before moving forward with a revised proposal.

“The Town Council has hired a housing consultant, and that housing consultant has a number of connections with community housing development organizations,” Dansie said. “He has reached out to those organizations to float the idea of doing projects in Springdale. And based on those initial discussions, there’s a lot of interest from these organizations to do a project.”

Planning Commissioner Kyla Topham asked the committee if those organizations knew what works, so Springdale would not have to recreate the wheel.

Some of the questions raised by the Planning Commission included: who is the target audience for the workforce housing zone? how many workforce housing units are appropriate for Springdale? how many are needed? how many would be used?

“These are questions the housing committee does not have answers to at this point but wants to,” Dansie said. “To that end, they will be preparing a community-wide survey and distributing it, and continuing to reach out to community housing development groups.”

Benefits of a workforce housing zone would vary, from employees having less of a commute and the ability to live in Springdale at a reduced rent to local businesses utilizing a larger available workforce.

Dansie said the housing committee also had discussed how the primary motivation for creating a workforce housing zone would benefit the Springdale community, not just individual employees or businesses.

The commission discussed how the intent is not to provide housing to all employees who commute to Springdale but to offer it to specific employees.

Other areas of focus of the housing committee include:

  • Employees of local businesses are more likely to be invested in the community if they live here.
  • Employees are more likely to be concerned about the business’s impacts on the community’s residential character.
  • Employees are more likely to take steps to reduce the potential negative impacts of the business on their neighbors.

Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2022, all rights reserved.

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