Welcome to the city of Aspen's resource page on Burlingame. We hope you will take the time to familiarize yourself with the facts.
In 2005 the City of Aspen produced a brochure on the Burlingame Ranch Affordable Housing Development. The brochure showed a "total cost" of $74 million for the project as well as a total subsidy of nearly $15 million for the project.
The brochure's listed "total cost" was only the total cost of on-site construction. It did not include all of the elements of building the Burlingame project including land, infrastructure, design, engineering, changes to the project made by Council, inflation in the cost of construction and other associated costs. This was not meant to be evasive but nonetheless was a mistake that should not have happened. The brochure should have said "total cost of construction."
We understand the sense of outrage from friends and neighbors after they saw such numbers in the media. However, this was a mistake in a brochure, not a mistake in accounting or building Burlingame.
The total cost of Burlingame (and all of its yet-to-be-built phases) is a moving target; however we do know the cost of Phase I, which was about $50 million. We haven't even begun Phases II and III of the project, and we haven't decided what that portion of the project will look like. We could decide to build things differently … We could build with partners who bring their own money to the project . . . We could change density … We could decide not to build it at all! Some critics of Burlingame have said "the numbers keep changing." Well, to an extent that's true. When a project changes over the course of a decade, so do the costs. We hope you'll read more about this in other documents posted on this site.
City Manager Steve Barwick has put together an advisory group of local development experts to create ways to reduce the cost of housing construction at Burlingame and other possible locations - including density increases and design changes. We are also looking at various partnership opportunities to lessen the use of tax dollars to deliver workforce housing to the community.
June 2009 Schedule Update
What You Should Know About Burlingame
Burlingame Timeline
109 Council Discussions on Burlingame
Votes on Burlingame
Burlingame Ranch Map
What Burlingame Cost
What It's Like to Live at Burlingame
What Was Built 1
What Was Built 2
What's Next for Burlingame
Budget Task Force Recommendations
Results of Two Audits on Burlingame
Broader Housing Questions
2005 Brochure on Burlingame
Email us with your questions or comments
Burlingame Homeowners' Information
What's going on?
In January of 2009, the City of Aspen will meet with the Burlingame Ranch homeowners in an effort to collaboratively create a mutually beneficial site plan design for Phases 2 and 3 of the Burlingame Ranch affordable housing development. City staff would like to make an effort to take input from the Burlingame Phase I homeowners and to collectively try to meet our mutual goals. The idea is to create a wonderfully-planned community with the same high level of livability and character as was created in Phase 1 of the development.
How did we get here?
In May 2008, City Manager Steve Barwick and Aspen City Council convened a group of local construction and development experts known as the Construction Experts Group (CEG). The group was charged with studying ways to minimize cost and maximize the number of units that can be built for future phases of development of affordable housing at Burlingame Ranch as well as for all future affordable housing developments. By design, this group consisted only of citizens and staff with a working knowledge of the development and building business so that the maximum density and the CEG recommendations could be objectively established. The next step in the process, as directed by City Council, is for City staff to sit at the table with the Burlingame homeowners and make "reasonable compromises" in continued planning of Phases 2 and 3.
This is impossible, isn't it?
City staff believes that this gives both the City and the Burlingame homeowners a great opportunity to plan the future of the Burlingame community together. We hope it will include additional amenities for the existing homeowners at Burlingame Ranch as well as a responsible level of increased density (more owners contributing dues to the master association benefits the existing owners, more density helps the city lower the average subsidy per unit) that would in no way compromise the level of livability that was promised to the existing Burlingame homeowners. The City would like to propose that we meet together and collaborate on a site plan that we can all potentially get behind - incorporating the needs of all stakeholders involved, and doing our best to meet those needs in a responsible fashion. After we have put forth our best possible collective planning effort, we can then worry about the legal details of an HOA vote after we have done our best to come to a mutually agreeable plan.
How would this work?
While the CEG recommended a specific number of units to be added as part of phases 2 and 3 of the development, we would like to propose that we focus less on a specific number of units and more on the conceptual building designs that were recommended by the CEG for the purposes of decreasing government subsidy for future phases of the development. The conceptual building plans are available via the links provided below, and we hope that you will familiarize yourself with these proposed conceptual building designs. These are not finished designs to the construction drawing (CD) level, but they are proposed conceptual designs that we can use for our collective site planning effort. By the time our collective site planning effort is complete, the City hopes to have a team of design professionals in place - ready to hone our conceptual ideas into buildable plans and specifications.
What would it look like?
In reviewing the conceptual building designs, it is important to note a number of details: These conceptual designs were created by the same architect that designed all of Phase 1. The architect insisted that they would in no way suggest changes to the architectural character that was established in Phase 1. The proposed building heights do not exceed the heights of the Phase 1 buildings. To achieve more density, the architect largely took advantage of building more upper-level livable space over what is, in Phase 1 designs, single-level massing. The architects refer to this as increased "infill". With increased infill, there is admittedly more stacking of units than there was in the Phase 1 designs, but the architects worked diligently to provide walk-out access to all levels of housing by providing lower-level walk-out access on the downhill side of buildings and upper-level walk-out access on the uphill side of the buildings. Some Phase 1 buildings were designed this way, and some of you may live in these types of units already. The results of this conceptual redesign are buildings that share in the established character of the phase 1 buildings, but have a more responsible eye toward utilizing land so that more housing can be created on the same size building footprint.
What about the cost and subsidy issue?
For the purposes of attempting to save on development costs, the buildings have been designed to utilize system-built, modular construction. Although the City is not "dead set" on utilizing modular construction, our cost/benefit efforts have shown us that utilizing modular construction accompanied with standardization of unit sizes could provide considerable savings. On the other hand, a blind application of modular technology to a design that is not customized toward efficient modular construction could possibly throw any potential cost savings out the window. Because of this, the buildings have been designed to have standardized units of generous size. This does not mean that all of the units look the same. You can see from the plans provided that there are a number of proposed unit arrangements. They are all based on the same sized "building blocks" simply arranged in different geometric patterns to create variation in unit layout, but also to allow for cost efficiencies that can result in the production of many of the same sized modules and the on-site repetitive stacking of those modules. Upon completion, the interior and exterior appearance of the buildings will in no way look "cheaper" than the phase 1 buildings nor will they look specifically "modular" in their appearance. Through the use of the proper materials, the exteriors of the buildings can be made to match the appearance of the Phase 1 buildings. Consider the modular single family homes that are currently being developed by some of the individual lot owners at Burlingame. They have an elegant custom appearance because they have been specifically planned and designed to do so.
What can I do?
Please utilize the links below and send us an email to share your opinions or get involved. We will incorporate as many people and as much feedback as we possibly can into this effort. After all, the homeowners are the reason that affordable housing is being developed at Burlingame in the first place, and we thank you for participating in this effort.
Open House June 26, 2009
Open House May 30, 2009
City of Aspen Staff Report on the Work of the Construction Experts Group (CEG)
Conceptual Plans for the CEG 293 Unit Plan
CEG Proposed Unit Size Standardization
Integrated Project Delivery
Email us with your questions/comments or get involved