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Vail Resorts Approves Workforce Housing

Published: December 6, 2015

Workforce Housing

Vail Resorts announced on Wednesday, December 2nd that they will spend $30 million on workforce housing within Colorado, California and Utah mountain resorts.  The company plans to partner with local governments and businesses to break ground on the future developments as soon as possible.

Currently, Vail Resorts owns over 3,200 beds, with 650 of those beds added within the last three years.  Due to resort community growth, workforce housing has become extremely limited to both seasonal and year round employees.  Available land is the initial problem within Summit County and the company plans to use land that they already own for all future developments.

“The mission of Vail Resorts is to provide an experience of a lifetime to our guests and we make that happen by providing an experience of a lifetime to our employees.  Having affordable and available housing options is a critical component of delivering on that mission,” said Rob Katz, chairman and CEO of Vail Resorts.  “With the incredible success of our resort communities, the strength of the travel economy and the growing prevalence of rent-by-owner options, fewer housing units in mountain resort communities are being made available to local employees across all resort businesses.

Summit County welcomes the workforce housing plans presented by Vail Resorts.  Housing across all of Summit County has become a critical issue that the town continues to address each year.  A survey was conducted in 2013 to emphasize the need for an additional 200 to 370 rental units in the Upper Blue River Basin by the year 2017.

Four housing structures underwent development plans in 2015 with a total budget of $40 million.  Even with these four new buildings, the town will still be short 70 to 240 rental units from the total suggested by the 2013 assessment.  The new plan will form a partnership between the different resort towns and Vail Resorts in order to collect available resources and make the best use of them.

“The availability of affordable housing is critical for the sustainability and vitality of our resort communities and we firmly believe Vail Resorts should be an integral partner in expanding employee housing capacity,” Katz added.  “We are hopeful this new commitment will complement our existing efforts and all of the projects that are already in the works with local government agencies.”

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