Lottery for new Aspen apartments to be held Wednesday
Kelsey Brunner/The Aspen Times
Almost 200 people will be in a lottery this week for nine new deed-restricted apartments on Main Street.
The lottery for the units at 802 W. Main St. will occur at noon Wednesday via Zoom, according to the Aspen-Pitkin County Housing Authority.
There are 122 people signed up for the category 2 units and 46 signed up for the category 3 units. There are a total of 10 apartments — five one-bedrooms at category 2 and five one-bedroom units at category 3.
However, the city of Aspen provided a previous tenant of the complex prior to the redevelopment of the property a priority for one of the units so only four units are available for the category 3 lottery.
Two lotteries will be held Wednesday. The list of names has been put in alphabetical order and each individual has been assigned a number. A ping pong ball with each number will be placed in the lottery drum and APCHA will draw one ball at a time and announce that number, according to Cindy Christensen, deputy director of the agency.
APCHA will select 25 balls in each lottery. The first lottery will be the category 3 units, followed by category 2. In between the first and second lottery, APCHA will replace the 25 balls that have been pulled and add the additional numbered balls from 47 to 122.
The top five people for the category 2 units and top four people for the category 3 units will be contacted immediately after the lottery. They will be provided a deadline to submit all required paperwork. If they do not meet the deadline or do not qualify, APCHA will notify the next individual on the list. The individuals will be able to pick units in the order their numbers were pulled.
The list of potential tenants will be posted on APCHA’s website by category, as well as information on how to log onto the Zoom meeting.
Apartments are available to those who make as much as $65,750 and $100,600 a year for a one-person household. The income limits change as the number of people who live in the household grows. Monthly rent for category 2 apartments is $1,112 and $1,576 for a category 3 unit.
The Main Street apartments are one of three projects that private developer Aspen Housing Partners is doing as a public-private partnership with the city of Aspen.
The others, located at 517 Park Circle and 488 Castle Creek Road, are expected be completed in the fall.
The Park Circle complex will generate 11 apartments, seven of which are one-bedroom units and four two-bedrooms. The Castle Creek building will have 23 units, 14 of which are one-bedrooms and 10 are two-bedrooms.
Combined, they bring 45 new apartments into the inventory, which addresses a need for low-income housing.
The city bought the three parcels, along with what is now the Harbert Lumberyard property near the Aspen Business Center, in the mid 2000s as part of a land banking effort for future affordable housing.
The public-private partnership consists of the city leasing the land to Aspen Housing Partners, as well as serving as the construction lender for the developments.
Combined, the construction loans amount to around $9 million.
The city’s financing gets paid back within three months of when the units are occupied.
Aspen Housing Partners owns the buildings on the land for 15 years and if the city wants to buy them at that time, it can exercise that right.
Otherwise, Aspen Housing Partners owns the buildings in perpetuity and the city can exercise its right to buy every 15 years.
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