Zoom Town Trend Must Be Balanced with Workforce Housing Focus
Eagle County is part of a trend that realtors and journalists are calling “Zoom Towns,” places that are booming as remote work becomes more accepted and quality of life helps drive year-round residency.
Small cities and towns outside of significant natural amenities such as national parks, public lands, ski areas and scenic rivers throughout the western United States are becoming increasingly popular places to visit and live. Naturally, many of these Gateway and Natural Amenity Region (GNAR) communities are found throughout Colorado, including Eagle County and the mountain region. This has driven real estate sales and pricing, helping to further exasperate the historical workforce housing challenge.
The increases in home prices are less than ideal for the longtime residents whose jobs are more physically tied to our communities. A pre-pandemic 2018 study conducted by researchers at the University of Utah and University of Arizona found that a full 80% of the 1,200 Western gateway communities surveyed had either a moderately or extremely problematic issue with affordable housing even before the latest influx of wealthier remote workers.
GNAR (or Zoom Town) communities often place as much value on their community’s character as they do on their surrounding natural amenities. These destinations maintain a strong sense of place and identity, including a “small town feel.” This happens intentionally—through the ways the community interprets and shares its history, designs and maintains built environments, and protects and provides access to recreational opportunities and natural landscapes.
Yet as a result of the proximity to popular natural attractions such as our ski resorts, our communities continue to grapple with a variety of “big city” issues. In addition to potentially pricing out longtime residents, concerns like congestion, environmental degradation, and a strain on local services and infrastructure are an increasingly prevalent fact of life in areas once defined by their spaciousness and isolation. Sound familiar?
Other GNAR communities across the west are just beginning to (or may soon) experience significant growth and tourism pressures that Eagle County and our surrounding counties have seen for years. These issues have resulted through a phenomenon called amenity migration: the trend of migration of people moving to places with more amenities—in this case natural amenities, such as hiking trails, wide-open spaces, cleaner air, dark skies and outdoor recreation.
The COVID-19 global pandemic has accelerated this trend due to the immediate rise in remote work, as workers have more flexibility in where they can live, resulting in the so-called “Zoom Towns.” Many of these communities experience differences between residents and visitors, full-time residents and seasonal homeowners, old-timers and new-comers, different economic sectors and a range of political views.
These groups are likely to have differing views on how typical challenges should be faced. It is important for the business community to engage and be active participants in community discussions to ensure that workforce housing remains a critical piece of infrastructure to support our communities and our businesses. The Zoom Town trend and amenity migration we have seen increase over the past 11 months should not be a negative to our community; in fact, it should be a very positive trend. However, this will only happen if local leadership continues to focus on retaining our local workforce while welcoming our newest residents.
Effective and proactive planning is critical for helping our rural resort communities preserve and enhance the qualities that make them such desirable places to live and visit, providing a balance between the Zoom Town benefits and staying focused on our workforce housing needs.
Chris Romer is president & CEO of Vail Valley Partnership, the regional chamber of commerce. Learn more at VailValleyPartnership.com