Teton Meadows Ranch aims to create 'micro market'

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

By Ben Cannon

Add another offering to the burgeoning though controversial medley of housing anodynes for Jackson Hole.

A new development application filed with the county last week proposes to build 500 deed-controlled homes that the developer envisions would create a much-needed, locally unprecedented micro housing market independent of Jackson Hole’s exorbitant free-market real estate.

Teton Meadows Ranch, the proposed subdivision resuming the historic agrarian name of a large chunk of the Seherr-Thoss property in South Park, aims to build on a 288-acre parcel there. What makes the application most interesting is that, beyond the offered 125 units, or 25 percent affordable housing – more than the 15 percent currently required by the county– developers call the remaining 375 units “homestead affordable,” creating a new, potentially middle-class-enabling market niche between traditional affordable and the free-market in Jackson Hole.

The idea is simple enough: Place in perpetuity deed restrictions on lots that would allow only a year-round resident working population to buy them. There would not be the artificial resale price controls one sees in the county’s current approach to affordable housing, but subsequent sales would be restricted to potential buyers who could meet criteria that does not consider an applicant’s wealth or income.

Those residents would have to work 1,500 hours a year (a lowball figure on the national average, but one that better suits Jackson Hole’s unconventional lifestyles, a development spokesperson said) at the time of purchase.

Additionally, the proposal stipulates purchasers already owning a home in Teton County would have to sell it within 180 days of occupying a Teton Meadows Ranch home, and that an open-lot buyer would have to move to build a house within three years of ownership.

The developer has pledged to maintain the idea of a steppingstone between Jackson Hole’s affordable and free-market homes – an ever-widening divide not often bridged – as a pillar of the subdivision. Though it has not yet been hashed out how, exactly, the development would keep below the market, and by how much.

“We’re kind of leaving that for discussion,” said Jim Verdone of Verdone Landscape Architects, which developed the sketch plan. “It’s impossible to anticipate housing costs,” he continued. “It’s hard to know how they will react to deed restrictions. The best answer is we’ll get there but we won’t get there without feedback” from the county and other groups.

County planners have already praised the thoughtfulness and effort developer Jim Reinert and his and his team have put into the sketch plan, which includes green building principles, 50 percent open space, street and alley systems, and unique nodes boasting urban-style parks.

The applicant spent weeks speaking with not only some surrounding homeowners, but also the Teton County School District and St. John’s Medical Center to let those organizations chime in on their needs for attainable workforce housing. Possibly, the additional 10 percent, or 50 units, of affordable housing offered could be set aside as vocation-specific housing for medical people, teachers, etc.

“We think it’s really commendable that they’ve been speaking with different stakeholders,” said Blair Leist, a principal planner with the county. “[This application] isn’t going to come out and blindside anybody, and they’re trying to be as transparent as possible … . Because of this we’re cautiously optimistic.”

But given the ongoing, often polarizing debate over the need to sustain some sort of a local middle class, it is likely some opposition will move against the project. That they would coalesce around Teton Meadows Ranch is as much a figure of speech as a literal statement: The property, an un-built pasture still in use as a gravel pit, is surrounded by subdivisions – Rafter J to the north, Big Trails and Melody Ranch to the east, and Singl’ Tree and South Park Ranches to the south.

That area, known collectively as South Park, has been impacted over the last three decades during the development of those residential areas, and the Seherr-Thoss property remains like an undeveloped island there.

Because of this, the developers have taken to calling development “in-fill,” a term they must hope will garner the project some favor in contrast to the notion of sprawl, or otherwise putting density where wildlife corridors and character might arouse concern, as has been the case with affordable housing activity on the West Bank.

Developer Jim Reinert, who built sky-rises in Chicago before moving to Jackson Hole with his family last year, said he has been coming to the area for decades and wanted to raise his kids in the area.

“I didn’t want to be the big bad developer here,” Reinert said at Verdone’s Jackson office last week. He is currently under contract to buy the property from Roger Seeher-Thoss, who will keep a large parcel southwest and adjacent to the property.

Among the sketch plan’s other deal-sweetening features: a large, habitat-improved open space surrounding the development; ball fields; START bus stops; multi-modal pathways; and a post office kiosk to reduce town trips. The applicant is even talking with the school district to put a new elementary school at Teton Meadows Ranch.
It is much too soon to gauge how county commissioners will receive the application, assuming it will make it through an initial sketch review at the planning and zoning level.

Likely, though, the onus will be on the applicant to convince commissioners that homestead affordable housing can work, and would help stem the exodus of professional and working classes from the valley.

Between ’01 and ’02, a development proposal on the Seherr-Thoss property known as the New Neighborhood barely seeped into the formal county dialogue. That proposal, much denser than the Grand Teton Meadows Ranch sketch plan, encountered strong resistance from neighbors.

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Teton Meadows Ranch aims to create 'micro market' | Planet JH News Article: Development

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