Ketchum officials are considering changes to the city's affordable housing requirements in an effort to bring conformity to the city's hotel regulations.
The problem is that Ketchum has different housing requirements for hotels built in the Tourist and Community Core zones.
In both zones, affordable housing requirements for hotels are more lenient than they are for other buildings, in order to encourage their construction. However, the requirement for hotels in the Tourist zone is based on floor-area ratios while in the Community Core zone it is based on the number of long-term residential units.
"Should they be treated the same, and is there a different target for hotels?" asked Planning Director Harold Moniz during a Planning and Zoning Commission meeting on Monday, June 11. "Is it community housing we're after or employee-generated demand that we're after? Should they be treated the same, regardless of zoning?"
Ketchum attorney and developer Brian Barsotti has been working on hotel plans both for the Bald Mountain Lodge site downtown and for a property at the Warm Springs base of Bald Mountain, in the Tourist zone. He said both zones should be treated the same.
"The reality is that anybody coming into town is going to have to have employees, and they're going to have to have housing," he said. "Hotels, no matter where they are, should be treated the same.
"To be responsible, the city needs to have a requirement within the hotel ordinance that addresses that at least you have a plan of where you're going to put your employees because there are no employees here."
P&Z Chairwoman Anne Corrock said she would prefer a requirement to provide employee housing rather than deed-restricted community housing. However, the city's code provides no definition for "employee housing," and Moniz said it's something the city might not want to define.
"Personally, I'd like to see more flexibility than less in terms of developers' flexibility and creativity for coming up with a plan that meets the objectives," Moniz said.
According to information compiled by planning staff, the city of Aspen, Colo., calculates employee housing for hotels thus: .5 employees are calculated for every hotel room and/or every bedroom in a fractional ownership unit. Of that number, 65 percent must be accommodated by housing.
The city of Vail, Colo., calculates its formula thus: Pure hotel projects do not need to provide additional housing. All others must, at a ratio of 10 percent of the net square footage of the building.
The issue will be up for further discussion at the P&Z's June 25 meeting.
