Aspen Employers Pitch $1.8 Million to Save Cavern Springs Mobile Home Park

Aspen —A 98-unit mobile home park. $13 million to buy it. $132,000 per unit in preservation subsidy.

That is the math employers are being asked to swallow.

Terri and Tony Caine, Jeanette and Scott Gilbert, Laura and Mike Kaplan, Melony and Adam Lewis, Larry Marx, Molly and Chester White — they aren’t just names on a donor list. They are the people who formed the Sopris Mountain Collective. They are the ones under contract to purchase Cavern Springs, the mobile home community sandwiched between the ReStore and the Roaring Fork River.

They need the rest of us to help.

The goal is simple on paper: raise another $1.8 million to hit the $13 million total by August 31. The remaining $12 million will be financed by the residents themselves through low-interest loans from ROC Capital and the Impact Development Fund. The plan is to run Cavern Springs as a resident-owned community (ROC) with no additional subsidy required and manageable rents in perpetuity.

It sounds efficient. It is efficient, if you look at the alternatives.

There are 33 mobile home communities between Aspen and Glenwood Springs. That’s 1,612 mobile homes housing approximately 5,000 residents. The majority are already preserved as affordable or have long-term local ownership of the land. Cavern Springs is the largest of the three remaining ROC candidates — defined as communities over 50 units in size that are not yet preserved.

Let’s do the math on the cost of preservation versus new construction.

For each mobile home preserved at Cavern Springs, the one-time subsidy is $132,000. Compare that to building new affordable units. You’re looking at $500,000 in the mid-valley. In the upper-valley? That jumps to $1,000,000 or more.

Preservation has a much better bang for the buck.

But who is paying for this $13 million price tag? The residents are putting up $12 million in loans. The community has already raised $11.2 million thanks to a broad coalition including the Mountain Voices Project, West Mountain Regional Housing Coalition, Aspen Community Foundation, and Thistle ROC. They need that final $1.8 million.

And they are asking employers to step up.

The appeal isn’t just to individuals. It’s to the businesses that rely on this workforce. Of the 350 residents at Cavern Springs, 250 adults are actively employed in the regional workforce. Fifty-one percent work in Pitkin County. Thirty-four percent in Garfield County. Fifteen percent in Eagle County.

That is not a transient population. That is the backbone of the local economy.

The remaining 28 adult residents are retired elderly individuals and U.S. military veterans. There are also 72 school-aged children belonging to this "flourishing community." If Cavern Springs disappears or becomes unaffordable, those workers don’t just move to a new house. They move out of the valley. And when they move out, you lose your teachers, your nurses, your construction crews, and your service staff.

The donors listed in the Aspen Times report include major players like the Colorado Health Foundation, Pitkin County, the city of Aspen, the town of Snowmass Village, the town of Carbondale, and the city of Glenwood Springs. Eagle Crest Nursery and Basalt Sanitation & Water District are cited as participating employers.

The ROC model isn’t a new experiment. It works with over 300 long-running ROCs across the country. There are even three recent ROC additions right here in the Roaring Fork Valley. This isn’t a gamble. It’s a proven mechanism for keeping land affordable while transferring ownership to the people living on it.

The deadline is August 31.

If the community hits that $13 million mark, the land stays affordable. The residents own it. The rents stay manageable. If they miss it, the contract falls through, and you’re left wondering why you didn’t just pay the $500,000-per-unit premium to build new housing from scratch.

The practical bottom line for locals is this: You are being asked to contribute to a one-time charitable donation to preserve housing for 250 working neighbors. It costs less than building new units. It secures the workforce you rely on. And it keeps the 72 kids in school right where they are.