New affordable housing opens in Idaho Springs, Colorado, offering rare opportunity for local workers

New affordable housing is now coming online in Idaho Springs, giving mountain workers something that has been hard to find for years: a modern place they can actually afford to live.

The three new buildings at the Fieldhouse Apartments sit just off Interstate 70, on land that used to be the school football field. They are the first development of this scale the town has seen in generations, according to Idaho Springs Mayor Chuck Harmon. 

"Boy, we are really happy to see it come online," Harmon said.

The project adds a significant boost to a town that has struggled with limited housing for decades, like many mountain communities. "This has effectively increased our housing stock by about 10%," Harmon said. "We haven't had a building built this big since the gold rush."

Harmon says about 75% of the local workforce commutes in from other communities, largely because there simply are not enough places to live. 

"Not only affordability, but just even access to the housing, it's just unattainable," he said. "You can't find a single-family home, no apartments to rent."

Geography plays a major role in this, too, according to Harmon. Idaho Springs is surrounded by mountains on all sides, leaving little room to expand, even if there were investors interested in taking on affordable housing.

"We're very landlocked, and most of our housing stock is in excess of 120 years old," Harmon said.

The Fieldhouse Apartments aim to address what housing leaders call the "missing middle," with rents tied to local income levels. The project was supported in part by an $8.5 million investment from the state through Proposition 123 funding.

For renters like Alvi Thorp and Noemi Ruvalcaba, the difference is immediate. "It's fairly reasonably priced… other houses are so expensive," Ruvalcaba said.

After searching across the region, they say this was the first place that felt attainable. "(It's) Relieving that we finally found someplace in the area that we wanted for the price range that we wanted," Ruvalcaba said.

"This feels like a brand new home," said property manager Bethanie Stoltzfus. The smell of fresh paint is still hanging in the hallways, waiting for tenants to pile in. That being said, there are limits on who can live there. The apartments are income-qualified, meaning renters must fall within a certain earnings range based on household size.

"You have to make a minimum of two times the rent, and you can only earn up to a certain maximum," Stoltzfus said.

That structure is designed to prioritize full-time residents and local workers, not seasonal or second-home use. For people like Thorp and Ruvalcaba, that focus matters.

"It's really cool that they actually care about the working class here," Ruvalcaba said.

City leaders said that kind of housing is essential if Idaho Springs wants to grow sustainably, especially with new economic opportunities on the horizon, including the Mighty Argo Cable Car project expected to utilize around 70 employees.

"It is so hard for any community to fire on all cylinders when we don't have adequate housing," Harmon said.