EPHA may also be looking for housing

Facing a looming expiration of its office lease, the executive leadership of the Estes Park Housing Authority has begun internal discussions about where to move its operations. 

One of the possible locations is Fall River Village, which the organization purchased last week, and which includes a conference center that could be converted into a suitable office layout.

Scott Moulton, EPHA’s executive director, said in an interview Thursday that the question of finding new office space has been bandied about by senior housing authority employees, but not with the organization’s board of directors as a group.

“Could the Skyview Event Center potentially be converted?,” Moulton rhetorically asked. “We all believe the answer is ‘yes.’” He was referring to the executive team at EPHA, to whom he has spoken about the idea. But “potentially” is a far cry from an established objective.

Moulton explained that, for EPHA, the challenge around office space is both physical and financial and is unlikely to become less pressing as its portfolio of properties grows and the services it provides to the community increase.

To begin with, the organization has all but run out of space at its current location downtown in the U.S. Bank building at 363 East Elkhorn Ave.

“It simply isn’t large enough,” Moulton said. “I have no more office space to house anyone. I have a real estate development director that doesn’t have an office because I have nowhere to put him.”

At present the organization has 14 employees. That is up from nine about one year ago, Moulton pointed out.

And although EPHA could, if necessary, endure its current location in the downtown U.S. Bank building, Moulton said the organization would incur a significant opportunity cost.

“Any [funds] we are paying to a landlord, we could internally obtain through a project,” he explained. “There would be a financial benefit to EPHA to have our own office space.”

“We currently pay, about, I think we’re at $1836 a month in rent in the U.S. Bank building,” Moulton continued. He noted that funds paid to a landlord are not available to do other things. 

“I think we’re around $100,000 in total lease payments,” he said, referring to the total of monthly rent EPHA has paid while housed in the U.S. Bank building. “That’s $100,000 over five and one-half years that could have been put to use somewhere rather than paying a landlord.” 

Ownership of office space could also potentially benefit EPHA by providing an opportunity to sublease to another organization. Moulton believes this could help the housing authority generate additional revenue or offset the organization’s cost of office space.

“Prior to Fall River Village coming about we had discussions internally about some future project being a partially mixed use,” he said. “We do a new development somewhere and we construct offices for our organization in some sort of joint venture with another allied nonprofit.”

The Skyview Event Center at Fall River Village is not suitable for housing. But conversion of that space for offices would not be difficult. 

“It’s pretty simple to convert a conference/wedding venue, as it is now, into offices,” Moulton said. “It’s just a shell, much like the space we reside in at U.S. Bank. It’s one large open room.”

Beaver Brook on the River, which EPHA will acquire today, also provides some options for some office space on site. The available square footage is not enough to accommodate all housing authority employees, which would mean that several of them would need to be provided with workspace at a different location.

“We gained some square footage that can be utilized,” said Moulton, referring to both Beaver Brook and Fall River Village. “Looking forward [to] how we should be operating as an organization, having some completely disjointed staff is probably not ideal.” 

A third option would be to look for office space made available by another commercial landlord. Moulton thinks there may be some workable options around town, but probably not many that would be ideal for EPHA.

“I am sure there are other locations,” he said. “When we were forced to move in 2019, we looked at a few spaces. I think a few spaces, as I recall them, would have been barely large enough.”

While no discussion about future office options with the housing authority board has occurred, Moulton said he briefly talked about it recently during an informal conversation with the board’s chair, realtor Eric Blackhurst. 

“It has gotten no further than that,” Moulton said.

One complicating factor that could prevent use of the Fall River Village site for office space may be an imperative for EPHA to provide some child care capacity there. Moulton said housing authority employees have considered the possibility of “using other resources on the site for child care, whether that’s an existing building or building something new on the site to provide child care.” 

No proposal for child care facilities at Fall River Village has been finalized, and Moulton pointed out in an email that legal considerations may come into play. “Regarding conversion of any space to child care, there are requirements and codes which must be adhered to,” he wrote. “I’ll add, any conversion of use for non-housing authority use has tax implications.”

Even if it happened, any use of space at an EPHA facility, including Fall River Village, would not necessarily be fixed for all time.

“If that ever became a decision of the board and it makes sense for us to make that move, that move would not have to be permanent,” Moulton said, referring to the possibility of a future organization relocation to the Skyview Event Center.

However the question of future office space is resolved, Moulton is convinced that it must be addressed sometime in the foreseeable future.

“I think it’s one of my duties as executive director to do everything I can to set this organization up for success,” he said. “With the rapid growth that we’ve had, what do I want our work to look like? What do we need to provide to EPHA to allow them to successfully interact internally to get done what we need to get done but also with the greater community as a whole?”

“I feel fairly strongly that our long-term home should be in something that we own.”