Pipes and Pavement at the Ponderosa Mobile Home Park Community
/Last month the first streets in the Ponderosa Mobile Home Park were paved over the brand new water and sewer infrastructure! This is a huge milestone for the community, and for the community stabilization project Trestle Strategy Group has been working on since 2015.
Ponderosa Mobile Home Park is located along Broadway in North Boulder. Trestle Strategy Group has been working with the City of Boulder and the Ponderosa community through many phases of the project:
Land acquisition: the City purchased the park in August 2017;
Annexation: the park was annexed into the City in October 2019;
Infrastructure and housing plans development: the site plan and technical documents were approved by City Council in October 2019;
Infrastructure replacement - sewer, water, gas, electric, stormwater detention, water quality, roads and sidewalks.
Throughout this very complex process, Trestle Strategy Group focused on innovative, equitable, and customized community involvement, the primary goal being to minimize resident displacement and disruption to the community. Through the end of last year, this substantial community outreach and engagement process was centered around the Resident Leadership Committee, a group of 7 nominated community leaders living within the Ponderosa community, who were sharing information, ideas, and concerns between the City and the residents.
The RLC was set up so Ponderosa residents could co-create the vision and infrastructure and housing plan for the community, work on issues that are important to residents’ daily lives, and empower residents to develop a lasting leadership group in the community. Numerous community meetings, in various formats, all bilingual, were held throughout the process to ensure residents were informed, could get all their questions answered, and could weigh in on important decisions:
22 RLC Meetings
15+ City Q&A Meetings
40+ One-on-One meetings
1 Good neighbor meeting
4 Habitat for Humanity home tours
2 Habitat for Humanity workshop on homeownership and financing
Training opportunities for residents
In addition, we kept communication channels open, and ensured residents had access to up-to-date information, both in English and Spanish, through a variety of tools to fit their needs:
Text updates
Bulletin Board, community signage
Videos
An exceptional property manager, G2 Consulting
More recently, residents formed a more formal Homeowners Association (HOA) so they can stay organized as the construction work progresses and the first Habitat homes are built, starting in 2021.
While the planning process hasn’t been simple, we have been able to come up with a highly innovative site plan that enables current residents to stay in the park - whether in their mobile homes or in a new Habitat for Humanity home, substantially improves infrastructure, services, and quality of life, provides flood protection, and maintains permanent affordability for future generations. We are extremely proud to continue to be part of this project along with many partners including JVA, Caddis, Marathon Construction Management, G2 Consulting, KCI.
