The Steamboat Springs City Council has unanimously approved the purchase of two parcels known as the Campbell property, marking a significant step toward expanding affordable and attainable housing in the city. 

The acquisition, which will cost $4.275 million and will be funded through the city’s short-term rental tax revenue, was described by Deputy City Manager Kelly Romero-Heaney as a rare opportunity to assemble key parcels and “gain site control from basically Dream Island to Steamboat Rentals.”​

The Campbell property is located south of U.S. Highway 40, adjacent to a marshy area and the Steamboat Springs Community Center, Romero-Heaney explained at the council’s Nov. 18 first-ordinance reading.

“I do want to note that the city had been approached by a private developer at one point about doing a public-private partnership type project developing affordable housing,” she told council.

“We determined that it was probably best at this point to go ahead and assemble the parcels as a city, do the master planning, and then we can move forward with a private developer in the future and probably follow a competitive process with that,” added Romero-Heaney.

The city is offering $250,000 in earnest money, with a closing date set for March 5, 2026, allowing time for environmental due diligence and finalizing the agreement with the Colorado Department of Transportation, said Romero-Heaney.

“As council is aware, for several years the city was looking to plan and design a childcare center, workforce housing project on that smaller parcel … that CDOT owns,” she said. “As we went further down the design process, we realized that that project was really financially infeasible, and there were some other public safety challenges given its location in the floodplain.”

“Fortunately, this other opportunity has come up,” Romero-Heaney added. 

Councilors unanimously approved a total of three first-ordinance readings at the Nov. 18 meeting related to the Campbell property, and also approved the second readings at their Nov. 25 meeting: the purchase of the two parcels; a supplemental budget appropriation of $250,000 from 2025 STR funds for the earnest money, due Dec. 1; and another supplemental budget appropriation of $4.025 million from 2026 STR funds for the remainder of the purchase price. 

No public comment was made regarding the Campbell property at either meeting.

“I think this is a great opportunity in terms of being able to use the STR monies to do some land banking and make some inroad into our workforce housing,” said Councilor Gail Garey at the close of the Nov. 18 discussion. “Hopefully we’ll be able to include childcare in some capacity.”

“Because of the short-term rental tax fund, we were able to take advantage of land-banking some land within the city limits, and that is something most municipalities don’t have the ability to do,” said Councilor Michael Buccino. “We’re really taking advantage of this funding mechanism the right way.”

According to Finance Director Kim Weber, following the two appropriations to the Campbell property, the city still will have approximately $24.5 million in STR funds available by year-end.