A WALK IN THE PARCEL
It’s always struck me as ironic that the first phase of The Parcel Housing Project is named “The Sawyer” given that we long ago expressed as a community our desire to be a “village in the trees” and a sawyer spends his life cutting ’em down, but … irony and symbolism are lost on us these days.
On Wednesday, Fisher and I decided to take a short stroll over to the Parcel to check out what it looks like now that folks have moved in.
We had hoped to speak to the property manager to get some idea of how full it was.
As we walked towards the door of the ‘A’ building, we saw a woman on the phone in an office. We figured she was the property manager. I waved. She waved back, indicating for us to circle back to her through the building.
When we got to her office, she was still on the call, and when I tried to ask her about the leasing progress, she dismissively told me to look at the sign on the door.
Mono County Behavioral Health.
Which apparently has an office and a staffer on-site. Although based upon the staffer’s sour attitude, I’m not entirely sure anyone would end up mentally healthier visiting that office.
Undeterred, Fisher and I took the elevator up to the second floor to poke around.
It soon became clear that we could easily tell how many of the units were occupied because there were flyers shoved in the doors – flyers warning residents about power shutoffs for electrical work, fire alarm testing, etc.
The occupied units didn’t have any flyers shoved in their doors because residents had already removed them.
The unoccupied units remained littered with them.
So we just started walking the halls and taking a count.
Building A has 66 units. We counted 22 unoccupied, flyer-strewn, doors shut, with another two also empty but having work done on them – so 24 empty.
Building B has 15 units but they all appeared to be filled.
Given that one unit is a manager’s unit, that means the Sawyer is 56/80 or 70% occupied.
In our visit, we came across three residents.
I would classify one as physically and mentally handicapped. A second was moving into his studio unit. He was an elderly hispanic gentleman – I’d guess 70-years old. But certainly still a member of the workforce. He didn’t speak much, if any, English. A third was a younger hispanic guy who had come downstairs to take his dog out. In terms of demographic and youthful energy, he could’ve been the poster child for the place. We asked him how he liked it so far. He said he was absolutely thrilled.
Now to explain how this affordable housing deal worked.
The Town bought the property. It then engaged with an affordable housing developer (Pacific West).
Next step was application for all sorts of grants/handout money.
The grant/handout money comes with a set of conditions – in this case, it caps the amount of money the developer will eventually be able to charge in rents.
The Town deeds the property to the developer.
The developer ultimately owns and operates the land and the units.
Because of the largesse of the phase one grants/handouts, The Town did not have to provide earnest money for the project (beyond the land purchase it made in 2017).
However, it’ll have to pony up approximately $7 million to get phase two (~150 units) done.
Phase two is slated to serve the same income demographic.
The income mix spread throughout phase one is for those making 30-80% AMI (Area Median Income).
50% of the units are studios/1 BDR, 25% are 2 BDR and 25% are 3 BDR
Units range between 400 (studio)-1,100 (3 BDR) square feet.
So you think you wanna raise taxes? A few stories which have appeared in the Wall Street Journal over the past week may provide food for thought.
One was titled, “Higher Hotel Rates Deter Some Travelers”
“Leisure travelers have been a resilient group, but recent signs point to a slowdown in spending. Travelers say that even when they can stomach higher room rates, added taxes and fees put them over budget, making certain rooms hard to justify. Most travelers aren’t canceling travel plans because of hotel costs, but they say these prices do affect where they go and how long they stay.”
“Higher-end travelers didn’t spend as much on food, beverage and spa services in the second-quarter as Marriott anticipated.” -Chief Executive Tony Capuano
The second was titled, “The Ski Industry is Heading Downhill”
It discussed Vail Resorts most recent earnings call, which announced:
1. A 14% corporate workforce layoff
2. “While there isn’t snow to ski on yet this time of year, it is prime season for season ticket sales. The prices during the quarter had risen an average of 8% but the units sold fell 3%.”
The story noted that an Epic Pass costs $1,025 as opposed to a five-day pass to Disney for $720-$830.
Conclusion: “Visits from Disney’s more middle-class clientele have slipped because of the high cost after years of rising prices and overflowing crowds. It is easier to expand a chain of amusement parks than to develop a new ski resort – they aren’t making any new mountains – but even skiing could be bumping up against some limits. Merely upper-middle class skiers might be thinking twice, and that could become more apparent if paper gains on stocks evaporate.”
Here’s an interesting one. Outbound Mammoth (formerly Sierra Nevada Resort) just built a whole bunch of new units.
And now wants to sell off twenty of them.
The property’s former GM-turned-Consultant Brent Truax says people have approached the hotel inquiring about purchase opportunities for the five newly built four-plexes which ring the property.
Whether this is true (If I said there are a whole bunch of folks approaching me about buying the paper would anyone really believe it?) is neither here nor there. What matters is that Outbound Mammoth would like to sell. This would reduce some of the debt overhang incurred as a result of the build-out, which was a lot more expensive than anticipated.
The sale would require a change in the property’s specific plan, but it is allowed.
Truax said Outbound would like to make the sales this winter.
The units are approx. 800-square feet with a deck.
Price? “Way less than Limelight,” chuckled Truax. While he couldn’t be pinned down, he suggested “the $700,000 range.”
He said Outbound would certainly love to retain the units in its rental program, but that would be up to the individual owners.
Before I cede the floor to Ms. Fisher, I’d like to talk about The Sawyer’s 70% occupancy, which doesn’t seem to gibe with “housing crisis.”
The simple fact is that most of Mammoth’s workforce makes too much money to qualify.
As Fireball, who works over at Ascent, quipped, “I work seven days a week and pay my rent early. Who would want a tenant like that?
If people like him don’t qualify, Fireball said the truth is pretty clear: “They’re building the wrong housing.”
A local restaurateur shared that none of his staff qualified, including the family consisting of husband/wife servers and their two children.
Now from Fisher’s desk …
While researching the Mammoth Lakes Measure L event held Tuesday, I noticed a number of comments left on the committee’s Facebook event post. They miraculously disappeared before the day of the event.
But we’ll repeat some of the comments here.
“We are one of the highest taxed cities in California and our town has never been in worse shape,” wrote Steve Searles, former Mammoth Lakes Wildlife Officer. “We need real change, not mismanaged funds.”
Another Facebook user, Douglas Brown, said Measure L was a “hard NO.” He criticized the town for floating the measure as a general tax.
“There is absolutely no guarantee that this money will be used for housing,” he wrote. “The town council can spend the money on whatever they want for the next ten years, like an ice rink for the city or civic center building…”
Ceramic artist Sarah Keith asked, in a comment, “will this TOT also be on all the luxury hotels going up? Or just on Airbnb/VRBO? How will funds support more housing for actual residents and people working in Mammoth?”
And then poof, all the above comments, which are hardly inflammatory or offensive, were removed.
The committee also created an instagram page, @yes4mammothlakes, which has three posts and 27 followers.
The bio reads, “Vote for Measure L on November 5th / Building Mammoth’s Future.”
The committee’s second instagram post, which promoted the September 30 event, was reposted by Mammoth Lakes resident Stacy Corless and has one lingering comment from @monodemocrats, which states, “we love civic engagement,” with an applause emoji.
The big controversy in Inyo County this week returned to the topic of Emergency Medical Services.
The consultant to the City of Bishop confirmed what everyone in Inyo County with a pulse already recognized: That funding EMS is no longer a zero-sum game but will require some form of taxpayer subsidy moving forward.
Supervisor Jen Roeser was incensed. “I can’t describe my level of disappointment,” she said. She implied the City and its Manager, Deston Dishion, were acting in self-interest by looking at the cold numbers and declining to spearhead a new EMS service model.
Roeser’s little tantrum included the suggestion that if the whole county couldn’t be guaranteed ALS (Advanced Life Support) service versus BLS (Basic Life Support) service, then no one should have ALS service, not even her constituents (50% of her district) who live closer to NIH and Bishop services.
Supervisor Jeff Griffiths gently suggested that “Philsophically, every square mile [of the county] doesn’t have to have ALS [service] for ALS to exist.”
But Big Pine Fire Chief Damon Carrington replied that differentiating ALS versus BLS for different areas implied placing a different value on people’s lives, prompting Griffiths into mild retreat.
This got me thinking, as I just reviewed a book last week which focused on people living in areas subject to increased climate/geographical risk.
Quite simply, if you live in extremely rural or outlying areas, do you really deserve the same level of service?
And I imagine what Carrington would say in reply is something like this: ‘I’m not implying that everyone gets the same level of service so much as saying every district should receive the same level of subsidy per call.’
All he wants is the same $91 subsidy per call that Bishop gets.
Whereas Roeser would like to still live in Merle Haggard’s world “where a buck was still silver/and the country was strong.”
And you didn’t have to subsidize EMS service.
But as Dishion told me on Wednesday, “A full-time ambulance costs the same no matter where it’s located.”
The current EMS contract with Sierra Lifeflight does contain a clause providing for extension of service while the bureaucrats ponder the next move.
“I’m not super-interested in extending the contract [for greater Bishop] once it expires,” huffed Roeser. If she’d been holding a ball she would have taken it home with her.
