Why a Boulder group wants to turn the city’s airport into an affordable neighborhood

2024-07-16

Boulder, like many cities in Colorado, has an ongoing shortage of housing for the middle class – which means many people who work in Boulder can’t afford to live there. One local group is proposing an unconventional solution: They want to decommission Boulder’s municipal airport and turn that city-owned land into a neighborhood with around 2,000 homes. At least half of those homes would be designated affordable. That group, the Airport Neighborhood Campaign, organized the two initiatives that, if a...

Boulder, like many cities in Colorado, has an ongoing shortage of housing for the middle class – which means many people who work in Boulder can’t afford to live there.

One local group is proposing an unconventional solution: They want to decommission Boulder’s municipal airport and turn that city-owned land into a neighborhood with around 2,000 homes. At least half of those homes would be designated affordable.

That group, the Airport Neighborhood Campaign, organized the two initiatives that, if approved, would put this plan into action. They’ve collected enough signatures to place them on the November ballot, although the idea faces opposition from organizations like the Boulder Chamber.

Laura Kaplan, one of the group’s organizers, sat down with host Erin O’Toole to discuss what they want to accomplish by repurposing the municipal airport.

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Host and Producer: Erin O'Toole
Producer: Ariel Lavery
Executive Producer: Brad Turner

Theme music by Robbie Reverb
Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions

In The NoCo is a production of KUNC News and Community Radio for Northern Colorado.

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