Western Planner at the 34th Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute: The Aging West: Adapting for the Future
Western Planner’s tabletop at the conference
by Dan Pava, FAICP and Donna Bye, President, Western Planner
Once again, continuing a tradition going back at least15 years, Western Planner was present as a sponsor of the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute (RMLUI) held at the University of Denver March 6-7th.
The theme of this 34th annual workshop was “The Aging West: Adapting for the Future.” This was just the second time since the pandemic that the Institute resumed meeting in person. Both Western Planner President Donna Bye, and board member Dan Pava, FAICP were fortunate to attend this year. We also set up a table to promote Western Planner during the two-day conference.
With 400 attendees annually, this event helps define and influence the West's land use and development future. The conference attracts people from across the country, but most attendees are from the Rocky Mountain West, representing national, state, and local government agencies, private planning and law firms, development companies, academic institutions, and non-profit organizations. This year, RMLUI offered 29 panels and three plenary sessions over two days.
Donna’s Experience
I attended the conference but spent a majority of my time helping the coordinator. I was asked to arrive at the check-in desk in the morning and arrived around 7am to help finish setup and organization of the tables. And the same thing continued to the next day, only longer, because a number of students didn’t show up for their shifts. Maybe they got to attend more sessions…
As part of the audience during the Thursday Plenary luncheon, I observed four demographers tell the story of fact not fiction and how to prepare for it. Zachary Feldman, Denver Regional Council of Governments, moderated the group that consisted of Mallory Bateman from the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute in University of Utah; Nancy Gedeo, from the Colorado Demographic Office; and Samuel Wolkenhouer a labor economist from Idaho Dept of Labor. These individuals know their statistics and were able to get some hard stares at what was presented. I was amazed to learn that the workers-per-retiree stats are falling. This is showing that for every retired person in America, there are only 2.2 people to replace them, compared with 5.8 in 1954 when they began tracking the info. The discussion continued to look at the youngest and oldest states, with the percent population of those 65 and older. Utah has the lowest number at 11.7% with Colorado at about 15%; Maine had the highest with 21.8% of its population over 65 years of age. The list of implications from Age and Aging was astonishing. Not because of any surprises to the list but moreover the expansive list itself leads one to recognize the severity of the situation. It will affect consumer demand, job creation, occupations and wages. It will affect the labor force for older workers and those attempting to retire. Housing will suffer because the household size is shrinking but inaccessibility is climbing. The idea of retirees aging in place impacts the upcoming generations and where they will live. How do the states offset the fiscal considerations surrounding these impacts as it relates to lower state and local government revenue, sales tax, property tax and income tax?
I also attended the segment, Doffing the Cap: Brownfields Re-Re Development.
The group was made up of three individuals, the first was Fonda Apostolopoulos, Colorado Dept of Health/Env; Elaine Wizzard from the City and County of Denver; and Polly Jensen representing Kaplan Kirsch, LLP. The discussion centered around the clean up of already approved and completed clean ups that maybe didn’t get completely cleaned up. The discussion focused on how all parties must come together as it is too great and too costly to handle alone. Many of the sites were cleaned up 25-30 years ago and who makes up the difference between the recovering costs vs the liability costs? The group discussed steps related to voluntary cleanup plans and special exclusions as well as partnerships early on. Best advice—check with local jurisdictions before getting in too deep to avoid costly mistakes. These individuals provided a toolbox of solutions to manage future liabilities and costs associated with a 2nd round of clean up.
My third attempt at attending a presentation: Paradigm Shift in zoning manufactured housing/mobile homes. The group consisted of Caitlin Quander, realtor; Cherie Talbert, Sharing Connexion; Lee Tuchfarber, Social Communities; and Libby Kaiser, planner for City and County of Denver. They shared their thoughts on what used to be America’s affordable housing with a non-conforming tagline that is now being known as naturally occurring affordable housing. The panel discussed the complexities of the case studies researched in nearby cities and counties and are working with the city of Denver to find allowances to continue the use. This allows the owners and any new buyers to be able to work with creative financing for infrastructure improvements and maintenance. Some of the mobile home parks discussed are approaching 80+ years old.
Dan’s Experience
In his preamble to the opening keynote, Attorney Tom Ragonetti, RMLUI president, encouraged robust conversations, stating that the Institute provides a forum for informed consideration that is based upon facts and observation. RMLUI Executive Director Susan Daggett exclaimed that the role of state and local planners and policy makers has never been more important as is the need to get creative and strategically invested to address the issues on the 34th RMLUI program.
Elaborating on the 2025 theme, RMLUI noted that “Western communities, and the infrastructure and regulatory systems that they depend on, are experiencing the challenges associated with aging. As we invest in foundations for the future, we need to address those challenges and seize opportunities presented as we adapt. The 2025 Western Places | Western Spaces conference will explore the best ideas for how communities can update their planning processes, their infrastructure, and their regulatory systems to meet the moment.” The program focused on three components of aging: population, physical infrastructure, and intellectual infrastructure.
The program described these three components further and the panels addressed how they overlap to present challenges to planning in the west. For example, the program detailed that, “Once a relatively youthful part of the U.S., the Rocky Mountain region is undergoing rapid demographic change. In just the past decade, 7 out of 8 Rocky Mountain states have experienced a 42-55% increase in their age 65+ populations. Combined with slowing birth rates, these aging populations portend tremendous changes for the region: fewer workers; increased demand for public transportation, more walkable communities, access to health services, and leisure activities; and a growing need for more flexible, affordable, and accessible housing.”
Moreover, the program continued, “Just as the population is aging, so too is the West’s built environment. A region that was largely developed in the 20th century is now experiencing the challenges of outdated, insufficient, and crumbling infrastructure. Our current water and energy delivery systems are inadequate to serve future needs. Our existing public transportation, bicycle, and pedestrian infrastructure is lacking and standing in the way of a more sustainable future. Our current housing supply is not only insufficient and unaffordable, but also largely not designed to accommodate older inhabitants — only 10% of our nation’s housing stock is considered “senior friendly”.
The third component of the aging west theme was explained as “Finally, our “modern” legal and regulatory systems that govern land development today were established roughly a century ago — at a time when segregation and unsustainable growth were the norm. Zoning and subdivision rules that helped chart a development course for the communities of the 1950s no longer deliver the desired development of the 2050s.”
Reception desk, where Donna spent much of her time
I attended five of the concurrent panels, and all three plenary talks, choosing sessions that featured legal issues, changing perspectives on growth, wildlife, and “naturally occurring” affordable housing.
Dan and Donna enjoying dinner before the conference
Grady Gammage Jr. was the featured opening keynote speaker for the conference. With more than 40 years of legal experience, his practice focuses on the intersection of real estate, development, zoning, water, and public policy. Gammage’s talk contrasted the roles of the engineers who built and maintained the irrigation infrastructure for the Bureau of Reclamation (plumbers), and the planners, who now must figure out how to use scarce water in the urbanizing west. Phoenix grew from an agricultural valley into the country’s fifth most populous city after World War 2 due to the convergence of several factors: flat land, plentiful divertable water, air conditioning, and air travel. Gammage posited that the reality is we cannot have both agriculture and urbanization any longer in Phoenix and its surroundings. The “plumbers” cannot avoid the politics of water appropriation so the planners must address what is essentially a regulatory problem, not a water scarcity problem. While farmers continue to pump without recharge, this will curtail subdivision development and water-intensive industries such as silicon chip manufacturing and data centers. He suggested allowing somewhat more market engagement in water transfers to sustain urbanization. This, he stressed, would require the kind of trust in government to accomplish important things like the reclamation projects throughout the west during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. …Good luck with that.
After being flooded with lots to consider during Gammage’s water talk, I opted to take in a panel on recent exactions cases focusing on the impacts of the case Sheetz v El Dorado County. According to Scotus Blog, “The dispute began in 2016, when Sheetz wanted to build a manufactured home on a lot that he owns in Placerville, Calif. El Dorado County, where the lot is located, told Sheetz that he would be required to pay “traffic impact mitigation fees” before he could receive a building permit. Sheetz paid the fee, but he also went to state court to challenge the fee’s constitutionality.” He argued that it should be subject to the Dolan (roughly proportional) and Nollan (rational nexus) Fifth Amendment takings cases. Scotus Blog noted that, “The Supreme Court in a unanimous decision authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the justices agreed with Sheetz that conditions on building permits should be subject to heightened scrutiny even if they were authorized by legislation, rather than imposed on an individual basis by administrators, and they remanded the case to the Ninth Circuit Court.”
A panel of two lawyers and two economists reviewed the merits of the Supreme Court decision, emphasizing that “it’s muddy out there,” when drawing a distinction between user fees and exactions. Back in El Dorado County they are now requiring applicants to prepare a study that shows the impacts of the project, however, one can also pay an in-lieu fee to avoid doing the study if you waive your right to appeal the fee. The caveat in all this is for governments to demonstrate that the fee schedule is supported by analysis and facts. Moreover, and ideally the fees should consider house size and its location, and relate to defensible service areas.
Around noon, I realized that I was also impacted, not by fees but by hunger. The plenary lunch satiated this sensation with a variety of deli sandwiches and the appetizing topic of “Forecasting the Aging West: A Discussion with State Demographers.” During lunch, we were served lots of graphs showing population trends in Colorado, Utah, and Idaho. All presenters agreed that immigration is essential to counter declining fertility rates across the west. This skewing of the age cohorts means that there are implications for housing, staffing public sector and private service industries, and local governmental fiscal solvency due to increasing numbers of retirees and decreasing workforce. They concluded that we have the benefit of knowing what’s coming because demographics are mathematically rigorous and not hypothetical, citing the truism that people age one year, each year. No alternative facts about it, planners must make the correct assumptions and design policies to address real problems.
Having digested so many charts and graphs over our midday demographic repast, it was time to better understand why “The Frontier Has Closed.” This post lunchtime panel engaged the three editors of a new book titled “A Watershed Moment—The American West in an Age of Limits (University of Utah Press 2024) ” which includes 25 essays about the changing west. The panelists spoke from academic and governance perspectives about western myths and realities. While the philosophical context was a fitting introduction it was the observations of Luther Probst, now a Teton County planning commissioner that appealed most to me. Without slides, he spoke with clarity about the challenges facing this wealthy recreational resort destination community. Probst noted that the solutions are political choices that support growth that builds community versus growth that does not. A balanced community will promote workforce housing solutions over more golf course villas.
I rounded out the day taking in “Legal Developments and Hot Topics in Land Use Law.” This is always an informative session that packs a lot into a short time. The late afternoon snacks bolstered my energy and attention span so I could absorb all the details happening in four western states expounded by five attorneys. Also, my concentration was heightened knowing that the annual RMLUI cocktail and hors d’oeuvre reception would commence in just an hour and a half. That would be a great place to mingle and wind down. Some of the takeaways from this last session of the day were: developments in states’ preemption of local zoning and land use controls such as the State of Wyoming challenging denial of a glamping temporary use permit by Teton County; the omnibus housing bill passed by the Colorado legislature that emphasizes Yes In My Backyard; Utah’s efforts to open state lands for housing; Arizona making ADUs less subject to local restrictions; and the use of referenda in Arizona to challenge affordable housing initiatives.
Friday at RMLUI began with sharing coffee and breakfast and meeting participants from around the West in the law school commons. Once sufficiently caffeinated, I opted to hear about “Improving Wildlife Connectivity Through Land Use Controls and Infrastructure Design.” The key to success is to improve partnerships such as being done with the Colorado Wildlife and Transportation Alliance. Several case study examples were presented that have reduced kills by 90% which helps to reduce the $80M a year economic costs of wildlife/vehicle collisions in Colorado. This requires a systematic approach to prioritize crossings with geomapping and incorporating improvements into capital planning. Montana meanwhile is releasing a report on Integrating Wildlife Connectivity into Municipal and County Plans and Policies. These efforts have garnered bipartisan support throughout western states. Clustering and conservation subdivisions are another tool to preserve wildlife in high-quality habitat. If you want to know more then the panel recommended a recent book “Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet” by Ben Goldfarb.
My mid-morning selection was a panel called “Saving Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing (NOAH)” moderated by the inimitable Dwight Merriam. Since Dwight is a sailor, he of course referred to the acronym “NOAH” for this class of dwellings. This is housing that is affordable but not subsidized by any federal program. Its rents are relatively low compared to the regional market. The four speakers on this panel pointed out that NOAH was typically built between 1940 and 1990, and includes single family, multifamily, apartments, and manufactured homes. We simply cannot build ourselves enough new affordable housing so preserving NOAH is both a challenge and an opportunity as it is the most readily available housing. Speakers suggested various funding arrangements that are being used to upgrade and improve the stock of NOAH focusing on the Denver region but is also transferable to other regions. This funding approach works because the vast majority of NOAH are owned by individuals and not corporations. As such, it is necessary to use tools including inventorying, appropriate code enforcement, and financing. An online search for Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing will yield many good articles.
Friday’s plenary lunch featured Peter Kaldes of The Next 50 Foundation in conversation with Susan Daggett. Citing the previous day’s plenary lunch demographic presentation, they discussed ways to address aging in the West. This was an effective way to reiterate this year’s RMLUI 2025 theme: The Aging West. Next 50’s goals are to end ageism, supporting aging in place, and advancing digital equity.
The Next 50 website notes that, “It is expensive to age in this country. Next50 works to change that. We support innovative ideas across Colorado and beyond, strengthening resilience and transforming systems for historically marginalized and geographically underserved older adults and the organizations that serve them. We achieve this by focusing on three core areas of economic opportunity, ensuring that aging is met with dignity, equity, and possibility.”
I highly recommend attending RMLUI as it is always a concentrated assortment of panels delving into the most relevant topics providing legal and planning context along with examples of practical and realistic solutions. Perhaps I’ll see you next year at the 35th Institute!