A ‘tremendous respect for Q’town’

• Published date: 11 April 2024
• Publication title: Mountain Scene

IT’S easy to assume Queenstown’s the major beneficiary of our sister city relationship with Aspen

While the Colorado municipality’s residential population’s just 7000, and its township’s about 10sqkm in size with a downtown core about the size of our main walking malls, it has, at times, appeared light years ahead of us.

Confronting many of the issues the Whakatipu is facing, Aspen, to borrow a quote from former Prime Minister, Dame Jacinda Ardern, went hard and early.

In 2016, for example, with just 24 hours’ notice, Aspen City Council approved a year-long ban on commercial development, to give council time to match the resort’s land-use code with residents’ vision for the town.

It’s battled, too, with finding, and housing, its workforce.

In his first visit to Queenstown, Aspen mayor Torre tells Mountain Scene in the county ‘‘we’re at a worker deficit of a few thousand’’.

‘‘In the city of Aspen, we have more people coming in fulfilling daily jobs than we have living there.’’

On housing, Aspen’s council determined anyone developing a new building had to accommodate about 65% of the workforce it’d generate, while the Queenstown Lakes Community Housing Trust was, in part, inspired by a similar model there.

Property developers contribute millions of dollars to the city’s Employee Housing Fund, and the council builds its own housing developments — about 30% of the workforce is being housed there at present — and establishes private-public partnerships with the market.

They also tax those using their ‘‘second, third and fourth homes’’ for non-resident purposes.

There’s an owner-occupied levy, for those who live in Aspen but want to rent their house out for up to about 120 days a year, and ‘lodging short-term rental’, targeting condominiums traditionally used as short-term visitor accommodation.

In both cases, 5% of the daily rate charged is remitted to the city, which is funnelled into affordable housing and infrastructure needs.

There’s also a short-term rental tax, at 10%, for a second home used primarily for short-term rentals.

‘‘There’s a lot to learn from Aspen — some say we were first in the pool,’’ he says.

‘‘Oftentimes, in my meetings with other communities, they will say ‘let’s just wait, ’cos Aspen’s probably going to do it, and they’ll get sued, and then we’ll learn from their mistakes’.

‘‘For 50 years we’ve had community leaders that have been very protective about the...