Strongest Town 2022, Round 1: Durango, CO vs. Santa Clara, CA
Welcome to this first round match-up in the seventh annual Strongest Town Contest! In this round, 16 towns are facing off, and eight will advance to the next segment of the contest based on your votes. We invite you to read answers representatives from these two cities provided to our questions about economic resilience, citizen involvement, community response to the pandemic, and more. Then vote for the strongest at the bottom of this page.
Can’t decide? If you’re looking for inspiration, check out how we describe the Strong Towns approach.
You may vote once per match-up. Round 1 voting closes at noon CT on Thursday, March 3. For rules, and to follow along with the contest, visit the Strongest Town Contest page.
Note: All entries are lightly edited for clarity and readability.
DURANGO, CO
Entry submitted by: Bryce Bierman, Mallory St. Pierre, Scott Shine, Mark Williams, Vicki Vandergrift, Dan Armentano, Savannah Lytle, Tommy Crosby, Eva Henson.
What is your favorite thing about your town?
We pride ourselves as a city that strives to lead the way for our region. We are relatively isolated in the southwest corner of Colorado; therefore, we have created a unique culture that cannot be found in the surrounding rural communities.
What is the biggest challenge your town faces, and what are you doing to address it?
Durango's greatest challenge in 2022 is the struggle to maintain affordable housing options for the rapidly growing population. Our community saw a large swathe of our housing stock leave the market for the purpose of creating short-term rentals in the pre-COVID-19 era, and that shrinking of our housing stock has only been exacerbated by the recent trend supporting remote work. People are no longer required to live in large urban areas where the jobs are physically located. To address the affordability issue, we have created a new Housing Innovation division and supported the rebirth of the county housing alliance. With new supporting staff and resources, we are now dealing with an unprecedented level of development projects in our pipeline.
What transportation options exist in your town for people of varying ages, abilities, and means? How easy is it to live in your town without regular access to a car? What transportation investments has your town recently made or is it in the process of making?
Durango has a public transit bus service that runs seven days a week. The City is currently working with our regional council of governments to interconnect the City's transit system with those of the surrounding towns through an easy-to-use mobile application. Living in the City is incredibly easy to do without a private vehicle, especially for how far removed we are from a major urban center. The town has recently expanded its public transit service to seven days a week with extended service hours. The city has also made recent investments to install electric vehicle chargers at our downtown transit center.
Tell us about your community's local economy. Who are the key players, big and small, and how do they help your town to be financially strong and resilient? What local businesses are you most proud of?
Being a Colorado mountain town, our local economy is largely supported by our tourism industry. Our largest employers are our two flagship breweries, Ska and Steamworks Brewing, and our "Old West," Narrow-Gauge railroad company. Each of these businesses is an anchor to our community's character. Sometimes tourism can be a bother to the locals, but our team sees it as a sign that we are doing something right that people yearn for in this City.
If we took a walking tour through your town, what would we see? How does your community use its land productively to promote long-term financial resilience?
A walking tour through our City would certainly include a trip through our vibrant downtown area and the adjacent, historic neighborhoods originally constructed in the 1800s. A walking tour of the town wouldn't be complete without a walk along the Animas River Trail that stretches the length of the City. Our team is working to preserve all of the natural and historic elements of the town that have resided here longer than any of the people; we have beautiful elements of nature that cannot be built, and we are working to further intertwine those features into the long-term vision for the City.
How easy is it to become an entrepreneur or a small-scale developer in your town? What kinds of support are available for a resident who wants to open a business or build on a small vacant lot?
This City is full of budding entrepreneurs! Durango is fortunate to have a wealth of supportive nonprofits in the area that exist to foster economic development including a the Durango Small Business Development Center, the Region 9 Economic Development District, the La Plata County Economic Alliance, Companeros (for our Spanish-speaking community), the Durango Workforce Development Center, and the innovative Southwest Colorado Accelerator Program for Entrepreneurs. We also have an Economic Opportunity Division within our Community Development Department that exists solely to support the relationship between the City and the private business community. The small-business community has ample resources to get their feet off the ground; however, with our restricted labor force, most of our small-scale developers are busy building highly priced single family homes rather than the "missing middle" housing that we would like to see in our community.
At Strong Towns we believe financial solvency is a prerequisite for long-term prosperity. What do you consider your most potent (existing) tax producing property? Where does your revenue come from? What do you spend it on?
Our most potent tax-producing property is our historic Strater Hotel, where most of the tax income is earned through City sales tax; sales tax income is the main tax base for the City's departmental budgets. The hotel represents $112,080.70 taxes per acre and $2,688,366.01 value per acre.
At Strong Towns, we believe that local government is a platform for strong citizens to collaboratively build a prosperous place. How are residents in your town involved in shaping its future? How do residents’ experiences, struggles, and concerns directly inform the projects undertaken by local government? Provide one or more examples.
The City of Durango has made a commitment to transparency and hosts 22 different City-sponsored, citizen-lead Boards and Commissions from Design Review and Planning Commission to the Airport Commission and Retirement Plan Board. The Community Development Department is also underway with a citywide survey to gather input on the revitalization of our downtown area. The art of government work is the balancing act of the needs of the public as they shift through time. A current example of how the City is responding the experiences, struggles, and concerns of the public is the creation of our Housing Innovation Division; home affordability is interconnected to so many other quality of life indicators that the City feels this is the best starting point to attempt to alleviate everyday struggles of our citizens.
SANTA CLARA, CA
Entry submitted by: Dan Ondrasek, Rod Dunham, Mary Grizzle, Donna West, Frank Lemmon, Carter Fulhorst, Skip Pearson.
What is your favorite thing about your town?
With a 150-year history, Santa Clara is one of the oldest towns in the San Francisco Bay Area. Santa Clara Downtown lost a lot of its identity in demolition that was part of an urban renewal project 50 years ago.
What is the biggest challenge your town faces, and what are you doing to address it?
Santa Clara faces a planning challenge because of the many one-time project developers in town who are not focused on the needs of everyday people living here. Such developers only seem to want quick profits from housing. We are part of the 4,000-strong citizen group Reclaiming Our Downtown Santa Clara, which has for five years worked to educate and advocate for reclaiming our identity lost to extreme growth patterns. In partnership with the city, we located funding to finish a precise plan with a community task force to write form-based code and look at ways to remove the mistakes made by the city and developers in the past 50 years. We’d like to return to our original street grid created 150 years ago.
We are uncovering the lost history and pictures of our town of Santa Clara, from back when it had only 120 residents. There have been six failed attempts to do this before us, and it is up to the citizens now. We received an American Planning Association award for our grassroots efforts in 2021. We received acknowledgement from our California Assembly member, Alex Lee, for using our Facebook group during the 2020 pandemic to support and connect small mom-and-pop businesses and frontline workers in our community.
What transportation options exist in your town for people of varying ages, abilities, and means? How easy is it to live in your town without regular access to a car? What transportation investments has your town recently made or is it in the process of making?
The Santa Clara Downtown grid is a short walk from the Santa Clara Downtown Train Station and the airport is in easy reach. But we have zero transportation options for residents in our town to connect to either. One of our visions is to work with the city to create options. Complimentary shuttles in Downtown Mountain View and Palo Alto are two best practices we are studying locally. Residents on Benton Street, one of the oldest streets in town, have few community options for transportation, though it’s only four miles away from our Downtown. Those trips currently have to be made by car.
Tell us about your community's local economy. Who are the key players, big and small, and how do they help your town to be financially strong and resilient? What local businesses are you most proud of?
There are a few family-owned restaurants such as Mio Vicino and Bloom Eatery which are proudly staying open. From a 2020 city data fact check, we have 8,400 total city businesses. Virtual remote business is a global awareness now, with lessons the pandemic taught us. Key investments in Santa Clara are technology corporations who do not often integrate with small micro mom and pop businesses. The NFL is not adding value to small businesses. Corporate developers are the other part of the equation who do not give back to the citizens.
If we took a walking tour through your town, what would we see? How does your community use its land productively to promote long-term financial resilience?
Our town has been developing project by project only. There is not enough care taken toward creating a community of small businesses. This is a great reason to join Reclaiming Our Downtown Santa Clara. We are focused on bringing back our core identity we lost 50 years ago. There are ugly, high-density apartment buildings and campuses for technology workers. The Downtown today is anchored by two strip malls built in the 1960s, an eight-story brown building build in the 1960s, vacant parking lots, a county courthouse, and an apartment complex. We are blessed with our 80-year-old historically significant post office, a 100-year-old train station, Carmelites, the historic Plaza Park, and Victorian mansions.
How easy is it to become an entrepreneur or a small-scale developer in your town? What kinds of support are available for a resident who wants to open a business or build on a small vacant lot?
This is challenging. City laws are outdated, the business chamber is divided by endorsement interests, ageism and gender-bias from the technology sector. We must research best practices from other towns across the U.S. for information. The support is not here.
At Strong Towns we believe financial solvency is a prerequisite for long-term prosperity. What do you consider your most potent (existing) tax producing property? Where does your revenue come from? What do you spend it on?
Hotels and franchise restaurants produce local taxes. Santa Clara Square is a recent neighborhood that grew around technology businesses but these retail businesses are franchise restaurants and there is no identity to be proud of. They consist of a grocery store, restaurants and high end condos for executives to live in.
At Strong Towns, we believe that local government is a platform for strong citizens to collaboratively build a prosperous place. How are residents in your town involved in shaping its future? How do residents’ experiences, struggles, and concerns directly inform the projects undertaken by local government? Provide one or more examples.
I spoke to this above. Our citizens are collaborating with the city government in Reclaiming Our Downtown Santa Clara, a group of 4,000 members on Facebook that started five years ago. The group chose not to become a non-profit that takes money from corporate sponsors. Organized neighborhood groups are following our actions and speaking to the City Council about other issues, such as the density of housing and how to address our homeless population. Awareness is spreading throughout our town. We are completing our downtown plan containing form-based code and a study to support bringing back city hall—a public place for residents of downtown. Public investment brings private investment. We need to continue to research the best practices of residents from other downtown communities who are calling the city government and front line retailers and thinking outside the box.