Commissioners Will Have Housing Needs Assessment Updated

In what may be the understatement of the year Bruce Breslow told Churchill County Commissioners Thursday morning, “We are short of housing of all types in the county and in the city here,” as he asked commissioners to support a request for funding to update the County Housing Needs Assessment in the amount of $5,000.

Breslow is the consultant hired by the City of Fallon and the county to serve as Executive Director of the Churchill Fallon Economic Development organization.

According to Breslow, the Navy has announced between 1,100 and 1,300 new jobs expected by 2025, and 22% of the people who work on base currently commute from another county. He said EnviroSafe Demil has been awarded their contract with the Army so they will be building their plant north of town and will employ 60 people. Additionally, he hosted a second site visit Thursday morning for a large agriculture manufacturing plant. “The owners have fallen in love with our community and while it won’t happen overnight, if they elect to come here it will be another couple hundred jobs. There are companies of that size that are calling and looking at sites here every month.”

He said there are three large companies coming into Fernley with more than a couple thousand jobs. The Hazen Industrial Park has joined with Churchill Hazen Industrial Park, the Industrial Realty Group, and the Western Nevada Commerce Rail Park to work out details together over becoming a type of financing district that might be a way to help get needed infrastructure into Hazen. “As development comes east and jobs come east, Hazen is next in the line of fire.”

DH Horton, the nation’s largest homebuilder, by capacity, has signed a purchase and sale agreement to build 100 homes in Fallon and will begin a project just south of Coleman Road, straddling Venturacci Lane.

Breslow gave an example of the demand for local housing, saying “In the subdivision on North Maine, just recently, they had a home buyer pull out at the last minute who had to put houses back on the market. It was a 1,800 square foot subdivision house on a 6,000 square foot lot that ended up selling for over $400,000 and had ten bids on it. This market is more than heating up, - it’s a supply issue.”

EKAY Economics originally completed the first Housing Study in 2019 based on data from 2017. With the new census and the drastic change in pricing in the area, Breslow said, “We wanted to be able to have real data when a home builder asks for population, income, sales prices, and rental prices.”

According to Breslow, Multi-family housing is “going to be huge here.” He said there hasn’t been a new apartment complex built in Fallon in over 40 years, and there are no complexes with a swimming pool and a clubhouse.

“We now have developers looking to build that sort of product here, along with parks, walking paths, bike trails, but I need more data,” he said.  

One member of the public was opposed to the spending request saying, “you can just look around.”

However, Commissioner Greg Koenig said, “I think it is important that we do this and he just proved the point, you’re going to have random people from the community come and say this and this, and if you have an outside consultant come in the numbers aren’t skewed and if you have these solid numbers from an outside consulting firm it would be very helpful for us as these things come online and we have to irritate our constituents by agreeing to let things be built in their neighborhood we have some black and white facts to prove that things need to be done.”

“I would agree with you, Greg,” said Commission Chair Pete Olsen. “This provides the builders and developers the solid data and evidence they need to make the investments and meet the assurances for their lenders.”

Breslow reported that the apartment builders he met recently have said that Fallon is a good community to build. “We have people wanting to build nice communities and really good apartments.”

“There is no reason this community can’t have those nice amenities here,” said Olsen. “Those amenities just add to our community, and we have to plan so we are ready for growth. I feel like the center of gravity has moved for Fallon and we had better be ready so it happens the way our folks want it to happen. On our terms.”

Jim Barbee, the county manager said that the cost of the update will be covered by grant funding and not come from the general fund. Commissioners approved the request and EKAY Economics will complete the update.