122 new homes coming to Cheyenne, with hopes for affordability

Yahoo

30-04-2025

CHEYENNE — Around 122 new smaller, single-family homes are planned for north-central Cheyenne, with ground scheduled to be broken in about a month.
Mayor Patrick Collins said he sees this as a reflection of the city's work to make updates to city code to incentivize developers to pursue more affordable projects, as housing availability and affordability continue to be top issues for the community.
Median home listings in Cheyenne were at $372,516 as of March, according to Zillow.com, and the median size was 2,402 square feet, according to data from the Federal Reserve. Most of these new homes will be smaller, with the goal of making them more affordable. Most will be between 900 and 1,200 square feet, two-bedroom, two-bath single-family homes for an estimated price in the high $200,000s or low $300,000s, according to the developers.
The new homes will be constructed southeast of the intersection of Storey Boulevard and Converse Avenue.
The push for development comes in an effort to reduce home prices in the area and increase housing supply for an anticipated population growth over the next several years caused by Project Sentinel coming to F.E. Warren Air Force Base, continued data center developments and other projects. Sentinel is the replacement for the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile.
Of the 122 proposed single-family homes, 86 are planned to meet those price and size expectations. For the zone district of these developments, the smallest lot width allowed is 30 feet. However, the developer, Edwards Development Company, requested the city reduce that minimum by 10% to 27 feet for some of the lots, which is allowed under current code because the developments are cottage lots.
The City Council approved this change, which allowed an additional eight to 10 lots to be developed with homes on them.
The developments are split into two adjacent spaces: 36 homes split on the 5.6-acre plat for Trailhead Estates first filing, and the other 86 homes split across the 11.9-acre plat for Trailhead Estates second filing. The homes in the first filing did not need a width reduction before approval.
Trailhead Estates plan
Edwards Development Company's plan for the two Trailhead Estates filings, with 86 single-family homes proposed to be constructed in the lot on the west side and 36 in the more eastern lot.
Both final plat plans were unanimously approved Monday evening by the Cheyenne City Council, with council member Mark Rinne absent.
In the second filing, homes will have parking access in the rear in a garage connected to the alley. Of the 86 homes, 23 won't face the street. Instead, the plan is to have the front facing a pedestrian corridor, with vehicle and garage access in the alley.
David Gregg, founder and co-owner of Berthoud, Colorado-based Mission Homes, is the architect on the project. He said he has installed this 56-foot-wide pedestrian corridor in other projects he has worked on in Colorado. He said the homes facing it are typically in higher demand than the street-facing properties.
Gregg has designed neighborhoods like this in several communities in Colorado, and said his company focuses on building more affordable starter homes, rather than larger homes, which some perceive to be a more profitable approach.
The units are small, with similar densities to townhomes, but detached to give more space between the buildings and yard space to the owners. The homes also have a private front porch and a fenced-in backyard. Gregg said they are energy and water efficient, as well.
Although not as common today, Gregg said this approach to housing development was more common 100 years ago.
'Up until the 1940s and 1950s, the average new home was 950 square feet. Today it is 2,500 square feet,' he said. 'We point fingers and argue over whose fault it is that homes are no longer affordable. I would argue it is simply because they've grown too large, and it's not necessary. And we're going back to something that was very, very common about 100 years ago.'
John Edwards of Edwards Development Company said this area for this project is ideal. With existing and planned apartment complexes to the west of this project off Converse Avenue and larger single-family homes to the east, he said these smaller single-family homes are a natural transition in the area around Anderson Elementary School.
At the City Council's Public Services Committee meeting last week, Mayor Collins said he had recently visited one of Gregg's similar developments in Colorado.
'I did go down to Berthoud because I thought maybe it might be too good to be true, that we could have this kind of density and yet still have a development that I would want to live in, or want my kids to live in. And I got down there, and it's beautiful,' he said.
He said he is excited to see aspects of affordable and attainable housing beginning to be realized in Cheyenne, something that has been his top priority to promote in Cheyenne throughout his previous and current terms.
'This governing body, over the last couple of years, has worked really hard with our Affordable Housing Task Force and the Wyoming Community Development Authority on all of the different recommendations for things we could do to encourage more attainable housing. We've passed all those rules,' he said. 'And now, we actually have developers who are coming to us with exactly what we hoped would happen, which is smaller, more affordable homes for people to get their first home, or maybe their last home, to live into.'
In 2024, WCDA released a housing needs assessment for the state and communities across Wyoming. With population growth over the past decade and moderate population growth projected, WCDA suggests the state needs to add between 20,700 and 38,600 units by 2030.
WCDA estimates that Laramie County will need between 1,204 and 1,994 additional rental units and between 3,181 and 5,271 additional houses, totaling between 4,386 and 7,266 total housing units needed by 2030.
In 2023 — the most recent year for which numbers were available — 1,681 units were built in Laramie County.