BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. — In Breckenridge, Fading West CEO Charlie Chupp is watching something his company has never done before, stack a modular apartment complex together.
“We have done over 200 homes, but this is our first big apartment project and it’s a different beast for sure,” said Chupp.
At the Fading West Buena Vista factory, modular homes are built like cars on an assembly line, faster and for less money than tradition construction, now they’re doing that with apartments and putting 60 30,000-pound boxes together in Breckenridge for affordable workforce housing,
“Sixty boxes are going to be set in about six days or less will have two full buildings in two weeks."
Inside those boxes, Breckenridge Housing Manager Lorie Best says are apartments that are already finished and almost ready for people to move in.
“They come fully ready to occupy,” said Best. “The floors there the cabinets are there the fixtures are there, the inside of this building is a complete finished apartment.”
The fast construction means people living and working in Breckenridge and Summit County will be able to move to the new affordable housing complex faster than if it was a traditional construction project.
In an expensive community where rents are around $4,000, the rent in the new modular apartments will be between $800 and $1200 a month.
“We have to find innovative approaches to providing housing quicker, more efficiently, and we think modular is one way to go for sure,” said Best.
There are also several other projects around the state using modular apartments for workforce housing, which tend to cost about 25% less to build than traditional projects. Officials in Breckenridge and Summit County plan on celebrating the work on their apartment complex on July 6.
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