Forest City has a history of being creative when it comes to its efforts at silencing the critics. One major criticism of Forest City over recent years is in regards to how far behind it is on the affordable housing piece they had promised the City of Denver. They attempted to catch up with the Bluff Lake apartments, but that will still leave them far short.
“One of the challenges we have is that the land is very valuable,” says Forest City spokesperson Janelle Ayers. “We realized that to meet the expectations of the city in regards to socioeconomic diversity, it was better to build up than out.” Forest City will continue down that path, and is even considering a proposal to create low income studio apartments in the control tower.
Last week, while surveying the Bluff Lake neighborhood, Forest City came up with another idea. “We realized that property on the water is significantly less expensive than the land,” said Ayers. “In the next two years, we hope to add 150 to 200 low-income houseboats right on Bluff Lake.” The company predicts it will draw a lot of native Alabamans and Floridians that will be drawn to their Southern white trash roots. “We posted something on our site, and it immediately garnered a lot of interest. A lot of them were people living in Thornton and Commerce City that are originally from Southern states,” saiud Ayers.
Forest City has yet to hire the houseboat builders for the project, but plan to lay out the lake very similar to the neighborhoods. “We want a good mix of houseboats in each section of Bluff Lake,” says Ayers. “We don’t want a situation where all the houseboats look the same.” The first houseboats are expected to be in by late spring.]]>