Converse County housing tightens with new development

By Colin Tiernan
Douglas Budget
Via Wyoming News Exchange
 
DOUGLAS — The fairgrounds and private RV parks are full again. City hotels almost look like truck dealerships with their parking lots packed with fresh, white pickups. Schlumberger has 100 rooms reserved nightly. 
Converse County officials expect housing is going to be a challenge over the next few years and hope to tackle that challenge now, before the problem escalates even further. 
“We’re not late, but we’re not early,” Converse County Commissioner Jim Willox said. More than 20 government officials and community stakeholders convened last Thursday to brainstorm housing solutions. Representatives from Douglas, Wright, Rolling Hills, Lost Springs and Glenrock all participated in the discussion. 
The general mindset at the meeting was clear: Let’s get ahead of this before it’s too late.
Converse County Commissioner Robert Short used a sonic boom analogy to describe Converse and southern Campbell County’s situation. 
“The sound barrier’s about 700 mph,” Short said. “We’re doing about 699 mph . . . It’s busy, it’s really busy just north of here. There’s a lot of rigs doing a lot of work.” 
Short mentioned the multi-million dollar energy projects that seem to be going on left and right in the county: Gas plants, miles upon miles of new pipeline, transloading facilities, compressor stations and hundreds of new wells. There are new wind farms, which require hundreds of temporary workers during the construction phase, and gravel pits, which portend development, too. 
The Enterprise board members Karl Hertz pointed out a critical boom preparation need: “I think that’s one of the things that we get caught up in, is the emotiveness of all this. 
“What banks and developers want is data. We all can feel it, and we all know we’re going 699 mph, we just have to have the documents to show it.” 
Converse County and Wright officials now have the task of compiling those data and handing the numbers off to analysts, who in turn will conduct a housing study. The Enterprise Director Cindy Porter said she has identified a company from Minnesota that can start conducting the housing study after the first of the year and should have a final version ready after four months. 
Officials noted that there’s no time to waste when addressing the housing problem. 
Porter described the study, which could cost around $24,000, as “in-depth.” A U.S. Department of Agriculture grant could help defray the cost if the application can convincingly tie the study to employment needs. Some Douglas businesses and organizations have difficulties hiring staff because of housing shortcomings. 
The study could help government officials better understand real versus perceived housing needs, too. Addressing the housing issue is not as simple as building heaps of housing as quickly as possible. No one wants to be stuck with deserted apartment complexes when the boom ends, representatives pointed out. 
“Currently we don’t have enough housing,” Porter said. “We know that we don’t, but we don’t know exactly what we need. Do we need starter homes? Do we need nice, higher-end homes? Do we need apartments?”
Right now, Converse County isn’t entirely sure what it needs. What are the short-term housing needs as opposed to the longterm needs? Douglas Mayor Bruce Jones said he believes low-income housing is available, but middle-tier housing is in demand. 
Toward the end of the meeting, the group settled on developing a sub-committee tasked with two goals: Identify ideal sites for short-term housing, potentially man camps and longer term housing, and start developing a set of best practices to guide housing going forward. 
Part of the challenge is that Converse County lacks zoning outside the city limits, which makes planned, organized rural development tricky. 
“You can’t do a permit in the county without zoning,” Willox explained. He made clear that he is “not advocating, not advocating, not advocating” for zoning. 
A lack of zoning can lead to some undesirable situations. 
“I drove up to Gillette the other day and you already have man camps in the county,” Douglas City Administrator Jonathan Teichert said. “More worrisome to me, we have places where there’s three, four camper trailers parked around a utility pole . . . I don’t know if emergency services would ever find them.” 
Meter poles have addresses, but the individuals living around the pole are not required to inform anyone of their whereabouts, they said. Government officials also continued to stress that the modern iteration of a man camp holds little in common with its predecessors. 
“They have a better etiquette in that man camp then you do on a city street on Saturday night,” Glenrock Building Inspector Scott Gilbert said. “Oil companies have changed huge . . . there’s no shenanigans.” 
The county commissioners have begun to hear inquiries about larger man camps, ones that house in the range of 200 to 300 workers, but there aren’t any of that size currently in the county. 
The boom will stress housing, but it’ll also put strain on childcare services, law enforcement, infrastructure and water. Right now, local offi cials hope to address those issues before the boom arrives in earnest in 2019-2020. 
“I always use the line ‘government does a great job of reacting and a bad job of preparing,’” Willox said. “Hopefully we can do a little better job of preparing if we get ahead of it a little bit.”