Jill Adler Grano is running for Boulder City Council, and she has spent years in the public record working out how Boulder got so expensive. Her answer starts in 1955, when the city adopted low-density postwar zoning. Today, 74.3% of Boulder's residential zoning is still low density. In the 1970s, the city layered growth controls on top of that, then decades of review on top of those, a pattern known as "growth control by hassle." The result, Jill says, is manufactured scarcity.
Dan opens by saying what he expects: they'll agree on the problems and disagree on the fixes. They agree on a lot. Office vacancy has climbed to 26%, schools are closing, and the non-student population is shrinking. Employers tell Jill that Longmont, 15 minutes away, offers commercial rent 65% cheaper. Dan tells the story of Zayo's hundreds of employees leaving the 29th Street Mall, and the city never calling to ask what it would take to keep them. Where they split is the duplex rule meant to create middle-income housing, which produced luxury second homes selling for $2.5 million per side. Jill wants guardrails like owner-occupancy requirements. Dan argues that more rules are how Boulder got here.
Plus, the Alpine-Balsam purchase, why Dan's own Glenwood redevelopment never penciled out, whether city employees should live in the city they serve, why Boulder shouldn't become the next Aspen, and the national investors buying up housing near fast-growing state universities.
Learn more about Jill and her campaign for Boulder City Council: https://www.jillforcouncil.com
Read Jill's thesis, Landscapes of Privilege: Housing, Capital, and the Contradictions of Progressive Urbanism in Boulder, Colorado: https://jilladlergrano.substack.com/p/who-is-boulder-for
Order Dan's book — Bandwidth: The Untold Story of Ambition, Deception, and Innovation that Shaped the Internet Age and Dot-Com Boom: dan-caruso.com/book
Listen to Dan’s song Stretch: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/dancaruso/stretch
Check out music by Jason Mendelson (Jace Allen): https://www.youtube.com/@jaceallen
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