Jerry Champlin had a plan to help ease the housing crunch in Buena Vista. Why not build a dozen tiny homes around a central courtyard on a residential lot a block from downtown and rent them out for $1,000 a month?
He bought a small home on a big lot in 2019 and floated his plan. Six years later, he鈥檚 about to start renting. But the plan, pushed and shoved by local rules and soaring costs, has changed.
He鈥檚 now stacked 21 shipping containers around the courtyard in a community he鈥檚 called. He built 16 units in 17 of those steel boxes and the rest are community spaces for office work, storage and studios.
And his rents have climbed a bit. He鈥檚 got furnished 160-square-foot units available for $1,150. The larger containers, about 640 square feet, are renting for $2,650.
鈥淚 ended up with more of an art project that you get to live inside versus an affordable village of tiny homes,鈥� says the first-time developer whose background includes a civil engineering degree and building a technology company.
It is one of the largest residential communities built entirely of shipping containers in the country. And it鈥檚 one of several new housing projects 鈥� some traditional and some innovative 鈥� about to open in Buena Vista.
Jerry Champlin, a first-time developer, has built a 16-unit rental community out of shipping containers in downtown Buena Vista. 鈥淚t鈥檚 been a fun adventure,鈥� he says.
鈥淭o do a creative project like this. You have to be willing to take on a lot of risk and, in hindsight, I had to be kind of clueless. I did not know exactly what I was getting myself into, but I needed to have the wherewithal to get through it,鈥� says Champlin, who has lived in a 750-square-foot home for the past four years with his three kids and wife. 鈥淚f I had known what I know now, in 2021, I would have stuck with my original plan and figured out how to get it through. I would have found a way to force it through, and it would have cost a lot less to build, and we would be up and operational and done a few years ago.鈥�
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