Leadville, Colorado has come a long way in the nearly 30 years since HMI cofounders Molly and Christopher Barnes selected the town to be the home of their new school. At that time, the mid-1990s, Leadville’s economy was bottoming out. Climax Mine, Lake County’s largest employer for most of the 20th century, had closed the decade prior causing the local tax base to crater and the county’s population to shrink by over a third. Real estate was cheap and Molly and Christopher took notice. They purchased the original 40 acres of land for HMI’s campus in 1996 for $2,075 / acre.
When HMI opened in 1998, there was no employee housing. All school employees lived in Leadville and commuted to campus. However, rents were low and home ownership was within reach for HMI staff. Christopher recalls: “In the early days, buying a home in Leadville was an option for many employees – at times, over half of HMI employees owned their own home locally. Sadly, those days are gone now, and affordable housing for educators is a significant challenge and issue.”
Real estate values began to rebound in the 2000s and the local economy received a huge boost in 2012 when Climax Mine reopened. Leadville hung on for a few more years as a rare “bastion of affordability” where teachers could still purchase a home and rents remained low. But between 2016 and 2022 Lake County experienced a stratospheric explosion in home prices. The median home value shot up by a staggering 250%, growing from $191,000 to $480,000, while household incomes increased by only 45%. Rents also skyrocketed. A recent study found that over three-quarters of Leadville households with incomes under $75,000 now contribute an unsustainable amount towards rent.
While the proliferation of AirBnB and remote work has unquestionably contributed to this growth, Leadville is also gentrifying. The town’s downtown now boasts six boutique shops, twelve restaurants, and an art gallery. The famous “We Love Leadville” sign that welcomed visitors into town for decades is gone, replaced by a 40-acre development site that will eventually contain over 100 new homes, currently priced around $700,000 each.
Thankfully for HMI, this period of decreasing affordability in Leadville has coincided with a residential building boom on our campus. Over the past decade we constructed eleven new housing units including the O’Brien House, our head of school home that doubles as an event space. 60% of our staff now live on campus and new hires relocating to Leadville no longer have to find their own place to live in the tight rental market. Perhaps most importantly, HMI’s campus is more vibrant than ever. Most employees bike or walk to work; faculty host their advisees for dinner in their homes, and there are generally more adults around for supervision. Thanks to the vision of HMI’s past leaders and advisors as well as the many supporters of our recently completed Campaign for Community, our school is better positioned than ever before to weather the boom-and-bust economic cycles that have defined Leadville since its inception.
This article originally appeared in the 2024 Fall Newsletter/Impact Report.
Photos courtesy of the Leadville Tourism Panel