A Lack of Affordable Housing in Moab Prompted Western Spirit to Build Their Own

Western Spirit Cycling, one of the foremost mountain bike tour companies in the USA, recently completed construction of a brand-new headquarters building in Moab, Utah. The new building includes modern offices for their full-time staff, meeting rooms, and a gorgeous lobby, but most notably: dedicated lodging and common areas for their hardworking guides.

The life of a full-time guide is filled with “really hard work,” according to Ashley Korenblat, CEO of Western Spirit. The guides “work generally three trips a month with a week off. And they get to hang out in some of the most beautiful, fun places in the country where the best trails are.”

“When it’s the right time in your life to be a guide, it’s about the most fun thing ever,” said Korenblat. “But if you start wanting a dog, or even a house plant, or possibly a closet, then it gets really hard.”

Western Spirit acknowledges how challenging the lifestyle can be, and so they do everything they can to make life a little bit easier for their guides. For many years, they’ve covered housing for guides when they’re out on the road and away from headquarters. If they’re away from HQ but not actively camping in the backcountry, Western Spirit covers condos, hotel rooms, Airbnbs—whatever the guides need.

But Moab is the hub of all things Western Spirit, and in the spring and fall, the vast majority of their trips take place in and around Moab. “When they are home in Moab at our headquarters, which is mostly spring and fall, we also wanted to provide housing for them,” said Korenblat. “And so we built dorm rooms—a whole section of our building—with dorm rooms in it.” In addition, they built a “lounge and kitchen area and storage areas, and patios and decks and places for them to hang out.”

The challenge of finding affordable housing in Moab

This amenity will prove critical for Western Spirit’s ability to retain guides as housing only gets more expensive in Moab. While the cost of housing soars in seemingly every attractive mountain bike town in the United States, Moab has been at the forefront of this so-called “affordable housing crisis” for years.

Brendon Cameron, General Manager for Western Spirit, has worked for many years with both the city and county councils to help bring affordable housing solutions to Moab. Before joining Western Spirit, Cameron ran a company in Moab with about 170 employees. “It was so hard for me to see those people who really wanted to be here and really wanted to work but just didn’t have a place to lay their head,” he said.

While Cameron doesn’t like the term “crisis,” he does acknowledge that Moab has a massive “opportunity” to find creative solutions to the housing problem. Creativity—that’s the key ingredient. “I say ‘homes’ loosely—so housing, whatever that may be. If it’s an adventure van, if it’s a small ADU, if it’s a tiny home, if it’s a house with several bedrooms, there’s not enough—there’s not enough for the people here in Moab, and probably in most of the country. But I would say definitely in adventure capitals of the world like Moab, there’s more workers that want to come here and more work that could be had than there is comfortable living space.”

Laws in Moab make it illegal to camp between trips within the city limits.

Moab has an ordinance that bans camping within the city limits, which includes sleeping in vehicles such as camper vans. While #vanlife is a logical bridge between trips for Western Spirit guides, this ordinance prohibits the lifestyle within the city limits—even if it takes place on private property, such as in the Western Spirit parking lot. At this time, multiple sources have confirmed to me that Moab is turning a blind eye to most violations of this ordinance, as the city actively acknowledges that they have a housing problem. But enforcement could begin at any time.

Even though guides could theoretically stay at campgrounds between trips, Korenblat doesn’t view that as a great solution, either. “In almost every community in the West, there are employees living in campgrounds […] around town because that was their only option,” said Korenblat. “Not only is that not great for the employee, but that means that the visitors have nowhere to camp close to town. That’s a disruption to the recreation economy. If people want to camp, and they want to come into town and go out to dinner or spend money or do whatever, but they can’t do that because all the campsites are full of the nurses and teachers and dental hygienists that don’t have a place to live otherwise, it’s affecting outdoor recreation to in that way.”

Furthermore, the use of federal land for residential purposes is expressly prohibited, even if campers are observing two-week stay limits. While enforcement varies widely across the country, living on federal land can earn employees an incredibly steep fine.

Guide housing as an investment

These factors coalesced to convince Korenblat that allocating valuable space in their new building to guide housing was a worthwhile investment. “Investment” is the appropriate word, because it wasn’t cheap.

“To be clear, we didn’t have to build that housing. And space is a premium. It costs a lot of money to be up to code for the dwellings,” said Cameron. “We had to do individual heating and AC in each unit. There’s certain things we had to do for fire code—it costs a lot of money.”

“These units could be offices. And we could sublet them all tomorrow, maybe in the next 15 minutes, because there’s also demand for office space,” said Korenblat.

But for Korenblat, the investment is worth it. “Making it work for the guides is pretty much our mission-critical priority,” she said.

Guide World on the ground floor

The guides have an entire section of the ground floor of the building all to themselves. While serious business is happening upstairs, the guides have their own dedicated space to relax and unwind between trips.

Thanks to these new dorms, guides can now sign up for a few days of free lodging whenever they need it. The industrial-grade kitchen allows guides to prepare their own food between trips, and common areas filled with couches and comfortable chairs provide a cozy place to hang out and recuperate. I recently toured the building myself and I felt like I would be right at home on the guides’ private floor.

Western Spirit views their guides as far and away their most valuable resource, and when it comes to taking care of this human resource, they put their money where their mouth is.