Gypsum early learning center takes an industry award for pairing classrooms with staff housing
Haselden Construction published its full account of the Gypsum Early Learning Center and Employee Housing project on Nov. 9. The Eagle County School District campus puts a 50,000 square foot center for about 320 children beside 40 below market apartments for district employees.
The builders have told the full story of one of Eagle County's most unusual school projects. On Nov. 9, Haselden Construction published its project account of the Gypsum Early Learning Center and Employee Housing, the Eagle County School District campus in Gypsum that combines an early childhood center with apartments for district staff on a single 20 acre site. The learning center is a two-story, 50,000 square foot building serving children from infancy through pre-kindergarten. At full capacity it can accommodate approximately 320 children. Beside it, the housing component provides 40 below market apartments reserved for Eagle County School District employees, built directly alongside the educational facility rather than on a separate site across the county.
The pairing is the point of the project. In its account, the construction team describes two pressures the district set out to answer at once: childcare availability, which can decide whether parents in the valley are able to work, and housing costs, which shape whether the district can recruit employees and keep them in the community long term.
Paid for by the 2023 bond
The project was funded as part of the school district's voter approved 2023 bond program. The district's capital improvements page records that voters approved a 100 million dollar bond in 2023, earmarked for projects up and down the valley, among them a new Gypsum Early Learning Center and more workforce housing units for district staff. It is a separate measure from the operating override Eagle County voters decided in this month's election.
Building the two halves together was not simple. The joint venture of Haselden Construction and RA Nelson describes high groundwater levels, wetland infrastructure tie-ins and complex plumbing reconfigurations on the site, worked through with the design team and trade partners while construction continued. Because the campus near Gypsum Creek Middle School and Red Hill Elementary sat in an active school area, the team also had to hold clear construction zones while neighbouring schools stayed in use.
An Award of Merit, with the honours still to come
The project holds a 2026 Engineering News-Record Award of Merit in the K-12 Education category of the Mountain States Best Projects competition. ENR announced the Colorado and Wyoming winners in August, from 135 projects reviewed by its panel of industry judges, and listed the Gypsum project as the category's Award of Merit, submitted by Haselden Construction. The category's Best Project award went to Peetz School in Peetz. Winners are to be honoured at the regional awards event in Denver on Dec. 4.
For the district, the finished campus is a practical tool on both of its chosen fronts: roughly 320 early learning places in the western valley, where the district sited the center on its own land in Gypsum, and 40 homes that give its own employees a chance to live in the community they serve. The award recognises the construction. The use of the buildings is the longer test.
