Alt-Mod™ in the Spotlight: The Denver Post Features EVstudio and Vederra Modular’s Breakthrough in Affordable Housing
Alt-Mod™ is making headlines. On July 16, 2026, The Denver Post published a feature on Colorado’s modular housing industry that spotlights Alt-Mod™, the patent-pending building technology developed by EVstudio’s Dean Dalvit in partnership with Vederra Modular’s Nathan Peterson. The article examines how this Colorado-grown innovation is lowering the total cost of multifamily housing at a moment when the state needs it most.
You can read the full piece at The Denver Post.
Real Numbers on a Real Project
The Post’s reporting arrives at a critical time. Colorado has invested roughly $70 million across 18 modular and off-site housing innovators, working to close a housing shortfall the State Demography Office estimates at more than 100,000 homes. What the industry has needed is proof that innovation can actually move the needle on cost — and that is exactly what the article documents.
The centerpiece of the feature is Alt-Mod™ in action at the Summit at Granby Apartments, a 66-unit affordable housing development by Summit Housing Group in Grand County. According to the Post’s reporting, applying Alt-Mod™ instead of a conventional modular approach cuts the module count roughly in half — from 93 boxes to 47 — and reduces the total project cost from about $22.6 million to $18.7 million. That is a 17% savings, even after accounting for the on-site finishing work the method requires, and it lands squarely within the 15–20% total vertical hard cost savings Alt-Mod™ delivers compared to traditional modular construction.
The article’s third-party validation is just as important as the numbers. Affordable housing consultant Rodger Hara described the approach as a promising breakthrough for building more affordable homes through better economies of scale. Summit Housing president Paul Capps called the program a game-changer for affordable housing, noting that savings of this magnitude can determine whether a project wins tax credits and gets built at all — and whether mountain-community workers can live near their jobs instead of commuting long distances on winter roads.
What Makes Alt-Mod™ Different
Traditional modular construction stacks factory-built modules directly on top of one another, so module count — and manufacturing and shipping cost — rises directly with the size of the building.
Alt-Mod™ takes a different approach: complex construction happens in the factory, while simple, inexpensive construction happens in the field. Modules are placed on alternating gridlines, with factory-built modules containing the complex elements — kitchens, baths, and MEP — and the voids between them finished on site as open living space. The result is the same unit count and the same design, built with roughly half the factory modules. Fewer modules also means less freight to the job site, reducing shipping costs by up to 40%, along with less material consumption, lower embodied carbon, and reduced waste.
Complexity in the factory. Simplicity in the field. That’s the Alt-Mod™ savings model.
The Story Behind the System
Alt-Mod™ is the product of a focused research and development effort at EVstudio between February and September of 2025, in which our architecture, structural, and MEP teams worked through an intensive development cycle to rethink how wood and light gauge steel modular buildings are arranged. The team analyzed load paths, service routing, manufacturability, lateral strategies, connector design, and field sequencing — the full picture of what it takes to make an alternating module layout work in practice.
That work culminated in the first Alt-Mod™ System Narrative, published on October 20, 2025, which establishes the foundational framework for the system. The technology is now patent-pending, with its designs, systems, and documentation protected by patents (pending), copyrights, and trade secret laws.
While similar concepts have appeared in European concrete modular systems, Alt-Mod™ represents the first known U.S. adaptation of this strategy for wood and light gauge steel — the framing systems that dominate American offsite construction. That means faster market adoption, lighter modules, more economical transportation and crane operations, and a system that works within the manufacturing ecosystem that already exists across the country.
Read more about Alt-Mod™ here.
Built for Multifamily
Alt-Mod™ is purpose-built for multifamily residential — apartments and townhomes of every kind, including affordable, workforce, student, and senior housing, as well as fee-simple and build-to-rent townhome communities. The system adapts across walk-up, podium, and wrap building types, making it a fit for the vast majority of today’s multifamily development pipeline.
The Granby project illustrates why the affordable housing market is such a natural fit: on LIHTC and other tightly funded projects, every dollar saved is the difference between a deal that pencils and one that doesn’t.
From Concept to Contracts in Under a Year
What makes the Denver Post feature so meaningful is that it captures Alt-Mod™ moving from concept to reality. Less than a year after the publication of the System Narrative, Alt-Mod™ projects are under contract and heading toward construction, with the Summit at Granby serving as a proving ground for the system at full scale. Manufacturing partner Vederra Modular will fabricate the modules at its Aurora facility, with the first boxes expected to ship to Granby before winter.
This is the continuation of EVstudio’s long tradition of innovation in the modular industry — and independent press coverage with hard project numbers is a milestone worth marking.
Ready to Build Smarter?
Through this collaborative initiative, EVstudio is proud to serve as the exclusive Architecture and Engineering partner delivering Alt-Mod™ solutions. If you are a developer, housing authority, or municipality exploring ways to improve the economics of your next multifamily project — without compromising design — we invite you to start a conversation. Reach out to EVstudio today.
Read the full Denver Post feature: As Colorado invests in modular housing, a new player offers innovation on a shoestring
