Larimer to test ‘cluster’ housing

County’s new master plan encourages developers to save farmland, open space

By Steve Lipsher

The Denver Post, November 19, 1997

WELLINGTON -- On a windswept knoll where grass meets sky, Dan Nelson is trying to set a new direction for the West.

A few miles outside the sprawling northern Colorado towns of Fort Collins, Loveland and Greeley, Nelson has plotted a modest cluster of homes that some believe will revolutionize development in Colorado by preserving open space.

"I’d really hate to see all of this carved up," he said, gesturing around the 547 acres of hay meadows, wetlands and grasslands that offer views north to the Wyoming border and -- on a clear day -- south as far as Pikes Peak. "We’ve never really had any other options."

But today, in the state’s first sanctioned attempt at "cluster" development, the Larimer County Planning Commission is set to give final approval to a new master plan that encourages developers to save at least 80 percent of the county’s farmland and open space.

It’s a plan that no one is completely pleased with, and no one knows whether it will work, but facing the growth exploding along the Front Range, its a plan the county feels compelled to try.

"The challenge was how can we allow people to protect their property rights and develop their land, while protecting the environment," said John Clarke, a county commissioner pushing the plan.

The concept is simple. Under Larimer County’s Partnership Land Use System: Developers will be allowed to build an additional number of "bonus" homes if they agree to limit construction to a small portion of the land.

Yet it took more than two years to formulate under a painstaking give-and-take process between the county, developer, property-rights groups and environmentalists.

"The end product is not perfect, but it’s something we can all live with," said Duane Rennels, a founder of the 800-member citizens for the Preservation of Property Rights.

Nelson’s development, Indian Creek Meadows -- a rolling bit of the high plains used predominantly for growing hay and harboring pheasants -- is held up as a model of how even compromise can save the flavor of the West.

"What we’re trying to do is keep open space in many different forms, whether it’s for mountain backdrops, character-defining vistas or agricultural use," said Jim Reidhead, director of the county’s Rural Land Use Center.

National Interest

Still, environmentalists worry that the proposal remains vague and doesn’t protect enough critical areas, while property-rights proponents fear landowners could lose some of their sale value.

Up for final approval tonight, the plan has attracted inquiries from across the nation and throughout Colorado, where growth and suburban sprawl rank among the top concerns of many residents.

Originally, Nelson wanted to divide it into 14 standard single-home lots of 35 acres each, the smallest plot allowed without any county review under a maligned 1960’s state law.

"I really didn’t want to do the 35-acre lots because I know what they look like," said Nelson, a real-estate agent whose own home sits on the northwest corner of the property.

Such developments typically chop up open space through a maze of roads and long driveways.

Instead, Nelson asked the county for special permission to clump the houses on smaller parcels along a narrow corridor, preserving the majority of the land as communal hay meadows and fields.

Commissioners receptive

The problem, Nelson recognized, was that smaller lots would be worth smaller prices, so he suggested building five additional homes to make up the revenue difference.

The county commissioners, who coincidentally were creating the Rural Land Use Center to explore just such options, were receptive.

"We really feel this is the kind of thing we can encourage," Commissioner Clarke said. "In the old days, someone would have come in and whacked that sucker up into 35-acre lots. You end up with land that’s too small to farm and too big to mow."

Before granting the bonus homes, the county set a few requirements, such as forbidding homes in wetlands and along the ridgelines to protect the scenery. As a result, each homesite is limited to an accessible "building envelope" that cuts down on roads and creates additional buffers to wetlands.

In return, Nelson saves as much as 20 percent in costs for stringing utility lines and building roads over a smaller area.

Meanwhile, the Rural Land Use Center initiated its own efforts. It committed the owners of five other big chunks of land to similar preservation agreements. Those deals have cut the potential number of 35-acre lots on those properties from 65 homesites to a total of 50 smaller, clustered sites.

‘Better than what we have’

Stemming from those pilot efforts, the county has proposed in the master plan to extend the 80-percent formula throughout the county, including the denser "exurban" regions around Fort Collins, Loveland and Estes Park.

"The plan is ... better than what we have now," said Ramon Ajero of the Sierra Club’s Poudre Canyon group.

But environmentalists remain concerned that the plan doesn’t address specific growth controls or the use of downzoning, in which the county legally may change the zoning to prevent development.

Additionally, Ajero suggested that developers should be required to pay their share of new infrastructure costs, such as county road maintenance, utilities and schools.

"In some ways, I think we’ve skirted the really sticky issues, and the battles are still ahead" when the planning commission starts to draft the actual rules for the plan, he said. "The Proof will be five or 10 years down the road when you see the result of the land-use code."

Rennels and other defenders of property rights also have concerns, contending that some ranch owners might now be able to generate the same amount of money from smaller, more numerous lots.

‘It’s not for everybody’

"We’re always concerned about the poor guy who got caught in the middle and was hurt," he said. "A lot of those people have owned property for many, many years. That’s their only retirement fund. That’s their only education fund. That’s all their money."

Indeed, the market value of the property will be the key to whether or not others follow him into the voluntary program, Nelson said.

"I don’t know how it’s going to be from a market standpoint because I haven’t tested it yet. I think there’s a big demand for it, but who knows? It’s not for everybody," he said.

He plans to offer some of the medium-sized lots -- now about 10 acres each -- for less than $100,000 when he puts them on the market in the next few weeks.

Some adjustment

Assuming they sell, one of his biggest questions down the line will be how neighbors learn to live adjacent to the property’s 300 acres of agricultural land -- land where hay rakes and tractors will be running at dawn in the summer.

"It will take some adjustment. People will have to accept that as part of the rural setting," Nelson said, adding his disdain for developers who commonly cram the largest number of homes on any subdivision plat.

"I think the end product," he continued, "will be much better than what the 35-acre tract is."

A new way to grow

Indian Creek Meadows, a 500-acre farm northeast of Fort Collins, will become Larimer County’s first "cluster" development, intended to preserve open space. Under old regulations, the land would have been split into one 35-acre tract for each home. Under the new rules developers will be allowed to build extra "bonus" homes if they limit sites within 20 percent of the land -- leaving 80 percent as farm land or open space. While conventional planning allowed homes anywhere on the lots the cluster plan limits homesites to accessible building envelopes.

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