Legal & Courts  February 4, 2005

Severance takes off in new direction

SEVERANCE ? Bruce Ruth spent Sunday, Jan. 23, doing what most people in Northern Colorado were doing ? soaking up some sun on a surprisingly warm winter day.
Seated on a steel toolbox that covers part of the bed of his pickup, he talked about some five decades in business in Severance, and what the last five years have done to the tiny farm community.
?It?s sure not the place it was when we started here,? Ruth said. ?It?s pretty hard to keep track of some of the things going on.?
Ruth is the man who gave Severance what is arguably the most important piece of its identity.
Bruce?s Bar & Grill, a low stucco building at the northwest corner of Weld County roads 74 and 23, has been serving up sliced, breaded and sauteed bull testicles ? delicately called ?Rocky Mountain oysters? ? and swing dance music for 50 years.
And, despite a housing boom that makes Severance Colorado?s fastest-growing town, according to census figures, Bruce?s is still the name by which the town is best known.
On this day, 33 motorcycles, all but two of them Harley-Davidsons, and three cars were parked outside Bruce?s.
Ruth, 72, was in the middle of explaining why he?s not the insider he used to be regarding Severance?s civic affairs when a pod of five Harleys roared by the driveway of his modest ranch house, just cater cornered from his bar, and thundered southward on WCR 23.
?That don?t bother me none,? Ruth said once the noise had abated enough for him to be heard. ?I know there?s money left behind in the cash register over there,? he said, wagging his head toward the bar.
Ruth, who these days spends a good chunk of the colder months in warmer climates, said he had missed some of the news that has other Severance old-timers talking.
He missed news that the Greeley?s St. Mary?s Catholic parish had purchased 42 acres of land a mile south of his bar, and that a new Catholic high school, serving 500 students from throughout the region, could well be built there within a few years.
He chuckled slightly at the thought of it: ?Five hundred? Well. Isn?t that something??
He puzzles over the town plan, adopted last year, that steers future commercial development southward as well, to the intersection of Weld roads 23 and 72, near the site of the proposed high school.
?Seems like this here?s pretty much the center,? Ruth said, waving a hand toward the intersection where another group of bikers was zipping up leather jackets and preparing to hit the road.
Planners say Severance in the next few years will go the way of Windsor, its neighbor to the southwest that grew from 5,000 residents to 15,000 in a single decade. That town?s commercial center shifted, as well, with supermarkets, banks, restaurants and other key businesses choosing to push a mile or more westward, away from the tiny, older business district that hardly lives up to the term ?downtown.?
A Severance citizen committee that gathered in 2003 to draft a comprehensive plan surveyed the surrounding landscape and decided south would be the direction to push the town?s growth.
With that view, the town is undertaking a project to push sewer lines in that direction ? a process that will conclude in the fall.
?Once that?s in, you?re going to see that area grow quite rapidly,? Severance Administrator John Holdren said.
And that means whether or not plans for the new high school, now being drafted by a Denver architect, receive the final blessings from the Archdiocese of Denver.
Rooftops will come first. New utility lines will open ?thousands of acres for development,? said Windsor businessman Kevin King, who has purchased land adjacent to the high school site.
?What we?ve got going, with the little restaurants and small service businesses, we?ll just continue to see more of.?
In the past year Bruce Ruth has seen something he hasn?t for 50 years in Severance: Competition.
Fort Collins restaurateur Paul Bulau opened Market Café and Catering last fall in the fast-developing Scotch Pines commercial center just a half-mile west of Bruce?s, and it?s catching on with Severance?s growing population.
Likewise, two banks have staked out locations in the same center, being developed by Fort Collins-based Everitt Cos., with Colorado Community Bank and First National Bank of Stratton both building branches.
But the utility lines that bore southward along WCR 23 will usher in a new, Windsor-like era for the town.
Building-permit applications are piling up at Severance?s Town Hall, with 33 recorded in December alone among the 174 granted during 2004. That compares to 60 issued by the town just four years ago.
?People are starting to discover Severance now,? King said. ?They?re looking at it for what they thought Windsor was five years ago.?
Meanwhile, Ruth and his small staff at the bar are planning a low-key, 50th-anniversary celebration at Bruce?s oyster palace.
?We don?t change much,? Ruth said. ?Everything else does. But we don?t.?

SEVERANCE ? Bruce Ruth spent Sunday, Jan. 23, doing what most people in Northern Colorado were doing ? soaking up some sun on a surprisingly warm winter day.
Seated on a steel toolbox that covers part of the bed of his pickup, he talked about some five decades in business in Severance, and what the last five years have done to the tiny farm community.
?It?s sure not the place it was when we started here,? Ruth said. ?It?s pretty hard to keep track of some of the things going on.?
Ruth is the man who gave Severance what is…

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