Developer plans Fort Collins’ doorstep

FORT COLLINS – A 101-acre purchase on one of the region’s hottest Interstate 25 corners – and an epic-scale engineering job to make the land ready for development – could set the table for an annexation face-off between Fort Collins and Timnath.

Fort Collins developer and homebuilder Jay Stoner, best known for his high-end residential projects at Eagle Ranch, Greenstone and The Hill at Cobb Lake on the city’s southeast and eastern edges, on Nov. 6 closed a $2.2 million deal to buy the acreage from Fort Collins lawyer Garth Rogers.

For the next several months, engineers will burrow into a plan that would require moving 1.2 million cubic yards of earth to raise the property and, at the same time, take it out of a flood zone mapped by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

SPONSORED CONTENT

How Platte River Power Authority is accelerating its energy transition

Platte River Power Authority, the community-owned wholesale electricity provider for Northern Colorado, has a history of bold initiatives.

“This is a hugely important intersection, and deserves something that Northern Colorado can appreciate,” Stoner said. “I imagine something that’s sort of like an Old Town – a mix of retail, office, and residential space. We want to avoid having it look like some of the other things going on up and down I-25.”

Assuming the monumental amount of earth can be moved, and FEMA can be convinced the flood-safety fixes will work, about 90 acres of land at the junction would be ready for development within two years. And, once that’s accomplished, Stoner said he would explore annexation options.

Shopping for annexation

“Right now, we’re acquiring the ground, and doing engineering and dirt work,” Stoner said. “Thereafter, we’ll be shopping Timnath and Fort Collins for annexation.”

The junction, like most of the western frontage of I-25 between Loveland and Wellington, is in the growth management area defined by Fort Collins City Plan and recognized by Larimer County under the terms of an intergovernmental agreement.

But Timnath remains in the process of defining its own growth boundary, and nothing – at least on paper – would preclude the town from looking west of I-25 for projects to support a sales-tax base.

Fort Collins officials are poised to take a stand on the western I-25 frontage to preserve what they call the city’s strategic gateway.

“I and council look at it very clearly that that piece of land will be, at some point in the future, within the city of Fort Collins,” City Manager Darin Atteberry said. “I think the most compelling point is that the property is within the Fort Collins growth-management boundary. For Timnath to consider an annexation there, they would have to overlap the boundary.”

Timnath Town Administrator Becky Davidson could not be reached to comment on Stoner’s planned development before the Business Report went to press.

Before any annexation talks begin, Stoner’s engineering consultants must plan to drain ponds formed by years of sand-and-gravel excavation on the site, raise it out of the floodplain and build a channel that would accommodate a 100-year Cache la Poudre River flood.

“The Poudre River does not fit under I-25 north of Harmony,” Stoner said. “In the event of a 100-year flood, it completely buries Harmony.”

The land plan, under development by BHA Design Inc. of Fort Collins, would feature a 200-foot-wide, nine-foot-deep channel that would solve the floodwater issue, and some of the dirt displaced in that process would be used to raise the elevation of the surrounding land.

Fort Collins Current Planning Director Cameron Gloss called the engineering aspects of the job “immense,” and said city engineering and planning departments would like to cooperate on the work.

The proximity of city-owned land on the north side of Harmony Road, destined to become a regional transit center according to planners, gives officials reason to collaborate.

Ponds, trails included

“It will be a challenge to develop, given the floodplain constraints,” Gloss said. “We’d like to work with them to resolve some of these fairly complex engineering issues.”

That process will begin in the spring – “as soon as the frost is out,” Stoner said – and will lead to the sculpting of about 20-30 acres of ponds, trails and open space that wrap around the commercial and housing portions of the development.

Stoner said potential users would include retailers, restaurants, an events center, office tenants and homeowners in dense, townhouse-style tracts.

“We hope to have something that’s aesthetically pleasing, well beyond what you see elsewhere on I-25,” Stoner said. “We would impose some fairly strict architectural guidelines to make sure that happens.”

Stoner also said he would like to make the development strictly local, with indigenous businesses choosing the gateway parcel for expansions.

“Imagine, say, a Silver Grill South,” Stoner said. “A local retailer like Jax (Outdoor Gear) could have a store out there where they could demonstrate kayaks, that sort of thing. I want to do something that’s not just the same-old, same-old that you see elsewhere.”