Senior housing project planned for Rigden Farm

FORT COLLINS — Northern Colorado’s demographic-driven rush to build retirement housing projects likely will spill next into Rigden Farm in Fort Collins, where a Denver developer plans a 129-unit apartment and cottage complex.
If approved, the independent-living center would be built on a 4.25-acre site on the northern edge of the Rigden Farm neighborhood, now under construction on the southeast corner of Timberline and Drake roads.
A three-story, horseshoe-shaped apartment building on Drake Road at Iowa Drive would house 115 residents, most of them in studio or one-bedroom apartments as small as 400 square feet. The 110,000-square-foot building would also have 17 two-bedroom apartments.
But moving ahead, Spectrum Retirement Communities LLC needs to solve a parking problem.
Fort Collins’ land use code sets forth parking requirements for apartment complexes that don’t take into account the age and needs of residents.
Under the code,
Mostly because the average age of Spectrum community residents is 82 and most do not own cars, the company and its Denver project consultants, Davis Partnership PC, are seeking an exemption from city regulations that specify space devoted to parking based on numbers of units and bedrooms in a complex.
The letter of the law would require 177 parking spaces for the three-story building alone, while the site plan shows just 70.
The Spectrum project is the latest in a slew of proposals for retirement living centers in Larimer and Weld counties, all spurred by the rising share of the population over 65.
By 2020, Colorado Demographer Jim Westkott predicts 13 percent of the state population will be over 65.
Fort Collins-based Columbine Health System is responding with the Winslow project, a new 94-unit independent-living apartment building on Center Avenue in Fort Collins.
Another Denver developer, LBA Community Development Group, will build a 250-unit senior housing complex in the Oakridge Business Park in southeast Fort Collins.
Details of the Rigden project, including cost, will await future filings with the city planning department.
But Columbine’s Winslow project, smaller in unit numbers and square footage, will cost slightly more than $11 million.

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