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The Denver Post

Urban getaways spur rural sprawl
State ranchette exemption begets boom

November 25, 2003
Section: 1A SECTION
Page: A-01
   David Olinger

Denver Post Staff Writer
Caption: PHOTO: The Denver Post/Helen H. Richardson

Steven Reed plays with his dog, Ralph, on his 38-acre ranchette near Franktown, which includes a modern wood home and historic farm buildings. Reed says he and his wife are 'just thrilled to be here.' GRAPHIC: The Denver Post/Severiano Galvan

Rural sprawl

An autumn breeze rustles the Ponderosa pines shading the long driveway through Jim Wanzeck's 35-acre ranchette.

From his front door, a streamlet trickles past a backyard footbridge to a fish pond below. The massive Pikes Peak summit peeks through his second-floor office window.

The creature comforts in the spacious rooms below include a family home theater. Outside, a stone-and-stucco barn accommodates not only a pair of horses but a kitchen, 10-foot basketball hoop and batting cage.

This is Colorado ranchette living at its finest: quiet, rural luxury, wildlife, open space - "just a heavenly lifestyle that we've dreamed about," Wanzeck said.

It is also a popular escape from Colorado's urban sprawl that has created a widening growth problem: rural sprawl.

Because of a 1972 state law exempting properties of at least 35 acres from subdivision regulations, an estimated 2 million rural acres have been carved into residential tracts just large enough to escape county planners' scrutiny.

Critics of ranchette development say the cumulative effects of this 35-acre exemption range from diminished wildlife habitat, tarnished Colorado vistas and ruined land to haphazard development and huge costs for counties serving remote homes.

Dave Theobald, a conservation planner at Colorado State University, calculates that as of 2000, properties of 1.7 to 40 acres covered almost 2.5 million acres of Colorado - four times the area of its cities, towns and suburbs. He estimates that exempt ranchettes account for 80 percent to 90 percent of that area and predicts it will double by 2030.

"It does concern me. I think we need to look at the best uses of natural resources," he said. "People are moving further and further away because they want to live in these far-flung areas."

In El Paso County, the subdivision process requires developers to demonstrate a 300-year water supply, road access and appropriate building sites, and pay fees toward school and parkland, drainage and possibly traffic impacts.

With tracts of 35 acres or more, "you're exempt from all that," said Carl Schueler, the county's assistant planning director. "A lot of people just say, 'I want to get on the other side of that bright line."'

Will Coyne, land-use advocate for the nonprofit group Environment Colorado, calls the rural sprawl of ranchettes "the next frontier" in the state's growth debate.

If Colorado designed a perfect plan to minimize urban sprawl, "we would still have this huge looming monster of 35-acre development," he said. "It's the sleeping giant of growth problems in Colorado."

The popularity of ranchettes is indisputable.

In Douglas County, Wanzeck bought one of 30 ranchettes subdivided from a ranch just east of Castlewood Canyon State Park. The owner of a ReMax Masters real estate office, he has sold seven ranchettes so far this year to buyers from California to nearby Parker.

Steven Reed is one. He and his wife, Pamela, fled Parker's growth to a 38-acre ranchette with a modern wood house and historic farm buildings leaning perilously on their foundations. The maintenance work is unending, but "we pinch ourselves every day. We're just thrilled to be here," he said.

Wanzeck warns ranchette buyers that tending 35 acres is not for the faint-hearted, and he is not a fan of the statutory exemption they enjoy.

"There's too many contractors that come in and sell blue sky," he said, to buyers unaware of impending road and utility costs.

But he disputes claims that ranchettes harm Colorado wildlife. He said elk herds, deer, bobcats, porcupines, rattlesnakes and raccoons roam his ranchette, and claims he twice spotted a rare lynx.

"I think we've lived in harmony with the wildlife," he said.

Nobody argues that any one ranchette poses a problem. What worries many Colorado growth analysts is their unchecked proliferation.

In many counties, the popularity of bypassing the time, costs, public hearings and regulatory controls of subdivision approval already has produced ranchette lands that dwarf their largest cities.

In El Paso County alone, 3,503 ranchette-sized properties were recorded by the end of 2002, 30 percent of them in the previous three years.

"The vast, vast majority are the classic 35-acre tracts," Schueler said. "It's bigger than the city of Colorado Springs, which is the biggest city in Colorado, area-wise. It's way more than all other developed land in unincorporated El Paso County."

And because they escape subdivision review, "we end up with very inefficient land use. It just takes up huge amounts of space," he said, creates "all sorts of screwed-up roads" - and complicates future development plans.

"If you're trying to build an airport, preserve open space, build a road, you've got all these 40-acre people to deal with."

In Gunnison County, the assessor's office counts 914 properties of 35 to 40 acres, including mining claims, in a county of just 14,000 residents.

The county's efforts to control ranchettes landed in court, where it successfully defended its right last month to withhold a building permit until a developer meets county road standards.

In Larimer County, ranchette development rivals El Paso County.

Senior planner Al Kadera estimates Larimer has 3,800 "ranchette-type parcels" of 35 to 55 acres east of Rocky Mountain National Park.

"What the 35s did was cut down on the overall development in the county," he said. "On the flip side, if you are anti-sprawl, we're taking up a whole lot of land to accommodate a very few houses."

In Larimer County alone, 836 ranchette-sized properties have qualified for agricultural tax exemptions, which can reduce property taxes "from thousands of dollars to less than $100 on the land," said assessment director Amy Wagner.

Colorado State University professors have studied what they consider negative effects of ranchette development on state birds and county books.

Rick Knight, a wildlife conservation professor, found public lands and ranchlands in Larimer County hosted similar animal life. By contrast, even low-density residential development tended to displace songbirds, such as green-tailed towhees, with robins and magpies, and bobcats and coyotes with domestic cats and dogs.

"In a nutshell, what we found is songbirds and carnivores in these exurban housing developments are pretty much what you find in town," he said.

Andy Seidl, an agricultural economics specialist at CSU, estimates that Colorado counties spend $1.65 in services to agricultural lands converted to ranchettes for every dollar they get back in taxes.

"People who live in this state value open space and they value rural lifestyle, and they value the wide-open Western things," he said, but school buses drive farther, and cash-strapped counties build more roads as a result.

Seidl called his cost estimate of ranchette development conservative because it did not assign any value to diminished wildlife, loss of views or air pollution attributable to long commutes.

Ernie Marx, the agricultural and natural resources agent in Larimer County, spends most of his time helping ranchette owners manage their land.

On the bright side, he has watched some owners labor to restore natural prairies. More often, he sees people who fail to understand how much arid grassland is needed to feed one horse.

With 30 horses, one family from the Carolinas "took 56 acres in pretty good shape and turned it into blowing dirt in two months. That land is still basically weeds," he said. "It's kind of sad. People move out there with a dream, and the dream doesn't mesh with environmental realities."

In El Paso County, a dirt lane called Log Road - notwithstanding the utter absence of trees - serves an array of ranchette development, from modern suburban homes to dilapidated trailers set on parched ground.

Vicky Nigro loves her new home there. In suburban Colorado Springs, her husband's heavy equipment collection raised eyebrows. On Log Road, he parks a bulldozer, road grader, tractor and fire truck without complaints and sometimes takes their grandkids for a ride. Rabbits scamper around their ranchette. Antelope frequent the neighborhood. The night skies are full of stars.

"Peace and quiet," she said. "It's better than the new subdivisions where the houses are 6 feet apart and you reach out your window and shake hands with your neighbors."

Ken Phillips, a ranchette owner at the north end of Log Road, is offering his farmland, house and barn for $339,000 and retiring to northern Idaho. He said living there has been wonderful, but he does worry about the "shacks and sheds" dotting the landscape.

``It looks like a heavy snow'll knock them down," he said.



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