It was hard to find a parking space at the Third Street Center on a recent Tuesday evening. Inside over 100 people filled the seats in the auditorium to hear about the proposed Harvest Roaring Fork development. 238 acres of Vacant land- fronts Highway 82 adjacent to Cattle Creek, spreading across the valley floor to the Roaring Fork River and beyond.
Neighbors and opponents of several large mid-valley rural developments lately seeking approvals are pooling their anti-growth activism under the banner of the Cattle Creek Confluence Coalition.
A bike path flanks the scrubby terrain supporting sagebrush and wintering elk, a rare example of low elevation habitat with river access in a valley that has absorbed the steady creep of suburban settlement in recent decades.
Delia Malone of the RF Audubon presented information at the meeting and answered questions regarding wildlife impacts. Here she outlines a brief history of the property for KDNK.
"This piece of property, a couple, couple, 300 acres or so, has been through a lot of iterations over the last 30, 40 years. It was a ranch, then it was sold, it was scraped off for a proposed development, and it switched hands numerous times over that time period.
The landscape has self-restored, and now we see a big sage meadow. And during winter, it's one of the last places in the lower Roaring Fork that provides habitat for overwintering elk. And as most folks know, winter is the hardest time for elk. It's the time where elk are basically they're just hanging on and they need these quiet places away from humans."
Realty Capital bought the former Sanders Ranch property in 2024. The development firm out of Texas has a history of projects in the RFV, much of it aimed at workforce housing. One example is the Tree Farm Lofts, 196 units across from Whole Foods in the midvalley. Forty of them are deed-restricted under Eagle County rules.
Now the developer is looking for approval for a PUD it says will “address Garfield County's housing shortage while preserving its rural character and natural landscape.”
The Cattle Creek Confluence Coalition doesn't think so. .
Harvest Roaring Fork proposes up to 1500 housing units, 10% of them so-called “mitigation units” in keeping with affordable housing requirements. The developer touts its plan as going “above and beyond” by offering an additional 20% - up to 300 units - of deed-restricted workforce housing units for FT employees. A 150-room hotel is also in the plan.
Concerns about wildlife are paramount. A herd of around 150 elk are just some of the current inhabitants of the property, Malone told the assembled crowd.
" So keeping that in mind a migration corridor for the elk, an undisturbed area for the elk and for the deer and for the birds.
We also have, um, as most folks know, we also have bald eagle, roosting habitat all along there."
Deer, fox, and cougar roam there. So do several bird species on a new CPW list of vulnerable wildlife, including: American kestrels, the Lewis’s woodpecker, broad-tailed hummingbirds, the Northern Harrier, and in the water, Barrow’s Goldeneyes and the quirky American Dipper.
Malone has even found a threatened orchid on the riverbank. She said 11 acres of conserved land in the current plan amounts to “not conserving at all.”
Rosemary Burkholder is a coalition organizer who has lived in the Valley close to four decades. She said her first home was in El Jebel - before today’s mixed use shopping and living amenities took root there.
" While I was living there, I watched the herd of elk migrate through El Jebel in the wintertime when I would be coming home from work late at night, they'd be crossing the road, whatever, and I saw that whole Willits development, the tree lofts, that whole thing push elk out of there."
Twenty years ago Burkholder left El Jebel, seeking a more rural setting. Now she’s within 5 miles of Harvest Roaring Fork.
Traffic impacts also loom large in the minds of skeptics. So-called Michigan U-Turns add potentially thousands of vehicles onto Highway 82 using a sequence of right turns followed by 180-degree direction changes. The strategy avoids new traffic signals where neighborhood entrances meet the busy highway. Here’s Delia Malone.
" So in a nutshell, this proposed development would essentially be a new city on the banks of the Roaring Fork."
Harvest Roaring Fork could add 4,000-5,000 residents to the lower Roaring Fork Valley and Highway 82. Another Coalition leader told the room the development won’t solve the housing shortage, but instead will create new demand for more services and workers.
The property has long been designated for residential development under Planned Unit Development zoning . Plans emphasize Community centered open spaces, landscaping with native plants, and shared green spaces. Efficient construction to minimize waste and compact homes to reduce environmental impact are promised.
Despite the do-gooding, Coalition team member Burkholder summed up why she joined the fight against approval for Harvest Roaring Fork’s plan.
" These elk are gonna be pushed out of here as well. I said somebody's got to take a voice, make a voice for elk, and you know, speak up for them. Just the whole growth of the valley since I've been here."
At the Carbondale meeting, clipboards with petitions were proffered and signatures collected. A meeting on the development with the county Planning Commission has been delayed after the applicant failed to give public notice as required. The Planning meeting is now scheduled for Feb 25. This week Harvest Roaring Fork plans a public meeting at the Glenwood Springs Community Center. That meeting takes place tomorrow [Jan 20] at 6 p.m.
