Dozens of neighbors appeal new urbanism project Polestar Village in west Fort Collins
Pat Ferrier
Fort Collins Coloradoan
12/5/23
More than 60 residents living near Polestar Village, a proposed new urbanism project in west Fort Collins, have appealed the Fort Collins Planning and Zoning Commission’s November approval.
City Council will hear the appeal Feb. 6, according to the City Clerk’s office.
City planning commissioners unanimously approved the 144-home project even as they expressed concerns about traffic impacts on adjacent neighborhoods.
Neighbor Charles Thompson and 63 others signed the notice of appeal citing the failure to properly interpret and apply relevant provisions of the city’s land use code. The appeal was light on details, but Thompson said more evidence will be submitted Friday, Dec. 8, the city’s deadline to present new information.
The 20-acre project, carved out of a larger tract that once operated as Happy Heart Farm, is east of South Overland Trail between West Elizabeth Street and Orchard Place.
Much of neighbors’ concern at the planning and zoning commission hearing centered around the lack of street connection to West Elizabeth Street.
When Polestar purchased the property, Happy Heart owners retained the bulk of the land and cut off access from Polestar’s property to Elizabeth Street, which eliminated any potential connection between Polestar Village and a major roadway.
Plum and Orchard streets will be extended through the project but will not go as far as Overland Trail or Elizabeth Street. That means all traffic will be routed through neighborhood streets including Locust Grove, Louise Lane and Kimball Road.
Under a section of the city’s land use code cited in the appeals notice, applicants can’t “reserve a strip of land between a dedicated street and adjacent property for the purpose of controlling access to such street from such property unless such reservation is approved by the city engineer and the control of such strip is given to the city.”
It is unclear if that argument will hold up since the previous landowner cut off access from Polestar to West Elizabeth, not Polestar owner Michael Gornik.
Polestar Village, which moved from Hawaii to Fort Collins in 2022, is a nonprofit educational group that promotes new urbanism and spirituality. The project includes community gathering sites and gardens as well as a bed and breakfast, small commercial center and wellness center.
Polestar’s 20 acres fall in the city’s low-density residential and low-density mixed-use neighborhood zones.
Neighbors signing the notice of appeal also cited the city’s land use code for those zones.
The low-density mixed-use neighborhood “is intended to be a setting for a predominance of low-density housing combined with complementary and supporting land uses that serve a neighborhood and are developed and operated in harmony with the residential characteristics of a neighborhood.” According to code, a neighborhood “shall be considered to be about 80 to 160 acres with its edges typically consisting of major streets, drainageways, irrigation ditches, railroad tracks and other major physical features.”
Planning commissioners were largely sympathetic to neighbors’ concerns about more traffic running through their rural neighborhood but felt the connection to a major street was beyond the commission’s purview since the Polestar developer did not own the property through which a connection would have to run.
Traffic counts were projected to double or triple on some neighborhood streets but would still be under the city’s threshold of 2,500 average daily trips before they transition to collector streets and require additional work to bring them up to city standards.
https://www.coloradoan.com/story/money/real-estate/2023/12/05/polestar-village-new-urbanism-project-in-west-fort-collins-faces-appeal/71811617007/
