Harvest Roaring Fork withdraws application, plans revisions before returning to county

The developers behind the Harvest Roaring Fork development have withdrawn their application for a controversial 1,500-unit development near Cattle Creek, saying they plan to revise the proposal and bring it back after feedback from Garfield County planners and commissioners.

Harvest Roaring Fork has been pitched by its developers as a long-term answer to the valley’s housing shortage, with smaller housing options closer to jobs and services. Opponents, though, have argued the project is too large for the area and would intensify pressure on Highway 82, surrounding habitat and public services.

The move pauses the current review of the planned unit development, which would bring up to 1,500 housing units to 283 acres along Colorado Highway 82 between Glenwood Springs and Carbondale. The proposal includes 150 deed-restricted affordable housing units, about 300 resident owner-occupied workforce units, roughly 1,050 market-rate homes, commercial space and a hotel.

In an April 6 letter to Garfield County Community Development Director Glenn Hartmann, Harvest Roaring Fork LLC formally withdrew the application. The letter asked the county to stop its review and schedule no further public hearings on that filing.

The letter does express, however, that the developer intends to continue its separate application to revoke the expired River Edge Colorado planned unit development on the property.

Realty Capital Founder Richard Myers said the withdrawal was intended to give the development team time to revise the proposal after what he viewed as encouraging feedback during the March 11 Garfield County Planning Commission hearing.

“We thought the Planning and Zoning Commission was asking us to come back,” Myers said. “They gave us, we thought, fairly positive feedback that we’re getting pretty close, but that we needed to make some adjustments and corrections.”

He said the team is still working through what those revisions will look like and is talking with county staff to better understand concerns raised during the process.

“We’re still working through that right now,” he said. “Some of it was just typos. We’re getting clarification and having conversations with staff to make sure we understand what some of their issues were with the application.”

He said the goal is to return with a version that better reflects what county reviewers were asking for.

“So that’s what we’re doing,” Myers said. “We’re making the changes, and then we’ll come back to the Planning and Zoning Commission, and hopefully we’re closer to what they are looking for.”

The withdrawal comes less than a month after the Planning Commission voted 6-1 to recommend denial of the Harvest Roaring Fork PUD following a lengthy public hearing dominated by opposition.

Speakers raised concerns about traffic, wildlife, water, evacuation risks and whether the project met Garfield County land-use rules. County staff had also recommended denial before the hearing, citing concerns tied to housing density, commercial uses, water, wildlife, affordable housing, transit access, traffic and impacts to public infrastructure and services.

At the same March 11 meeting, commissioners unanimously approved revoking the expired River Edge PUD zoning on two parcels and returning them to residential suburban zoning. That piece of the process is still moving ahead.

Myers said he does not see the withdrawal as a setback so much as a refining of a proposal that spans more than 600 pages and could take decades to build out.

“There’s always room for improvement,” Myers said. “It’s 600-some pages long, and it’s hard to get it perfect the first time.”

He said that matters even more for a project expected to be built in phases over many years.

“The project’s going to build out probably over 20 years, maybe more,” he said. 

He said the team is trying to avoid revisions that would weaken the project’s housing mission.

“We don’t want to do anything that harms the workforce housing nature of the project,” he said.

For now, the current application is off the table while the developer works on a revised version for another round of county review. A hearing on the River Edge revocation application is scheduled for May 18.