V. Richard Haro/The Coloradoan CUSP OF GROWTH: Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park looms in the background as cattle graze in a field in Berthoud next to the Mary's Farm subdivision. The subdivision is a new development in Berthoud. How Cities Manage Growth Berthoud 5 percent growth cap on building permits issued every year Impact fees: $33,000-plus Estes park Restricted densities on slopes Building fees: $9,740 (2003 estimate) Joint comprehensive plan developed with Larimer County for Estes Valley. Requires 15 percent to 30 percent open space on new subdivision Requires developers to provide roads and water to developments Fort Collins Slope restrictions Development fees: $19,000 City Plan (adopted 1997, currently being updated) Requires adequate public facilities to be in place before development Loveland Requires developers to supply shares of water Impact fees: $20,000 Requires mix of commercial and residential development in large projects Development can't outstrip infrastructure Timnath Comprehensive plan Growth area: 10 square miles Annexed 2,200 acres into Timnath Impact fees: $4,913 Design standards Wellington Growth area includes where town can grow and develop with the current water supply. Impact fees: $14,275 Windsor Market driven Comprehensive plan outlines where town board would like to see growth occur over next 20 to 30 years. Impact fees: $12,157 plus fees for raw water and schools

Too little and there's no revenue from building permits to pay for new fire trucks, road repairs or park maintenance.

Striking a tender balance in Larimer County -- which grew 35 percent from 1990 to 2000 -- is a persistent headache for those clutching at ways to manage how and where they grow.

"Growth brings in dollars and people and jobs, and that certainly keeps our economy vibrant," said Stephan Weiler, an economist and co-director of the Center for Research on the Colorado Economy at Colorado State University.

"But Colorado also has a lot to protect. Part of what drives our high quality of life is its setting," he said. "Just letting the market decide what it wants to do on a vacuous plane may be OK, but we believe we have some important resources to protect."

Protecting those resources typically requires government intervention but rarely brings unanimity among cities on how best to achieve the goal.

Some restrict growth through limits on building permits; some put annexation decisions in the hands of voters; others rely on the market economy or strict land-use codes as a way to manage growth.

There's no one-size-fits-all plan; no shining example to be emulated, most officials admit.

Each municipality pulls from its own toolbox to find ways to protect the environment, retain its quality of life and encourage a vibrant economic base.

Some point to Boulder as an example of growth controls gone bad. Others hold it up as a proactive approach to urban sprawl.

Effective growth control, it seems, is in the eye of the beholder.

No magic wand

"There's not a silver bullet or magic formula," said Dave Theobald, research scientist with the Natural Resource Ecology Lab and assistant professor in the Natural Resource Recreation and Tourism Department at CSU.

There needs to be a combination of urban growth boundaries and special districts that protect things such as agricultural land, he said.

A review funded by CSU of 47 studies of the cost of development in the west indicated that the average residential property lost an average of 17 cents for every $1 of tax revenue while agricultural land produced an average surplus of 69 cents per dollar of tax revenue, Theobald said.

"There is a vast difference between them. Sure, growth generates revenue and building permits generate revenue; but you have to ask, does it cost more to provide services?"

Though migration into Colorado has slowed some from the 30.6 percent growth between 1990 and 2000, the state remains one of the fastest growing in the country, according to most estimates.

Grappling with growth

Managing that coinciding demand for housing and services while retaining a town's character is still a top issue for municipalities, said Sam Mamet, associate director and chief lobbyist of the Colorado Municipal League.

Each handles it differently.

Berthoud, Golden, Lafayette and Elizabeth voters have growth limits.

Seven communities, including Mead, Erie and Lyons, require residents to vote on all annexation proposals, Mamet said.

Most others use the combination of strong land use codes, master plans and impact fees that require growth to pay for itself.

But, in Timnath, Severance and Wellington, growth -- even substantial growth -- is welcomed openly.

With population standing at about 230, Timnath has plans to annex 2,200 acres.

That means its population could grow to more than 15 times its current size.

"We felt there was growth going on, and we could either be more actively involved" or let another community "grow to our doorstep," said Town Administrator Joe Racine, hired last year to help navigate Timnath through its growing pains.

Request by landowners to annex the 2,200 acres provided the impetus and money for Timnath to do some long-range planning.

In Severance, houses are busting out all over.

Town Administrator John Holdren said Severance is working on a new land-use ordinance that will establish regulations for annexations, subdivisions, zoning and the entire land use package.

Holdren estimates Severance will double its 1,000 population in the next five years.

There are at least 400 units waiting in the wings this year; 124 new home permits were issued last year.

"The town is welcoming growth," Holdren said. "But development has to pay for the growth. We would like to see more commercial growth, but we're beginning to work on that a little."

Like Wellington, Severance hopes commercial development will follow the rooftops.

Wellington is welcoming

In Wellington, "too much growth hasn't been a problem yet," said Town Administrator Larry Lorentzen.

"We are trying to encourage growth in order to compete and have our own local community rather than be a bedroom community for Fort Collins," he said.

The town began encouraging residential growth several years ago to "get rooftops to bring in commercial development," Lorentzen said.

It seems to have worked.

Hundreds of new homes have already been built, and hundreds more are expected this year, in addition to a new bank and motel, said Lorentzen, the town administrator for the past 2Þ years.

Wellington growth, however, is limited by its water supply.

The town has a guarantee of 2,000 acre feet of water per year; enough to supply a population of about 15,000, five times its current size of 3,000 residents, Lorentzen said.

That could sustain Wellington for the next 20 years.

"To go beyond 15,000, the board would have to go out and find additional water sources," he said.

Water, or lack of it, is becoming "the strongest growth management issue right now," said Sam Mamet of CML.

"If you don't have water you can't grow."

Windsor water works

Windsor has worked water into its growth plans as it nears capacity on its water lines, said Dennis Wagner, the town's director of engineering.

The town will begin work on a new transmission line to North Weld County Water District's line at Weld County Roads 76 and 15 that could be done by 2004.

That will increase Windsor's capacity by 10 million gallons per day -- three times what it's serving today, Wagner said.

Summer peak usage is about 3 million gallons per day and services about 10,000 people on the system.

"We can't service a lot more with that," Wagner said.

Other tools

But perhaps the most widely used of all management tools is a combination of impact fees and tough planning and zoning regulations.

Fort Collins, for instance, has City Plan, a 5-year-old document that dictates such things as development and design standards.

It also assesses about $19,000 to the cost of every single-family home built in the city, although fees vary depending on size and cost of the home.

Impact fees, sometimes referred to as development charges, are typically charged for items such as water and sewer development, traffic mitigation, storm drainage, support of parks and recreation, open space and schools that are all impacted by additional rooftops.

Statewide, fees range from nothing and go up to more than $30,000 for single-family homes.

"There are costs to growth," said Larry Kendall, chairman and broker at The Group Inc. real estate, who supports "appropriate fees."

"But, problems can come when fees are so high" that businesses go elsewhere or when the hassle becomes too much to get through the planning process, Kendall said.

The Group, which recently opened an office at Centerra in Loveland, paid about $23,000 to the High Plains Environmental Center as part of the cost to build at the intersection of Interstate 25 and U.S. Highway 34.

The fee is charged by McWhinney Enterprises, the developers of Centerra, not the town of Loveland.

"Private enterprise is saying this is an amenity we support and we will put our money where our mouth is," Kendall said. "That's a pretty innovative way to make growth pay for itself."

Incentives in Loveland

Loveland, known to offer incentives to developers who build in the city, requires a ratio between residential and commercial development so that revenue from sales and use taxes offsets the cost of residential on larger projects such as Centerra at I-25 and U.S. Highway 34.

It costs the town about $800 a year for several years to provide municipal services to every new home, said City Manager Don Williams.

Developers also pay about $20,000 in fees that ensure growth pays its own way, he said.

Loveland expects to cap out at a population of about 90,000; a process that could take anywhere between 30 and 60 years, depending on the economy, Williams said.

The city has been criticized, the city manager acknowledged, for allowing growth from the outside in rather the inside out.

Fifty years down the road, the city is built out to I-25 anyway, Williams said. "It's just a matter of how we get there."

Estes teams with county

Estes Park, a town whose growth is limited by natural boundaries created by Rocky Mountain National Park and U.S. Forest Service land, teamed with Larimer County to develop a comprehensive plan put into place in the late 1990s.

That plan reduced density -- the number of homes allowed per acre -- put the burden of providing roads and water on the developer, increased the amount of open space required in a proposal, and protected mature trees, said planner Dave Shirk.

Larimer County has also used open space requirements to encourage developers to cluster homes and protect up to 80 percent of undeveloped land in a subdivision.

And, it requires "adequate infrastructure," such as roads, water and sewer.

Russ Legg, chief of planning for Larimer County since 1979, said the county strives to make developments around each community blend in with its municipal neighbor.

"We are not in competition with cities," he said. "Urban uses belong inside a city or inside urban growth boundaries."

The county, which issues about 600 permits per year -- most for single-family homes -- is trying to keep a low density, Legg said.

The Hill at Cobb Lake was the county's first large development approved under Larimer County's Rural Land Use Code passed in 1999.

The 850-acre gated community, two miles east of Interstate 25 and north of Colorado Highway 14, has 83 homes -- 50 of them clustered along a two-mile hill that gently slopes down to the lake.

It also includes 670 acres of protected open space and eight miles of trails that wind along the shore, canals and irrigation ditches.

"The Hill seems like a popular place to be," Legg said, but the county wants to evaluate its land use plan for a couple more years before it declares it a success.

Jay Stoner, developer of The Hill and president of Stoner Co., 2815 E. Harmony Road, said the concept of open space is good, "although I don't think it addresses ... creating demands on the infrastructure, whether highways or schools."

Stoner favors a statewide approach to growth management that brings in several factions, including environmentalists, school, city and county officials, politicians and the Colorado Department of Transportation "to have a real live land use plan" that suits the state's diverse needs.

"All the different ways to manage growth have plusses and minuses," Stoner said.

Discouraging growth in one town forces people out into the county or nearby town, he said.

"And, that causes sprawl."

That's why the county needs to work in conjunction with its cities and towns, said Larimer County's Legg.

"New development should be compatible with existing uses," Stoner said.

Fort Collins takes the lead

Fort Collins has often been at the forefront of planning, said Joe Frank, the city's director of advanced planning.

The community's forethought in planning reservoirs, water transmission systems and establishing its own utility department "set the foundation for a quality community," he said.

It was one of the first communities in the state to "think about making development pay its fair share," said Frank, who's worked for the city for more than 20 years.

"We raised the bar," he said. "We could see all the bad things we didn't want. We wanted high quality community development and high quality standards."

Yet the city has been criticized for the length of time and cost of getting a proposal through the 5-year-old City Plan.

"There are a lot of standards this community has adopted over time," said Fort Collins Deputy City Manager Diane Jones.

"There are some valid criticisms about the time it takes to get through the process," she said.

"We have looked for ways to make the process customer friendly and streamline it to the degree we can without giving up or negating standards that are here."

Originally published Monday, February 3, 2003