Fort Collins residents fighting a new road into their neighborhood lose appeal

The latest effort in a 14-year battle to prevent a new road from coming into the English Ranch neighborhood failed Tuesday after Fort Collins City Council denied a resident's appeal on the matter.

Back around 2010, the residents of the east Fort Collins neighborhood successfully fought off a plan that would have connected their neighborhood to Front Range Village.

But now the Union Park development proposed west of Ziegler Road behind Front Range Village has again sparked concerns about a new connection that would offer another pathway for vehicles in and out of the neighborhood.

On Tuesday, City Council denied the appeal of English Ranch resident Jeff Janelle, who alleged the Fort Collins Planning & Zoning Commission failed to conduct a fair hearing and failed to correctly interpret relevant codes.

It's complicated, but here is what was being appealed

The Union Park development, proposed by Landmark Homes, would bring 603 housing units, a child care center, office and retail, plus park space to Ziegler Road and Hidden Pond Drive. That's just south of the English Ranch neighborhood.

There are two plans guiding its development: an overall development plan and a subsequent project development plan, which must adhere to the overall development plan.

The overall development plan calls for a "stub-in" to support a future road connection from Union Park to English Ranch via Edmonds Road. Union Park would build that stub as part of its project, but actual vehicle access wouldn't happen until the parcel at Edmonds Road, which is owned by someone else, is developed.

That property's owner, Dan Bartran, told City Council on Tuesday that he plans to develop it.

The neighborhoods must be connected because of a land use code requirement that says developments should connect to adjacent neighborhoods, said Clay Frickey, the city's planning manager.

The principle behind it is that local street connections help knit neighborhoods and amenities together, allowing residents to more easily access nearby schools and parks.

An amendment to the overall development plan was approved by the Fort Collins Planning & Zoning Commission in September. The amendment changed what had been planned to be a bicycle and pedestrian connection to a full connection to allow for vehicles, in order to meet the requirements of the land use code.

With the overall development plan, or ODP, approved, the developer took its next step, submitting the project development plan, or PDP. That was approved in February.

Janelle then filed an appeal to the PDP.

In denying the appeal, council members said it's the ODP that calls for the road to be stubbed, not the PDP, and the deadline to appeal the ODP was back in October.

"This exact issue has already been decided, it was brought to you last August," Bob Choate, an attorney for Landmark Homes, told council members Tuesday. "We had hours of a discussion and testimony, and you made a determination that ... a bike-and-pedestrian-only connection was insufficient to meet the code."

He said Landmark came back with the amendment that was approved by the planning commission, so the opportunity to appeal was then, not now.

Janelle said he and others didn't file an appeal to the ODP because "we had been led to believe ... we weren't allowed to."

When council members asked the city attorney if the matter was even appealable, City Attorney Carrie Daggett said: "It's a settled question that that connection is going to be more than a bike and a pedestrian connection."

Council member Julie Pignataro said the appeal should never have made it this far in the process and the fact that it did gave false hope.

When asked whether city staff has processes to help residents understand the deadlines around appeals, Frickey said a development review liaison comes to all neighborhood meetings to answer questions about the process and that residents can also talk to the planner for a project, who will be able to let them know when an appeal period expires.

He also said all decisions by the planning commission are appealable, and that's written in the land use code.

City Planner Ryan Mounce said that when residents asked during a November neighborhood meeting regarding the PDP whether the ODP could be appealed, they were correctly told the deadline had passed.

Janelle said there has been "a lot of misinformation."

"I'm just common neighborhood guy, and I'm not a slick lawyer," he said. "What about the common person, the taxpayer? If we have to go to district court, I don't think they'll appreciate some of the misguidance."

Frickey said he didn't provide any guidance to neighbors but doesn't know if others in the department did.

The broader story: Why neighbors are fighting the connection

Janelle said increased traffic would present increased risk to the many people who ride their bikes or walk in the neighborhood, including children who attend Linton Elementary School.

His appeal also alleges the connection would impair that walkable and bikable character of the neighborhood, violating the land use code.

Further, Janelle says the neighborhood streets don't meet the standards for a collector road and the commission didn't consider bike and pedestrian counts when making its decision.

He said he likes where the city's land use code is going, and he said English Ranch could be an example for how to encourage use of active modes.

"I thought we want more bikes, less cars," he said.

He said the new connection could lead to traffic cutting through the neighborhood from Fort Collins High School to Front Range Village, via the Union Park development.

In response, Landmark's representative Choate said: "I understand why people don't want more traffic on their roads, but that is a necessary part of weaving our neighborhoods together and is exactly what the code requires."

Janelle said he and his neighbors had been led to believe that the reason for the connection was to make a case for putting a traffic signal at the Paddington/Grand Teton/Ziegler intersection. He said a majority of Fox Stone and English Ranch residents don't want it.

In his appeal, he said while city planning staff have made statements that the intersection was close to having enough traffic to warrant the signal, it's far from close and those statements were misleading.

Pignataro, whose district includes the English Ranch neighborhood, said if the connection gets made during her term, she commits to working with residents to advocate for road diets to make it "incredibly inconvenient to get through your neighborhood," saying installing speed tables helped reduce problems in her own neighborhood.

The story is complex

Complicating the three-year history of the development plan is the prospect of a new traffic signal in the area.

When first proposed in 2021, Landmark Homes did not propose a connection for vehicles into the neighborhood. Instead, it proposed a bicycle-and-pedestrian-only connection.

The planning commission OK'd that plan in 2022.

But then Landmark obtained an additional parcel along Ziegler Road, so the developer proposed adding a traffic signal at Ziegler and Hidden Pond Drive.

That didn't change anything about the pedestrian-only connection to English Ranch, but it did prompt a different set of neighbors who live on the east side of Ziegler Road to appeal the plan for the traffic signal.

They said Hidden Pond Road wasn't the right location for it. Instead, they said Paddington Road would be the better location because traffic counts better warranted it: It could serve not only English Ranch and Union Park, if a connection were made, but also their own neighborhood, Woodland Park Estates.

That appeal prompted council to send the ODP back to the planning commission to consider, but not to review the traffic signal. Instead, they instructed the board to review what the land use code requires for connecting neighborhoods.

Ultimately, Landmark removed its plans for a traffic signal.

Choate said the project has had six hearings now and been delayed a year.

"These kinds of delays are just completely detrimental to the supply issue that you've heard so much about tonight and on other nights from me and other people," Choate said, referencing the land use code changes discussion earlier in the meeting.

"These are homes that are in a more attainable range and they meet the city plan and the city's land use code, and we really need to get an opportunity to move this project forward," he said. "It's not a silver bullet but it is an important part of responding to the housing crisis."

Coloradoan reporter Pat Ferrier contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Fort Collins' English Park residents lose appeal of road connection