Tom Ross/Steamboat Homefinder

02-26-2011

Overlook Park, a proposed 139-lot residential subdivision on Steamboat Springs’ far west side, has emerged from foreclosure and resumed the city planning process.

The 70-acre parcel immediately west of the West Acres Mobile Home Park and West End Village neighborhoods is on the market for $3.8 million.

Project manager Norbert Turek, of Slopeside Consulting, said original developer Jay Weinberg returned the property to Alpine Bank through a deed in lieu of foreclosure. It had been scheduled to go to a foreclosure sale in early December.

“Alpine Bank created a holding company that hired me and Erik Griepen­trog at Landmark Consulting to finish the preliminary entitlements for the subdivision,” Turek said.

Turek is also the listing Realtor through Elk River Realty.

City planner Jason Peasley’s application for Overlook’s permit, which was tabled by the Steamboat Springs Planning Commission in October 2009, will go back through the technical review process so city departments such as fire and public works can review changes to the layout of lots.

Turek and Peasley agreed that the potential for future homes on some lots in the subdivision to stand out against the skyline led to the tabling vote in 2009.

The city’s skyline ordinance restricts homes on highly visible ridgelines from having their rooflines show against blue sky.

Turek said he has engaged a consultant to aid in establishing maximum roof heights for each affected lot to stay out of the skyline.

“There aren’t many skyline lots in the city, but Overlook has quite a few,” Turek said.

He said 20 to 30 of the lots have the potential to create skyline issues. The consultant has used computer modeling to determine the maximum roof height on each lot to avoid skylining for people viewing the subdivision from U.S. Highway 40 roughly adjacent to the Sleepy Bear Mobile Home Park south of the subdivision.

“The (maximum) height of those roofs would range from 40 feet down to 14 feet,” Turek said. “If there are hills in the background, it’s not skylined.”

Weinberg already had invested about $900,000 in building the first phase of a new arterial road, Gloria Gossard Parkway, in a cost-sharing agreement with the city and Routt County.

It would be the beginning of a link from Downhill Drive to Overlook as well as to hundreds of acres in the West of Steamboat Springs Area Plan just outside city limits.

Overlook is tucked inside city limits, with city water and sewer available. Because excavating contractor Duckels Construction rolled Overlook’s participation in Phase 1 of the parkway into a single bid including Phase 2 and the road and infrastructure for the subdivision, it’s possible for a prospective buyer to make a reasonable estimate of how much the cost base for the lots might be on average, Turek said.

If the property sells for close to the asking price, the $6.5 million for the balance of the infrastructure bid (assuming it doesn’t change) will bring the sale and development package to about $10 million. That would yield a cost basis (not a retail asking price) for each lot to an average of about $73,000.

That would allow a developer to list them for sale at prices below those of all but a few building lots in the city, even considering price decreases in the past three years, Turek said.

“My vision for Over­look has always been to take the best of West End Village and offer it with more trails and open space,” Turek said. “We’ve got a nice little park with a kiddie-sized soccer field. I’m pretty excited about it. We’re trying to make a really good locals community.”

And Turek pointed out that those figures do not take into account the fact that the subdivision includes parks, an alley greenbelt and, more significantly, a 4-acre parcel zoned as commercial neighborhood.

Peasley confirmed that is the same zone district that prevails on Oak Street in Old Town Steamboat Springs.

“You could ha­­ve anything from duplexes to multifamily (residential) or mixed (residential/commercial),” Peas­­ley said. “The intent was to provide for some neighborhood retail.”

That could translate into businesses such as a laundry or a coffee shop, for example.