Steamboat Springs, CO Real Estate and Community Blog

Steamboat 700, and now Steamboat 360, have been working really hard for annexation into the City of Steamboat Springs. They need annexed into Steamboat so the developers can build 2000 homes and commercial properties. Here’s why:

If you own land in Routt County, (like the parcel Steamboat 700 is developing west of Steamboat Springs), the minimum acreage you need to build a home is 35 acres. In some cases, you can go through a process with the city and create a Land Preservation Subdivision. With a LPS, landowners can split a parcel (at least 70 acres, usually more) into 5-7 acre lots and leave the remaining acreage open space. But most homes in Routt County are on 35 acres.

So just doing the math, the 700 acres in Steamboat 700 can currently support 20 homes. (20 homes X 35 acre lot size=700 acres). Even at $1,000,000 per lot, the total value of the land would be $20,000,000-less than Steamboat 700 bought the land for a year ago.

By annexing, Steamboat 700 can tap into the city water and utilities and lot sizes can become a whole lot smaller. Instead of 20 homes, Steamboat 700 has plans to build 2000 homes.

Colorado law says city annexations must be contiguous, meaning the borders of annexed land have to touch Steamboat Springs city borders. Not a problem for Steamboat 700, but that’s where annexation gets tricky with Steamboat 360. (Steamboat 360, which has 350 acres but 360 degree views, is on US 40 by the Steamboat Golf Club and Marabou.) The borders of Steamboat 360 don’t touch the city of Steamboat Springs. They jump over Silver Spur and Steamboat II to the next parcel down the road.

The developers of Steamboat 360 are well versed in the rules of the Steamboat Springs Planning Department. They are working on different ways that they can get legally annexed into Steamboat. One way is a “flagpole annexation” where the city annexes the CDOT right-of-way along US 40. Stay tuned.