Berrien Ranch

The easterly boundary and lowest elevations of Berrien Ranch lie along County Highway 73. Broad and gentle terrain of open meadows and ponderosa pine forests extend westerly, where the land rises through rock outcroppings to high meadows, Douglas fir forests, stands of aspen and the top of Centaur Mountain, with its commanding views west to Mount Evans and surrounding peaks, and east across the rolling Front Range foothills. Most of the Berrien Ranch’s 456± acres is gentle, rolling land. There are few challenges to developing the property in accordance with its vested Rural Cluster entitlements; generous level building envelopes on all of the 26 approved residential lots provide great flexibility for planning, siting and designing the allowed improvements. If and when the new owner develops the property, the layout and spacing of the approved Rural Cluster lots and building envelopes will afford wonderful privacy and views across the shared, protected open area for each of the Berrien Ranch owners. Each of the three residential lot clusters on the property is buffered from residential areas bordering the Berrien Ranch by portions of the ranch’s private open area. 

Vested Development Rights
Berrien Ranch, beautiful as is, is also a ready-to-build 26-unit residential subdivision. The project was approved in 2004 under Jefferson County’s Rural Cluster Process, which allows a doubling of residential density on a significant property (from one unit per 35 acres to two units per 35 acres) provided not less than two-thirds of the total acreage, including the land’s most outstanding natural features, is permanently protected as private open area. The current owners obtained these approvals to lock in the property’s long-term development value in anticipation of ongoing public efforts to reduce and restrict development in the Front Range’s more prosperous and growing counties.

Berrien Ranch contains 26 approved single-family residential lots, each larger than 5 acres, grouped into 3 separate clusters surrounded by more than 306 contiguous acres of conservation easement-protected private open space – a gorgeous landscape reserved exclusively for the use and enjoyment of the Berrien Ranch owners.

The Berrien Ranch Rural Cluster, masterfully laid out by the pre-eminent national planning and landscape architecture firm DHM Design, is thus an approved blueprint for the creation of an exclusive private enclave for horseback riders, hikers and nature enthusiasts. Because the rights to develop the land in accordance with the completed planning, platting and infrastructure engineering work are vested rights, Berrien Ranch represents an unusual opportunity to quickly realize a unique architectural and common interest community vision. The remaining required County approvals prior to issuance of permits to begin the work are minor, minimizing time and risk to begin building the project and marketing individual lots or homes, should a buyer choose to develop the property, either now or at some future time.

Conservation Easement
For many ranch buyers, the presence of a conservation easement raises questions and concerns. All other things being equal, the natural preference is to acquire land with the fewest potential restrictions on its future use and development.

It is therefore important to emphasize that, unlike many conservation easements, the easement affecting the Berrien Ranch was not granted by the current owners to constrain future owners to steward and preserve the property essentially as it is, or to extinguish opportunities. To the contrary, the Berrien Ranch conservation easement was negotiated and crafted as a necessary piece of a larger vision – to protect the owner’s ability to maximize, at the time of his or her choosing, the economic value of this oasis in the foothills just outside Denver, where both development and corresponding growth control pressures are intense.
Jefferson County’s Rural Cluster land division process is intended to create incentives and opportunities for landowners to optimize the development potential of significant properties while at the same time reducing the overall footprint of improvements and conserving the most significant features of the landscape. Again, by meeting the Rural Cluster requirements, a landowner can double the number of residential units otherwise allowed as a matter of right. There are great advantages to a Rural Cluster, as well as some tradeoffs.

Qualifying as a Rural Cluster requires permanently protecting not less than two-thirds of the larger property’s total acreage as open area, with limitations on certain uses. In general, the open area portion of any Rural Cluster project may be used for farming and ranching, as a natural area or wildlife sanctuary, or for non-commercial, low-impact “passive” recreational uses – such as hiking, birdwatching, nature study, and bicycling and horseback riding on roads and trails – that do not involve motorized equipment or guns. Commercial mining and timbering on, or other commercial uses or material alterations of, the open area portions of a Rural Cluster are prohibited.

If a key objective for a buyer is the ability to hunt on his or her own land, the Berrien Ranch may not be the ideal property. That said, vast expanses of national forest lands with outstanding hunting values are just a short drive from the ranch gates. Berrien Ranch itself, with its recognized elk calving area and exceptional and diverse wildlife habitat, is a sanctuary for both man and beast.

The required Berrien Ranch conservation easement interest granted to the local Mountain Area Land Trust (MALT) to meet Jefferson County Rural Cluster requirements reserves, however, great flexibility to construct the 26 allowed homes and related improvements within the generously sized and optimally spaced and sited building envelopes. The road system and other project infrastructure may be built as originally engineered and approved, notwithstanding possible later changes in general road standards or similar requirements, or efforts to further restrict development generally.

The owners’ significant investment in the Berrien Ranch Rural Cluster land division reflects their recognition – nearly two decades ago – that any limitations imposed by the required grant of a conservation easement were far outweighed by the vested development rights – in effect protecting the Berrien Ranch and its owners against inevitable future “downzoning” efforts – secured through that process. 

In an area that has been highly developed, a property of this size and beauty, located just outside Evergreen and less than an hour from downtown Denver, is a rarity. Even rarer is the opportunity to enjoy for oneself this private ranch landscape that has been held by the same family for more than a century, while also having the immediate opportunity to pursue an approved first-class blueprint to create a unique private residential and equestrian community, with its own exclusive natural area park, to be shared by up to 26 privileged households. Minutes from Evergreen, the Berrien Ranch features lush open meadows and mostly gentle terrain punctuated by rocky outcrops, healthy ponderosa pine forests and aspen stands, abundant elk and other wildlife, beautiful and expansive views in all directions, and an idyllic Colorado mountain setting just a stone’s throw from all the culture and recreation that Denver and the Front Range have to offer.