Voters again may have say in town’s transformation
TIMNATH — A citizens group in Timnath successfully led a petition drive in 2023 to keep a Topgolf golf and entertainment center out of the proposed Ladera development.
But this fall, the town itself may ask those same voters to greenlight a different sort of recreational opportunity.
The town government will decide in late summer whether to place on the November ballot a 1.25% sales and use tax to help fund construction and operations of a $98 million indoor recreation center designed to serve all ages and interests. The proposed two-story, 109,000-square-foot facility could include aquatics, gyms, fitness spaces and community areas — all suggested through extensive public input gathered for the recent Parks, Recreation, Open Space and Trails (PROST) Master Plan.
The online resource Wikipedia once described Timnath as “a small agricultural/farming community” that “has remained virtually unchanged in recent decades. Now, however, it acknowledges that “encroaching growth of both Fort Collins to the west and Windsor to the south have placed the town in an area considered favorable to development.”
Growth along the Front Range urban corridor has turned once-rural Timnath into a thriving community, one of the fastest growing in Colorado.”
Growth along the Front Range urban corridor indeed has turned that once-rural town into a thriving community, one of the fastest growing in Colorado, with big-box retailers, sprawling new residential developments, and all the traffic and controversies that go with it.
Costco quickly followed Walmart into Timnath at the busy Harmony Road interchange along Interstate 25 southeast of Fort Collins. Proposals for new subdivisions are common at town board meetings, and none has gained more excitement than Ladera.
Connell LLC, developers of the planned 240-acre Ladera development, envisions a dynamic mixed-use project on land that now is a working gravel pit and asphalt plant operated by Connell Resources.
The developers describe their vision for Ladera — the name comes from the Spanish word for the slope of a hill or lakeside bank — as “an economically invigorating commercial, residential and recreational development at Timnath’s front door, with homes, office space, retail stores and entertainment venues.”
Timnath voters have approached Ladera cautiously. They soundly rejected a Topgolf golf and entertainment complex because neighbors worried about the lights and noise – but especially the 156-foot nets’ hazard to wildlife along the nearby Cache la Poudre River. However, in April 2024, they just as overwhelmingly rejected another citizen-initiated measure that would have restricted annexation of land containing active mining permits.
Walker Manufacturing, which has made high-end lawn mowers in unincorporated Larimer County since 1988, last year asked to be annexed into Timnath and said it wants to add office and manufacturing space.
The new Timnath Middle-High School celebrated its first graduating class of 129 students this spring, the first for the school in 65 years. Four graduates from the old Timnath High School’s final class in 1960 attended the ceremony.