$50 million tab for land near Telluride rocks town

Ellen Miller, Special to the News

Monday, February 19, 2007

The group leading Telluride's efforts to save its scenic outskirts from development scrambled Sunday to come up with millions of additional dollars in the wake of a jury decision that the land's value is $50 million.

A Delta County District Court jury agreed Friday with a development company's attorney who told them 570 acres at the entrance to Telluride were worth "not one dime less than $50 million."

The verdict rocked Telluride, which is seeking to obtain the land known as the Valley Floor through condemnation and preserve it as open space.

"It took us by surprise, honestly," Jane Hickcox of Valley Floor Preservation Partners said Sunday.

The land, in contention for years, now will cost the town about double the $26 million it had offered the property's owner, San Miguel Valley Corp.

The parcel is on the outskirts of Telluride. Both sides in the trial agreed the Valley Floor lies in one of the most gorgeous places on Earth.

"It's not only a beautiful property, it's a unique, diverse and complex property that is very, very valuable," the developer's attorney, Darrel Waas, of Denver, told the jury. "The people looking for property like this are the wealthiest people in the world, who can live anywhere they want to."

Leslie Fields, of Denver, the town attorney, said not all of the property could be developed because of several constraints, including utility easements, old mine tailings and protected wetlands.

Telluride has on hand $25.5 million in its open space fund, $8 million raised by Valley Floor Preservation, and another $1.2 million in donations made over the weekend. Hickcox said there was "no question" Telluride could raise the needed funds.