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Denver developer buys 688 acres near Winter Park, Fraser

Property includes defunct ski area, would link towns

John Rebchook, Rocky Mountain News

Published April 24, 2007 at midnight

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Walter "Buz" Koelbel first began skiing with his family at Ski Idlewild near Winter Park.

Now the Denver developer is buying the defunct ski area and surrounding land and adding it to his sprawling resort community development.

Koelbel and Co. already owns the 450-acre Rendezvous resort community between Winter Park and Fraser. The new purchase will add 688 acres.

J. Scott Bradley, who assembled the property during the past 25 years, will remain a minority owner, with Koelbel and Co. acting as the master developer.

Experts estimate that if the parcels were developed to their full 2,200 units, the completed value in today's dollars would easily top $1.2 billion.

However, Koelbel said he doesn't expect that the entire 1,138 acres will ever be built out to the full 2,200 units.

"This was a little bit of a sentimental purchase for me," Koelbel said Friday.

He noted that he and his brothers and sisters skiied at Ski Idlewild in 1961, the year it opened, when he was 9 years old. It closed 21 years ago.

"Our parents used to drop us off there in the morning, go ski at Winter Park, and pick us up at the end of the day," Koelbel said.

He quietly investigated buying the land for three years or more, he said.

"When I first went to look at it again, I got this really eerie feeling like I had gone into a time warp," Koelbel said. "The old ski lifts are still there. I think all of that stuff will have to come down. It's all rusted."

The land also includes the ghost town of Arrow, which was incorporated in 1904 to serve the Moffat Road rail route over the Continental Divide. After the Moffat Tunnel was completed in 1927, the town was abandoned.

Much like at Rendezvous, some of the land is too steep to build on, Koelbel said. It's too early to determine how many units will be built on the combined property, but the development will include condos, cabins and luxury custom homes.

Denise O'Connell, a broker with Coldwell Banker Mountain Properties in Winter Park, said the timing is right for the long-awaited development.

"Winter Park is really ready for this," she said, adding that the purchase will help to link Fraser and Winter Park.

Rendezvous has about 120 homes, ranging in price from the $400,000s to more than $2 million. Colonnade Resorts, a sister company to Koelbel and Co., will build many of the homes, with other lots being sold to custom builders.

This year will be for planning. Infrastructure such as roads, utilities and sewers will be installed in 2008, and construction of the first homes likely will occur in 2009.

Of the 688 acres in the Bradley parcel, about 130 acres will be designated primarily as open space, but that does not include smaller pocket parks in individual neighborhoods.

Koelbel's family on his mother's side used to own land in the area called the Byers Ranch. The area, Koelbel said, is undergoing a renaissance, given Intrawest's investment at nearby Winter Park Resort.

Matt Sugar, spokesman for the Winter Park ski area, is familiar with the land Koelbel bought.

"It is an impressive property," said Sugar, who used to live in a condo across from Idlewild when he moved to the area in 1989. "A lot of locals have very fond memories of cross-country skiing at Idlewild."

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