(The following story by Dan England appeared on the Greeley Tribune website on May 18.)
DENVER — The Regional Transportation District is reimbursing Union Pacific for $18.3 million of land.
RTD hopes to eventually get its money back for the property, which was slated for UP to relocate its railyard to Fort Lupton. In fact, Pauletta Tonilas, spokeswoman for RTD, said the land in Weld County may be more valuable than some believe. RTD reimbursed UP $15 million for the land, a price that stunned Fort Lupton officials.
“We’re not looking at that land as taking a loss,” Tonilas said. “What we know is there is a strong interest in the land. There are a lot of firms interested in Weld County. That’s all we’ve heard.”
That could be good news for Fort Lupton, which may draw interest from several industrial companies.
RTD is reimbursing UP for the land as part of the agreement for the railroad to come up with a proposal to relocate its railyard to Fort Lupton. The proposal raised the hackles of many residents, but it never materialized after the cost estimate to do that was too high for RTD to stomach. RTD won’t say what that cost was but did say the Fort Lupton piece was the most cost-prohibitive.
RTD wanted to use the vacated UP property in Denver for the FasTracks train to Denver International Airport and a commuter-rail maintenance center.
Even though the proposal was up in the air when UP began buying the land, Tonilas said the timeline meant UP needed to have the land all ready to go if the proposal went through.
“Negotiations can take a long time,” Tonilas said, “and we were looking to relocate within two years.”
RTD will offer the land back to the original property owners at the price UP paid for it. But they probably won’t want to buy back the land, if town officials and real estate agents who believe the land was overpriced to begin with are correct.
So RTD will put the land on the market, and RTD officials are optimistic that the land is valuable. Board members for RTD, Tonilas said, have talked to Fort Lupton chamber officials who said there’s been a great deal of interest in the land.
But that was hard to confirm. Members of the Fort Lupton’s Chamber development corporation did not return phone calls. And City Planner Tom Parko said he hasn’t been contacted by any companies about the property. The land, in fact, is zoned agricultural, is unincorporated and has no utilities. In fairness to RTD, the land is slated in Fort Lupton’s master plan to eventually be industrial and have companies on it. But city officials don’t think that will happen anytime soon.
“That’s a lot of money they’ve spent on property that’s being farmed,” Parko said. “Usually you’d pay that kind of money for land that’s already been annexed, zoned and has utilities on it.”