Holcim Inc.’s sale of water rights and nearly 3,000 acres of land surrounding its former cement plant north of Fort Collins brought in $16.8 million over the weekend.
The price included $7.6 million for 2,886 acres in LaPorte sold at auction Saturday and $9.2 million for 885 shares in the Colorado-Big Thompson Water Project from an agreement reached Friday with the Fort Collins-Loveland Water District.
The water district will use the water as developments pop up between Fort Collins and Loveland, the territory it serves.
The water will not be available for the land sold at the auction, said Mike DiTullio, manager of the water district, which paid cash for the water rights.
“It’s a big block of water that doesn’t come around very often,” DiTullio said. “We’re buying it for the future.”
The land will probably be developed for residential use.
Zoning allows for one residential unit to be built on every 10 acres.
The residences must be clustered on 20 percent of the property, with the remainder left undeveloped, said Rob Helmick, Larimer County’s principal planner for development review.
Of the 183 registered bidders from eight states, there were 32 property buyers. The biggest buyer was Mile High Properties of Fort Collins, which was the high bidder on six parcels for nearly $3 million.
“We felt it was going to do well because we had a wide variety of parcels and we had water rights,” said Carl Carter, a spokesman for J.P. King Auction Co., the Alabama company that handled the sale. “It’s beautiful land. It’s just the right kind of area where there’s a lot of demand for development property.”
Staff writer Margaret Jackson can be reached at 303-820-1473 or mjackson@denverpost.com.
