Residents and friends of tony Telluride were stunned last February when a Delta jury decided the town would have to pay $50 million to condemn 570 acres that citizens wanted to protect from development.
Last week, their dismay turned to triumph as they met a seemingly impossible fundraising goal.
Telluriders have been trying to preserve the entrance to their town in the Valley Floor area for more than a decade and had set aside about $25 million to buy the property from developer Neal Blue, who purchased it for $7 million in 1983.
The jury verdict was nearly double the $26 million value appraisers for the town had set on the property.
It meant citizens would have to raise another $25 million on short notice or resign themselves to new development that has blighted so many scenic mountain communities.
The citizens fighting to preserve the character of Telluride refused to quit. Mayor John Pryor told The Denver Post: “Anything is possible in Telluride.”
Last week, Pryor was proven right as Los Angeles filmmaker and frequent Telluride visitor Tom Shadyac pitched in the final $2 million needed to put the fundraising drive over the top.
The success doesn’t guarantee that Telluride will acquire the Valley Floor property, since developer Blue has elected to spurn the $50 million verdict and challenge the eminent domain proceedings in the Colorado Supreme Court. But the citizens can afford to wait because the property can’t be developed while the case is in court. In contrast, if the fund drive had failed, bulldozers could have swiftly begun reshaping the entrance to Telluride.
The case before the court involves a tangled conflict between state law, the powers of home rule cities and the concurrent rights of counties to regulate unincorporated land within their own jurisdictions. In a nutshell, we hope Telluride prevails, primarily because the town worked closely with county leaders to protect their mutual goals.
We also hope the high court rules narrowly and upholds another section of the state law that allows counties to protect their own open space plans against hostile condemnations.
If that happens, all Coloradans can share in this victory for Telluride and San Miguel County.
