Getting your player ready...
Natascha O’Flaherty grew up in the Austrian Alps and was Nordic skiing and climbing peaks while still a young girl. Husband Glenn was raised in Boston, playing golf at lush clubs along Massachusetts Bay – so when the pair drove over a ridge near Winter Park and saw Village Homes’ fairway cabins at Granby Ranch, they both said ‘Wow.’
It’s a vista you can take in all this weekend (Memorial Day, too), including the last ten sites where you could have your own Village home wrapped by Granby Ranch’s fairways by summer, skiing by winter. “People come here for the winters, but they end up buying for the summers,” says Sheila Bailey, who can show you two lavish, 4-bedroom cabins like the O’Flaherty’s have, each with 2-car attached garage and finished walkouts that overlook the valley. Like all of Village’s homes in Granby Ranch, they’re literally wrapped by the ski mountain (three lifts serve Granby Ranch’s family-friendly terrain; plus pool, hot tubs, and newly remodeled lodge and grille). And the picture gets better coming into the warm months. That includes golf at Granby Ranch’s Headwaters Golf Club, where one scenic tee-box is a few hundred yards below O’Flaherty’s view-swept home. “It’s great,” says Glenn O’Flaherty, who’s played some pretty good courses. “The front nine is tight; the back is more scenic, more water features.” Beyond the clubhouse, Granby Ranch has installed two par-3 knock-around holes for family golf – where the couple’s 8-year-old daughter Steffi is now picking up the sport. None of this was remotely possible when the O’Flahertys started searching for a mountain home drivable from their place in Denver’s Hilltop area. He’s in finance, she’s an attorney; so the first expeditions were up to Vail and Aspen; but “Glitter Gulch was not for us,” says Natascha. The couple read about Granby Ranch in a Denver Post feature one Saturday; and got around the fact that the Village’s prices were about a third of what homes were in Beaver Creek. Bailey showed them Village’s sharp-looking architecture (you can tour a furnished model today); then they had dinner at a top-rated bistro across the valley. “We drove back up on Sunday morning,” Glenn adds. Now Village is working even bigger changes in the O’Flaherty lifestyle. Although at 88 miles Granby Ranch is 15 miles closer to their place in Denver than Vail would be, the family’s begun living there year-round – using the internet and DIA to stay in touch with business. Meanwhile, Natascha has knocked off Byer’s Peak (12,804 feet) and numbers of other Grand County summits; and the family rents boats at Granby Reservoir. Steffi attends school in Granby, where she’s reading two grades ahead of her level; and Natascha has made friends with numbers of like-minded local women who mix outdoor sports with cerebral pursuits (book club one day, women’s ‘Cast-n-Blast’ tourney the next – fly-fishing before lunch, skeet shooting afterward). That very accessible lifestyle is still available from the $420s – with season-long family ski passes, plus some golf foursomes, mountain-biking and fishing in Granby Ranch’s private reserve all included in the HOA package. Bailey (she’s sold 180 homes since Village arrived here – top ranked sales person in the Fraser Valley) warns that those last ten Fairway Cabin sites really are the end-of-the-line for what the O’Flaherty’s have – and those two homes ready now (the ‘Portrush’ has Venetian slab granite and walnut floors throughout the kitchen and entertaining areas, $493,499) are perfect matches. Village’s model is just over the crest as you drive into Granby Ranch, before the ski area. From I-70 take U.S. 40 west 43 mi. (15 mi. past Winter Park) to Village Road, then east 1.8 mile to Fairway Lane. If you go…
