Boulder County, Colorado, population 291,288 (2000), begins 15 miles northwest of downtown Denver. The eastern third of the County lies within the Great Plains. The western two-thirds consists of mountainous terrain, primarily within the Roosevelt National Forest, Rocky Mountain National Park and other parks, preserves and wilderness areas.
Boulder County has inter-jurisdictional transfer agreements with several incorporated cities including one in which the City of Longmont agrees to accept TDRs from rural county land surrounding the City.
In 1981, Boulder County adopted a clustering technique known as a non-urban planned unit development, or NUPUD. This technique allows a density bonus for on-site development when at least 75 percent of a parcel is permanently preserved by a conservation easement. In 1989, the program was expanded to allow the density bonus gained by NUPUD to be transferred to a non-contiguous parcel, a process, known as non-contiguous non-urban planned unit development, or NCNUPUD. The County also entered into inter-governmental agreements (IGAs) controlling TDR transfers with seven incorporated jurisdictions and one unincorporated community.
In a February 2005 update, Peter Fogg, Manager of the County's Long-Range Planning Division, confirmed that most of the procedural mechanisms detailed in Beyond Takings and Givings remained unchanged. However, he mentioned four recent modifications. 1) Boulder County now allows platted subdivision lots that have been combined by deed into one lot to be recognized as separate lots again for TDR sending purposes if they are vacant. 2) The IGA with the City of Boulder has been revised, altering potential sending and receiving areas. 3) The City of Longmont now accommodates clustered TDRs as an acceptable land use in its Ultra Low Density Residential areas in addition to accepting TDRs under the terms of the County-City IGA. 4) All the allocations for sending and receiving areas in the community of Niwot have been used up, effectively completing that TDR program.
Beyond Takings and Givings stated that the County's original transferring mechanism, NCNUPUD, had been used only five times but the inter-jurisdictional TDR program had been used on 15 transfers as of the end of the year 2,000. In February 2005, Peter Fogg reported that two more TDR PUDs had received Final Plat approval and that another Final Plat was being prepared on a third TDR PUD. These three PUDs contain 73 TDR lots, increasing the total number of TDR lots from 265 to 338 TDR lots. Likewise these three TDR PUDs represent the preservation of an additional 1,200 acres, bringing the total acreage under conservation easement due to TDR to between 4,400 and 5,900 acres depending on whether or not the sending areas retain their water rights.
As a final note, Peter Fogg reported in February 2005 that there were fewer and fewer 35+ acre parcels left in the county that qualify as sending sites under the current TDR provisions in the Code. Consequently, Boulder County may have to revisit its sending site criteria in the near future.
