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Growing subdivisions pace Durango building

Edgemont Highlands, Three Springs, see busy 2014

The residential building industry in the Durango area has had a busy summer, with development particularly strong in Edgemont Highlands and Three Springs.

The city of Durango issued 50 single-family building permits for the year through September, up from 47 during the same period in 2013. Both years were dramatically busier than 2012, which saw only 22 single-family building permits issued during the first nine months of the year.

The city permit data doesn’t include Edgemont Highlands, which is outside city limits. Edgemont Highlands, on the north side of Florida Road (County Road 240), has built 30 to 35 single-family homes in 2014, said Tom Gorton, manager of Highlands Development.

Durango has benefited from real estate recovering in other markets, Gorton said.

“In 2009, ’10, ’11, we talked to a lot of people who wanted to move here, and their response was we need to wait until our house sells,” he said.

Now buyers are back in the market, and builders have responded.

The Timbers at Edgemont Highlands is the next area of the development to be built. Plans call for 87 single-family homes on lots of just less than a half-acre to 2 acres. In the first batch of 24 lots, 11 are already under contract, project manager Eric Flora said.

Flora acquired the undeveloped portion of Edgemont Highlands in May.

Builders in The Timbers should break ground late this fall and continue into 2015, Flora said.

“Next summer we expect to follow up with similar absorption that Edgemont Highlands has experienced,” he said.

In Three Springs, on the southeast edge of town, builders have started 20 to 25 single-family homes and 14 townhome units this year, said Tim Zink, Three Springs real estate portfolio manager.

Three Springs is being developed by the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and a roster of local builders.

Lots are quickly being snapped up by builders and then homebuyers.

“Anything that’s being built right now is being sold,” Zink said. “There’s no real inventory out here.”

In September, the city issued single-family building permits in the 500 block of East Third Avenue downtown, the 300 and 600 blocks of Animas View Drive in north Durango and the 300 block of Confluence Avenue in Three Springs.

Another local development, Twin Buttes, is not seeing building, at least not yet. The development in west Durango hasn’t applied for a single residential building permit, according to the city’s Planning Department, and isn’t expected to until summer or fall 2015.

cslothower@durangoherald.com



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