Neighborhood Spotlight Burgundy Park

The Left Hand Valley Courier is spotlighting various local neighborhoods, their history, issues and general nature. This week, the Courier is focusing on Burgundy Park.

The Boulder County area continued to grow into the late 20th century, requiring more housing for families and individuals drawn to the area by employment opportunities, the outdoors, and other amenities.

Niwot was well-positioned geographically as a prime location for multiple housing developments, and Bowron Builders Inc. had experienced some success in building residential subdivisions as well as Cottonwood Square. Their streak continued with Burgundy Park, developed in the early 1990s. It was located just across from Cottonwood Park and Cottonwood Shopping Center which Bowron had also developed, and just blocks away from 2nd Avenue shopping and events.

Current Burgundy Park HOA board member and founding resident Lance Carlson recalled how he first moved to the community. "I knew my overseas work assignment would be ending soon so during my visit I started shopping for a home. At that time the housing market was incredibly hot and there were only a small handful of listings for the whole of Boulder County. One afternoon we happened to be driving along Niwot Road and spotted a freshly plowed and staked field with a pickup truck and a man walking about. It turned out to be Kent Bowron, who had recently broken ground here. Just a few days later we signed a contract."

Another original owner, Dick Lentz, made the bid for his home in 1993. He recalled how in the earliest days of the HOA board, Bowron Builders held two votes for every unsold lot. This stipulation allowed them to establish certain provisions for the subdivision, including not allowing on-street parking, and requiring HOA approval for landscaping.

At that time, the board also established "good neighbor fencing" which was around three feet tall, which allowed residents to stand and to talk to neighbors over the fences. "We wanted people to drive through the neighborhood and not see it as closed off," said Lentz. "We felt like it improved the communication between residents. Like it was a neighborhood, not just individual houses."

In the community's earlier years, Burgundy Park was part of a larger subdivision, Johnson Farm, platted in the early 1970s, which featured several smaller subdivisions.The Johnson Farm Association owned common areas that all of the residents had an interest in, and the original plan was for the developer, Tull Construction Company, to build and maintain recreational facilities in these common areas. Builders paid $1,000 per lot into an escrow fund held by the county for development of the recreational facilities, but the only thing ever constructed was a tennis court adjacent to Neva Road in the Dry Creek subdivision. When Tull Construction Company went bankrupt, lenders foreclosed on the undeveloped blocks, and each block was developed independently. The other planned facilities, including a picnic pavilion, basketball court, volleyball court, and a horseshoe pit were never constructed. Residents agreed to disband the Johnson Farm Association, distribute the open space properties to each small subdivision, and divide up the county-held escrow money among the smaller subdivisions, including Burgundy Park.

Carlson said that, through the years, Burgundy Park has been a great neighborhood to live in with plenty of young families. "I can remember gangs of youngsters, including my own, running and playing in the open space during the summers. It was always a bit of an adventure to get the children in for dinner and bed in the evenings."

The neighborhood has developed a close community bond over time, and shows a history of residents who can work together to ensure their needs are met. In 2017, when they found the condition of their roads was deteriorating and county funding that was supposed to help with repairs ran out, they formed a Public Improvement District solely devoted to their neighborhood, which provided for repairs, plowing and street sweeping. Lentz was one of those who spearheaded the effort, which was approved by vote of the residents on November 17 of that year.

The Public Improvement District became a focus of the neighborhood again this past year as Lentz and others asked to renegotiate the amount of the mill levy that homeowners would pay. They explained that, in the wake of rising property taxes, the county would receive the same amount of fees with a lower mill levy and that those fees would be adequate to provide service. The county agreed, much to the gratitude of the homeowners.

Today, Burgundy Park remains a strong choice for those looking to live in Niwot. Homeowners have been known to hold regular block parties, sometimes complete with garage bands, said Lentz. He estimates that there's also about 25 percent of original owners who remain. "Over 30 years we've gone through almost one entire graduation cycle, and we're on our second graduation cycle. It's been wonderful."