Attention homeowners associations: Check out an article in The Daily Sentinel March 26, “107 home development gets OK.”

Your HOA may have “open space” within your subdivision that was required by the city of Grand Junction by its development code when the subdivision was approved.

Open space is a parcel of land that is owned by the members of the HOA and is not taxed by the county assessor. The current city code requirements are in Chapter 6.3 b. 1. of the zoning and development code (view it on the city Web site).

It now appears that should the HOA members sell that open space, the buyer could go through the development process with the city and then build homes on what was once required open space.

A serious question surfaces: If the city requires open space, why would it allow development on what it previously required to remain open?

The city admits it does not have legal codes to address this decision or action to allow development on land it originally required to be “open space.” It seems, however, it is going forward to allow development and that will take the city into unchartered waters and untested actions.

CARL MITCHELL
Grand Junction

This entry was posted on Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 9:24 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.