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Routt County planning commissioners will review a plan to create as many as 63 luxury home lots on a west-facing hillside just south of Steamboat Springs' city limits.

Alpine Mountain Ranch would be built on 1,216 acres across U.S. Highway 40 from the Haymaker Golf Course on Routt County Road 24. The developers are asking the county for a "land preservation exemption subdivision." Such a designation would allow them to make more lots in exchange for clustering the home sites on a fraction of the overall parcel. They propose to leave 900 acres largely undeveloped.

Partners Bill Butler and Andy Daly hope to obtain approval from the county and begin marketing the first 19 lots through reservations in June. Butler is the chairman and CEO of the Northern Kentucky company Corporex. The company has attracted attention for the architecture of its riverfront housing projects in Cincinnati.

"It will be done right," Butler said about Alpine Mountain Ranch during an unveiling of the plans in March in Steamboat. "That's what we stand for. If you go back through my company's history, that's what you find."

Daly is a former president and CEO of Copper Mountain and, later, Vail Associates (which became Vail Resorts).

Also being considered during tonight's meeting is a conditional use permit that would allow the developers to begin construction on an owners' lodge, barn, trails, hiking shelter and two employee housing units.

The ranch originally was proposed to have 43 home sites. However, under recent revisions to LPS regulations, Alpine Mountain Ranch could be used as a pilot program in which development rights would be transferred to the ranch from another parcel on the valley floor. The developers could create as many as 20 additional "contingency lots" at Alpine Mountain Ranch. That would be contingent upon their ability to acquire an additional 600 acres or more on the valley floor to be set aside from development.

-- To reach Tom Ross, call 871-4205

or e-mail tross@steamboatpilot.com