2025 Market Facts VRP - Flipbook - Page 71
ECO NO MI C PRO FI L E & MA R K ET FACT S 2025 | 63
PROFILE
11,554
POPULATION
9.10
SQUARE MILES
COURTESY CONTOURGLOBAL LTD.
A facility that is part of the Black Hollow solar array, under construction in
Severance.
3,190
HOUSEHOLDS
SEVERANCE
Growing town hasn’t
severed ties to past
$127,257
MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD
INCOME
SEVERANCE — The little town of Severance is growing up.
Along with the growth has come numerous new businesses that seized on competitively priced commercially zoned land, including bars and restaurants, personal service shops
and salons, retail stores, a bank, self-storage, child day care and more.
It also has brought challenges, including strains on Severance’s ability to supply water
to all the new residents and businesses.
The Lucerne-based North Weld County Water District had stopped issuing new taps
in September 2021, blaming uncertainty over potential project delays for a new pipeline
stretching through parts of Fort Collins and Larimer County, as well as its own capacity to
treat water to the region’s explosive growth.
North Weld’s move prompted a complete moratorium on building permits by Severance and an “effective moratorium” on building permits in Eaton. Other nearby communities also were affected.
North Weld officially lifted the freeze last November.
The town traces its history to 1894, when David E. Severance applied for a post office
for a community of approximately 50 families that originally was called Tailholt. However,
because Severance’s name was on the application, the post office was erroneously named
Severance — and the name stuck. Mail was carried to and from the new town by horse
and buggy from Eaton, then from Windsor. Farmers began raising sugar beets in the area,
and the town itself was founded in 1906 by Bruce Eaton, son of Gov. Benjamin Eaton.
Severance began as a receiving station and dump for the nearby Great Western Sugar
Co. and remained in that role until 1985.
This summer, Severance joined Evans and Keenesburg in taking advantage of Weld
County’s free offer to assist in processing applications for oil and gas developments. The
intergovernmental agreement approved by the Board of Weld County Commissioners will
allow those municipalities to save time and resources by consulting with more experienced professionals from the county’s Oil and Gas Energy Department and reducing
costly errors in the process.
In January, London-based ContourGlobal Ltd., a 20-year-old independent power producer based in London, acquired a solar-energy portfolio that includes the Black Hollow
Solar array in Severance. Ground was broken last year for the array, which is being built
by Irvine, California-based Qcells USA Corp. When it reaches full operation by 2027, the
1,400-acre solar array will generate enough energy to keep the lights on in 63,000 homes
in Northern Colorado, edging the Platte River Power Authority closer to its goal of zerocarbon energy generation by 2030.
The town currently maintains six parks spread throughout many town neighborhoods.
A trail system is being developed that will hook into regional trail systems in the future.
And in December, Severance finally got its own police station. The new 4,000 squarefoot station carried a price tag of just over $3 million, although it was constructed without
accruing any debt or imposing any new taxes on Severance residents.
$532,000
MEDIAN HOME
SALE PRICE
FOR SALE
OPEN
TAX
129
NO. OF BUSINESSES
5.9%
CITY, COUNTY,
STATE SALES TAX
49.7%
BACHELOR’S DEGREE
OR HIGHER
ONLINE RESOURCES:
Town of Severance
www.townofseverance.org
Matt Fries, mayor
mfries@townofseverance.org
Nicholas Wharton, town administrator
nwharton@townofseverance.org
