Thank you Over 150 letters were submitted into the public record.
Lone Tree · Douglas County · Colorado

A landlocked mesa top.
No water. High wind.
343 homes.

The Hillcamp proposal would place 343 single-family homes on a landlocked mesa above Lone Tree — no assured water supply, high winds, adjacent to a known landslide, and routed through rural roads never built to carry a development of this scale. It is the wrong project for this land.

The City is taking public comments through May 26. Every letter goes into the record.

Public comment window closes May 26, 2026 · today
In plain language

This is not a story about opposing growth. It is a story about an incompatible plan — built on land that cannot carry the water, the traffic, the fire risk, or the slope conditions the plan requires.

Below are the six reasons the proposal does not fit this land — and the simple way to add your voice to the record before May 26.

New wildfire code — effective July 1
Lone Tree just adopted the Colorado Wildfire Resiliency Code, effective July 1, 2026. It requires wider roads, a real second way out, defensible space around homes, and ignition-resistant construction in wildfire-prone areas like ours. The Hillcamp design does not meet it — and it should have to, because this project has not been approved yet.
Jul 1Effective date
What's at stake

Three threats. One landscape.

This is not opposition to growth. It is opposition to a specific plan that fails on the three issues that protect human life, our shared land, and the agreement Lone Tree voters made in 2000.

Life Safety & Wildfire

343 homes on a high-wind mesa with a single public collector road. SMFR's February 4 referral is conditional, not an unconditional approval. McArthur's emergency vehicle access is admitted to be too steep for a public road. The IFC requires a true second access for any development over 30 units — this proposal exceeds that threshold by more than a thousand percent.

Geology & Water

The Colorado Geological Survey formally found the developer's geotechnical record insufficient on January 30, 2026. The site sits adjacent to the January 2025 Tract C landslide, currently in litigation. There is no City or State Engineer water-adequacy determination on this project.

The Promise of 2000

Lone Tree voters approved rural-residential zoning here in 2000. What is now being proposed is an urban village with an amenity center — a product type that does not conform to that zoning, and a density the rural Type III and IV roads were never built to carry.

What's being proposed

The Hillcamp development, in plain numbers.

Brookfield Residential's resubmittal is currently in its second public-comment period at the City of Lone Tree. These are the numbers our neighborhood would have to live with.

343
Single-family homes on a landlocked mesa
1,000
Estimated additional vehicles from the new homes
3,136
Daily trips in the developer's traffic study — understated
F
Projected level of service at the I-25 / RidgeGate interchange by 2028

† The interchange is already projected to fail. The RidgeGate & I-25 interchange — which serves Sky Ridge Medical Center — is forecast to reach a failing level of service by 2028 without Hillcamp. The project's added trips arrive on top of an interchange that already cannot keep up. On May 15, 2026, a fatal I-25 closure between Happy Canyon and Castle Pines held residents on those arterials for over three hours.

Our position

Six reasons this proposal does not fit this land.

Each is independently sufficient. Together, they describe a project that is in the wrong place, at the wrong density, on the wrong roads, with the wrong infrastructure.

01

There is no water.

The developer's own off-site utility report admits the existing water supply already has trouble keeping pressure up during peak demand — before adding 343 new homes. There is no formal determination on this project that the water supply is adequate for what's being proposed, and neighbors who rely on private wells will feel the consequences first.

Water supply
02

One road in. No real road out.

343 homes are being asked to share a single public collector road. The fire code requires a real second way out for developments over thirty homes. The proposed McArthur emergency access is acknowledged in the developer's own materials to be too steep to ever function as a true public road, and the local fire authority has only given a conditional approval. In a wildfire on a high-wind mesa, this neighborhood has nowhere to go.

Wildfire & emergency access
03

The ground has already failed once.

The State's geotechnical reviewer found the developer's geological record insufficient in late January. The site sits directly adjacent to a January 2025 landslide on the same hillside, now in active litigation. The developer's own drainage engineer concedes that stormwater carried over these slopes "would create unstable slope conditions." Permanent homes and a public road should not be built on ground that has already moved.

Slope & landslide
04

An urban village on rural-residential land.

What's being proposed is not a quiet extension of a rural neighborhood. It is an urban village with an amenity center — 343 dense homes organized around a single arterial. That kind of development does not conform to the rural-residential zoning Lone Tree voters approved in 2000, and the rural roads built to serve large-lot homes were never designed to carry it. A mesa top is not a suburb in waiting.

Wrong product · Wrong place
05

The Comprehensive Plan does not support it.

Lone Tree's Comprehensive Plan calls for infrastructure-first growth, protection of natural resources, neighborhood compatibility, and preservation of the rural character at the City's edge. This proposal contradicts every one of those policies. The City has previously denied applications on Comprehensive Plan grounds despite a staff recommendation of approval. The same analysis applies here, with more on the record.

Comp Plan conformance
06

The interchange is already projected to fail.

The RidgeGate and I-25 interchange — the one that serves Sky Ridge Medical Center — is already forecast to reach a failing level of service by 2028 without Hillcamp. The project arrives on top of an interchange that cannot absorb its baseline growth. The developer's own traffic study understates the 3,136 daily trips Hillcamp would add, and on May 15, 2026 a fatal closure on I-25 between Happy Canyon and Castle Pines kept residents on those arterials for over three hours.

Traffic · RidgeGate & I-25 · Sky Ridge
Submit your letter

Three minutes. Your voice in the official record.

Pick the concerns that matter most to you. We'll assemble a thoughtful neighbor-to-City letter you can review, edit, and send. Important: the same letter has to be submitted on each of the four pending Hillcamp applications for your comment to count on the full project. We make that easy below.

  1. Tell us who you are — your name and street/neighborhood. The City weighs comments from named residents more heavily than anonymous notes.
  2. Pick the issues you care about — water, wildfire, geology, density, the Comprehensive Plan, traffic, the new wildfire code, or wildlife. Choose one or all.
  3. Review and personalize — read the assembled letter, edit anything in your own voice, and add a sentence that's personal to you. That's what makes it powerful.
  4. Copy your letter, then submit to all four applications — Hillcamp moves forward as four separate filings. For your comment to count on the entire project, the same letter has to be submitted on each one. We'll walk you through it on the right.

Choose your concerns

Your letter — preview & edit

Submit to all four Hillcamp applications

For your comment to count on the entire Hillcamp project, the same letter has to be submitted on each of the four pending applications. Click Copy letter above so it's in your clipboard, then work through these four links one at a time.

  1. 1 Hillcamp Sub-Area Plan
    Open the page → scroll to the public comment section → paste your letter → include name & address → submit.
  2. 2 Hillcamp / RidgeGate Rural Residential Preliminary Plan
    Same drill — paste the same letter into the comment field on this page and submit.
  3. 3 Hillcamp / Southridge Preserve Preliminary Plan
    Paste and submit on this preliminary-plan filing.
  4. 4 Final Plat — Hillcamp Trail Filing No. 1
    Paste and submit on the final-plat filing. That's all four — you're done.
Your browser may ask to allow pop-ups — click "Allow."

Tip: paste your letter into a Notes/Word doc first as a backup, then into each comment form. Browsers occasionally clear the clipboard between tabs.

Where we are

The process, in motion.

Hillcamp is currently in its second referral period before the City of Lone Tree. The decision points ahead are real, and so is the window to influence them.

February 2026
First referral comments filed

Surrey Ridge residents, SMFR, CPW, OSNR, and Douglas County submitted formal comments documenting wildfire access deficiencies, density concerns, and ecological impact.

April 7 & 21, 2026
Colorado Wildfire Resiliency Code adopted

The City of Lone Tree adopted the new wildfire code on first and second reading. The developer has no vested rights in this plan or its density until the City conditionally approves the application — which means our comments matter, and the new code applies.

May 26, 2026 · Now
Second referral comment deadline

The window to file public referral comments closes. Every comment becomes part of the official record the Planning Commission and City Council will see.

Summer / Fall 2026
Planning Commission & City Council review

Staff report, Planning Commission recommendation, City Council public hearings. Conditions, denial, or approval — all decided on the record being built now.

Beyond your letter

Other ways to make this count.

The most important thing you can do is submit your letter. After that, here are three quick ways to amplify it.

01

Forward to one neighbor

Pick one household who hasn't heard about this yet. Forward this page. The strength of our voice is the number of households who add theirs.

Forward via email →
02

Attend the next hearing

Planning Commission and City Council hearings will be set this summer. Showing up — and being recorded as present — counts in a way an email cannot.

Get hearing alerts →
03

Connect with the broader coalition

Save the Lone Tree Bluffs is the broader community effort — a petition, a Dropbox of source documents, and a running list of recent articles. Sign and share.

Save the Lone Tree Bluffs →
Who we are

An equestrian community organizing for the land that defines it.

Surrey Ridge is a covenanted rural-residential and equestrian neighborhood at the northern edge of Douglas County — residents who live here, trail riders, an active equestrian group, families who chose this for the open sky, the low density, and the quiet.

The Concerned Residents of Surrey Ridge are a coalition of homeowners working alongside Save the Lone Tree Bluffs and other communities affected by the Hillcamp proposal. Our May 14 community meeting was heavily attended — a turnout that tells you how seriously this neighborhood takes what is being proposed.

We will fight for thoughtful development on this land — development that has the water to support it, the fire access to protect it, roads built for the traffic it generates, and a footprint that respects the wildlife and the bluffs we share. We are not against growth. We are for getting it right.

Contact us

Send us a note.

Questions about the proposal? Want to volunteer or share something we should know? We read every message.

Or email us directly at surreyridgeCOneighbors@gmail.com
Resources

The documents the record will be built on.

Everything below is publicly filed or publicly accessible. We link rather than restate so you can read the source for yourself.