The owners of Granby Ranch are again banning elected members of the homeowner metro district from accessing the ski area, the golf course, trails, fishing areas and all restaurants.
In letters sent by the lawyer who represents Granby Ranch owners Bob and David Glarner, the homeowners — members of the homeowner-run Granby Ranch Metro District and their spouses —were told they could not access any of the resort’s amenities, including “sidewalks, patios and lawns.”
“I can confirm that in December, my wife and I received a letter that purports to exclude us from most of the resort, including areas where the general public can go, but does not specify why,” Matt Girard, the president of the Granby Ranch Metro District, said in an emailed statement regarding the letters sent from David Richardson at law firm Husch Blackwell to him and his wife in December.
“It’s a dark communication sent during a time of year that I believe should be about love of neighbor, and seeking tolerance and understanding with those with whom one might otherwise disagree,” said Girard, who was elected in 2018 with a promise to not increase debt for owners and “protect taxpaying property owners and homeowners’ interests first.” “I will continue to prioritize my duties and obligations as an elected member of the Granby Ranch Metro District board, and I hope everyone involved, including the authors of the exclusionary letter and their clients, had a beautiful and safe holiday season.”
Emails to Richardson seeking comment were not returned. Husch Blackwell lawyers in April sent The Colorado Sun a formal letter demanding that Sun editors remove stories about Granby Ranch and issue a public apology to the owners. The Sun declined.
The Glarners are brothers and real estate developers from Missouri whose GRCO LLC and GR Terra LLC bought the financially struggling Granby Ranch in May 2021 for $29 million. Another company they are associated with, Middlefork LLC, in 2022 spent $8.4 million for the 2,269-acre Troublesome Valley Ranch east of Kremmling.
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Natascha O’Flaherty, a longtime homeowner in Granby Ranch, has been critical of the new owners and was elected to the homeowner-controlled Granby Ranch Metro District Board in 2023. For a second year in a row, she and her husband got letters banning them from the resort after paying HOA dues for access and maintenance for nearly two decades.
She is tangling with the Glarners over a proposed trail that crosses her property. The owners have asked that she take down a fence and remove landscaping to accommodate the trail, saying they have an easement to access the property. She’s received unexplained letters from title companies listing Husch Blackwell as her representative in the sale of her home, which is not for sale.
The Husch Blackwell letters to O’Flaherty and her husband said they were banned “due to your open hostility, personal attacks and abusive language towards Granby Ranch’s owners.” O’Flaherty, a lawyer, said she has “always been civil” with the owners, despite her disagreements with them.
“Hold on, I’ll read you the letters. I have a whole folder filled with Husch Blackwell letters,” she said. “This is their M.O. — to harass and intimidate. It appears to have a chilling effect on getting owners to serve on the board. It would appear to me they want to control the Granby Ranch Metro District board.”
It is not the first time the Glarners have clashed with homeowners at their development projects. In 2021, homeowners in the Villages of Huntleigh Ridge in Wentzville, Missouri, about 45 miles west of St. Louis, raised concerns with spending by the homeowners’ board, which had three members: the brothers and their mother. The Glarners were planning to develop homes on property they owned in the village and the association was racking up annual legal bills to Husch Blackwell that were as high as $54,000.
“That’s a lot for an HOA that is taking in $85,000 a year. Fence approvals or anything that had to do with the HOA would go through his lawyer, David Richardson at Husch Blackwell, and we would get these huge bills,” said homeowner Danny Vehlewald, who was elected to the homeowners association board after the Glarners sold their property. “We were literally charged $700 for a phone call with Husch Blackwell over a fence approval.”
When the homeowners complained to local news outlets, “we all woke up to cease-and-desist letters from Husch Blackwell,” Vehlewald said. “The only thing I can say to owners in a similar situation is to get all your local town and county leaders to get together and tell them they can’t do business like this in your community.”
Husch Blackwell represented the Glarners when St. Louis County leaders wanted to question them following a high-profile federal pay-to-play bribery case involving a top elected official in 2019. The executive of St. Louis County, Steve Stenger, in 2019 went to prison after pleading guilty to the bribery scheme that involved him directing lucrative county contracts to political donors. The Glarners in 2016 leased office space they owned to the county in a 20-year deal that would have cost the county as much as $77 million. The St. Louis County Council subpoenaed the Glarners in 2019 after a council ethics probe found the Glarners were major contributors to Stenger’s political campaign. The Glarners sued the council, arguing the subpoenas were inappropriate and the two sides settled the lawsuit in 2021 and reduced the length of the county’s lease of the Glarners’ office space.
In April, five members of the Glarner-controlled metro districts in Granby Ranch approved 24 ballot measures authorizing many billions in debt for resort infrastructure, which O’Flaherty told The Sun “defies comprehension and reason.”
The Granby Ranch Metro District manager and O’Flaherty filed complaints with the Colorado Secretary of State last year saying Husch Blackwell, which represents the Glarners’ GRCO and GR Terra companies and the community’s Headwaters Metro District, violated campaign finance rules around the May 2023 election for the homeowners’ Granby Ranch Metro District.
Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Beall in October dismissed the complaints against GRCO, GR Terra and the Headwaters board, saying there was insufficient evidence of campaign finance violations. But Beall did direct his office to file a formal complaint against Husch Blackwell involving the reporting of the law firm’s spending for records requests seeking emails and documents shared among members of the Granby Ranch Metro District Board. Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser in November filed the campaign finance complaint against Husch Blackwell. That complaint alleges the law firm spent more than $1,000 on the election-related records requests, which should have been reported to the Colorado Secretary of State.
John Henderson, a founding member of the Coloradans for Metro District Reform, called the letters from the owners of Granby Ranch “totally strange and childish.”
“My 4- and 6-year-old grandchildren behave more maturely than this,” Henderson said.
Henderson is a lawyer who works with communities to help put homeowners on metro district boards that are typically controlled by developers. Henderson, who does not work with anyone in Granby Ranch, remembers a developer in Lakewood who threatened to stop supporting community charities as homeowners took over the local district board. Another developer slowed community investment when newly elected residents asked for detailed accounting of developer spending. But he hasn’t heard of developers banning residents from public property.
“And these are the folks who demand the absolute right to impose literally billions of dollars in resident debt to support unaccounted-for developer profits in metro district financing,” Henderson said. “It’s scary but becoming the norm.”