MAAD Peak

A peak of your own! Design meets nature in Architect Marc Gerritsen’s latest Colorado creation, which sits atop a mountain peak in northern Colorado outside Fort Collins.  The property’s modern and monolithic design redefines luxury and reimagines mountain living.  Bordering the national forest on two sides, the 40-acre property offers ample privacy, silence, solitude, unobstructed views of the Front Range, and access to trails, rivers, reservoirs, and the great wilderness.  That’s just a start.  MAAD PEAK also features luxuries and conveniences not usually found in remote mountain hideaways such as an oversized, fully-equipped professional kitchen featuring a 16-foot island; multiple outdoor decks and patios; Sauna and Cold Plunge, a 1,400 square foot master suite, and a 1,500-square foot fully-insulated and heated stand-alone ‘artist studio’ that can easily be converted into another dwelling, artist’ atelier, office, recording studio, or home theatre.  A mere 25-minute drive from downtown Fort Collins, equipped with high-speed internet, and accessible year-round via HOA-maintained and plowed roads, MAAD PEAK is the perfect place to live, work, and play.

This forty acres of rock outcroppings and big views within the Bonner Peak Ranch subdivision sits at 6,800 feet behind hogbacks, mesas, and foothills that separate this gated community from the nearby sea of development in the northern reaches of Denver metro area suburbia. This part of Larimer County just northwest of Fort Collins is home to many large expanses of preserved land and working ranches where residents and tourists hike, bike, and explore the Rocky Mountain foothills. Bonner Peak Ranch sits between the small hamlets of Laporte and Livermore to the west of scenic US Hwy 287, the road between Laramie WY, and Fort Collins. Gas and some supplies are in both towns, with everything else being available in Fort Collins, just twenty-five minutes down the road, or up in Laramie, which is 45 minutes away. Dispersed subdivisions, horse properties, estates and farms, and ranches dot the landscape here and there. For some folks these are summer homes, for others, they are primary homes and they commute to work at nearby tech jobs or at CSU. The Bonner Peak Ranch subdivision is one of the larger developments in this area, well-run and well-designed, where a family can build a large, new private residence, guest house, barns, and other structures like this family has done in a magnificent setting.

Improvements

The design elements of the MAAD Peak are what make this a unique legacy property. The owners of the ranch designed and built the home and studio from the ground up. Marc Gerritsen was trained at the Academy of Industrial Design in the Netherlands and has an extensive portfolio of homes he has built around the world. His wife Adria Lake is a prominent wellness industry insider who has worked with well-known and distinguished brands like Four Seasons, Ritz Carlton, and Aman Resorts to name a few. The combined backgrounds in design, luxury, and hospitality are seen in every aspect of the home.

The home was built intelligently and artfully.

Marc opted for a robust structure that adapts to its surroundings and will continue to function in all types of elements. Take the monolithic, ark-like shape of the main building, for example: “Having spent time in the Alps, I knew a massive mansard roof with large panoramic windows would allow the sunlight to heat the building in the winter and give it a slight aerodynamic form that will allow 150 miles an hour winds to glide over it,” he continues. In addition to the shape of the home, the exterior is steel and mahogany, which protects against wildfire, sun, moisture, or any other element that typically ages a home.

To learn more about what went into the home, you can check out the property’s website here. You can also download the floorplans for the house here.

Locale

Some of the fastest-growing communities in the nation are located in the busy I-25 corridor north of Denver. However, the MAAD Peak property and Bonner Peak Ranch is an oasis in the hustle and bustle and is unmatched if one is interested in a stunning, recreationally-oriented, mountain escape close to a metro area. The area is largely rural, with some dispersed subdivisions and some large horse and cattle ranches and irrigated farms in the lower valleys and cabins up high to take in the views. The Laramie Hills area where MAAD Peak sits is a priority for Larimer County Open Space and private landowners and recreationists benefit from this investment, with viewsheds and quiet largely preserved. The property is situated only an hour and a half from Rocky Mountain National Park and an hour and a half from Denver International Airport.

Climate

Although this property is located in the Laramie Foothills at 6,800 feet, a higher elevation than down in the valley at Fort Collins, this region of northern Colorado is still sometimes known as a “banana belt” within Colorado’s populated Front Range, as its lands are situated in the leeward side of some of the largest peaks in the Rockies (such as 14’er Longs Peak in nearby Rocky Mountain National Park), which means it can be milder and drier than other parts of Colorado. As a result, the property experiences a very comfortable four-season climate with an estimated 250-300 days of sunshine a year and snows that typically melt quickly in the winter.

Fort Collins Weather Highlights:

• Summer High: the July high is around 87 degrees
• Winter Low: the January low is 15
• Rain: averages 16 inches of rain a year
• Snow: averages 48 inches of snow a year

Bonner Peak Ranch subdivision is located adjacent to public lands and as this property borders the national forest on two sides, it has access to thousands of acres of wilderness right at its doorstep. Residents often hike and bike the well-designed Bonner Peak roads to access these lands to exercise and view the area’s abundant wildlife and beautiful geology. Hunting is also allowed on one’s private 40-acre property or on the adjacent public lands for deer, elk, bear, mountain lion, and wild turkey, with hunting licenses being easy to procure over the counter for CPW Unit 191.

Bonner Peak Ranch is a rural mountain subdivision totaling 3200 acres. With eighty lots, each averages forty acres and is located so one rarely sees a neighboring home. Sixty-five of the lots are currently built upon. These large lots are all on well and septic, with these elements each being new at MAAD. Intermittent snows are removed in a timely fashion to where residents are rarely if ever inconvenienced, with many commuting to jobs in Ft Collins. The HOA fee is $895 annually, and that includes regular road maintenance and snow removal.