$110.9 million price for Buckeye Farms outside of Minden

All 2,112.6 acres of the Buckeye Farms project north of Minden is on the market for $110.9 million.

The first neighborhood of the project is going through the Douglas County approval zoning process.

Park Ranch Holdings is seeking to sell all or part of the project, according to Coldwell Banker, which posted it on its web site on Thursday, not long after an ordinance was introduced by commissioners.

A March 7 public hearing and second reading is scheduled for a zoning map and planned development overlay for the 89.39-acre neighborhood site that will create 304 single family homes and 20 units of multi-family.

Planning commissioners voted 7-0 to recommend the project on Tuesday after a Jan. 9 meeting which sent staff and the applicant back to work on revisions to the development.

Posting the property for sale might explain the rush on the part of the Parks to get the property through the process.

Planner Kate Moroles-O’Neal told planning commissioners at that Jan. 9 meeting that staff had hoped the applicant would delay the item after its submittal the Monday after Thanksgiving.

“The Buckeye project has been a very difficult review,” she said. “We did attempt in mid-December to continue the item to try and get us all on the same page. We felt things still needed to be submitted with the applications based on the general requirements in the specific plan.”

Park representative Keith Ruben argued that the specific plan approved in 2020 was more of a guideline, but planning commissioners conditioned their approval on working with staff to incorporate more elements from the plan into the proposal.

That specific plan was approved in December 2020 a year after county commissioners agreed to a master plan amendment that moved receiving area from Topaz Ranch Estates to Minden.

Most of the property is among the remnants of the old Dangberg Ranch purchased by the Parks and Don Bently in 1995 and has been the subject of a handful of development proposals over the intervening decades.

It is part of the property the county attempted to purchase for $24 million.

A key factor in the eventual approval of the master plan amendment and specific plan was obtaining the right of way for Muller Lane Parkway. That right-of -way is in county hands and Douglas has until the end of next year to build two lanes of the route.

Under the current approval, the parkway will not permit trucks, hence reducing its value as a bypass around downtown Minden and Gardnerville.

In 2017, it was determined that about half the trucks rolling on 395 were making deliveries to local businesses.