When the massive Copperleaf subdivision was first proposed in 2004, it drew protests and legal challenges that dragged out for years. Then, the housing market tanked and the whole project fell into foreclosure in 2010.

But under new ownership, Copperleaf is now getting a second life.

National Land Partners — one of the country’s largest buyers and sellers of residential real estate — acquired the 100 or so remaining lots in the Wapiti area subdivision from the bank last year. The company’s been working to sell the lots since.

In an interview earlier this year, Gary Sumner of National Land Partners said his company was drawn to the rarity and uniqueness of the property, nestled between Cody and Yellowstone National Park.

“It was started, potentially, at the wrong time, I guess, with the [economic] situation that came along in 2008, ‘09, ‘10 …,” Sumner said. “But I think now is the time for Copperleaf.”

He said there appears to be a strong market for second and retirement homes among buyers all over the country. Despite not getting fully up to speed until mid-July, by mid-October, National Land Partners had sold about two dozen lots to people ranging from New York to Colorado to California, Sumner said. Additionally, the company has received more than 1,000 inquiries, generally from people looking for a second home or a retirement home, he said.

“It’s such a great tract of land and it was well-developed and [has] high-quality, state-of-the-art facilities there in terms of sewer [and] water,” said Sumner.

The subdivision — built out at a cost of roughly $22 million, according to a partner on the project — is one of the largest developments in Park County’s history. And it was indisputably the most controversial and scrutinized.

Soon after a group of developers proposed turning the more than 550 acres of former ranch land into a high-end, 155-residence subdivision, “Copperleaf” became a household name and the subject of much public debate.

Some of the strong feelings persist to this day; this summer, one of the candidates for the Park County Commission, Bob Stevens of Wapiti, complained about the way Copperleaf was developed and approved.

In the run-up to National Land Partners’ new marketing effort, one of the firm’s salespeople walked into Mossy Oak Properties in Cody and asked owner/realtor John Parsons what he thought about Copperleaf. Though the sales rep didn’t realize it at the time, he was asking one of the subdivision’s original developers.

Parsons said it has been hard to see another company come in and start selling and marketing what was once his vision.

“I have a lot of heart and soul and wallet in that place up there,” he said in May.

Parsons and fellow partners Bob Kudelski and Jeff Daragh lost a combined total of around $16 million when lot sales fizzled and Copperleaf went into foreclosure, he said.

But while it’s difficult to watch a new owner take over, Parsons hopes National Land Partners keeps Copperleaf as nice and environmentally friendly as it was envisioned to be — and he wishes the new owners all the best.

“I hope they have success,” Parsons said. “Because I think it sitting there empty is the worst thing that can happen.”

Four years of litigation

As National Land Partners’ marketing materials describe it, Copperleaf is “situated alongside the Shoshone River in a jaw-dropping setting in the Wapiti Valley, giving every property owner panoramic Rocky Mountain views and over a mile of blue ribbon trout stream fishing.” While the area’s beauty and relative wildness make it an attractive place to build a home, it’s also a place where a new high-density development proved controversial. Many were concerned about how the splitting the former alfalfa pasture into scores of 1- to 3-acre lots would change the character of the valley.

A group of Wapiti area property owners and residents who called themselves the Northfork Citizens for Responsible Development spearheaded the opposition. They raised numerous objections, mounted legal protests and filed lawsuits. The litigation mostly surrounded concerns about the subdivision’s water and sewer systems, but also about procedure, the amount of open space and other issues.

An attorney for the Northfork Citizens, Tony Wendtland, once summarized the group’s goal as wanting to ensure that Copperleaf, “if it is allowed to exist, is done right.”

Their objections did create changes: For instance, the developers, known as Worthington Group of Wyoming, ditched their plans for private water and septic systems and instead installed centralized ones. Those are now part of the “state-of-the-art” infrastructure that National Land Partners pitches in its promotional materials for Copperleaf.

The dispute began with contentious hearings in front of the Park County Planning and Zoning Commission and the Park County Commission, before the Wyoming Environmental Quality Council and later, in courtrooms. The Wyoming Supreme Court issued two separate rulings about the subdivision’s permitting process.

The legal battle eventually ended with the Worthington Group prevailing on just about every issue; the courts generally agreed that county commissioners had acted appropriately in approving the development.

However, those legal processes took years — stretching from 2006 to 2010. In the meantime, the national and local economies shifted.

“It really went from the best housing market to the worst housing market during that four years,” Parsons said.

Falling into foreclosure

When Copperleaf was first proposed, development was booming in Park County.

Linda Gillett took over as Park County’s planning director in 2006, midway through the planning process for Copperleaf, and she recalled the office bustling with business. Planning and Zoning Commission meetings sometimes ran until midnight, Gillett said, with one hearing after another on proposed developments.

“It was crazy for about a year,” Gillett recalled in a May interview, shortly before her retirement. “And then it’s been steadily decreasing since then.”

She provided rough numbers that illustrate how development skyrocketed and then plummeted in Park County. Between 2006 and 2007, commissioners and planning staff approved 83 different subdivisions, creating 515 new lots. In stark contrast, the county approved just 20 subdivisions and 47 new lots between 2016 and 2017.

Copperleaf appears to have fallen victim to that trend, as the national housing bubble burst. County records indicate that 11 lots in the subdivision changed hands in 2007, then, it appears, only about six of the lots were sold over the next three years.

In October 2010 — just a month after the county commissioners gave a final vote of re-approval to the subdivision — Wells Fargo bank began the process of foreclosing on Copperleaf and the roughly $3.2 million remaining on the mortgage.

“I think our [legal] system’s a little bit broke, because we did not lose, but we lost,” Parsons said.

When National Land Partners bought the remaining lots last year, only about a half-dozen homes had been constructed in the subdivision.

Before he got into property development, an acquaintance warned Parsons that “it’s always the second and third developer in that makes all the money.”

“He was right on this one,” Parsons said.

He believes National Land Partners bought Copperleaf’s remaining lots from Wells Fargo for about 10 cents on the dollar, “so they can afford to sell it a lot less than what we as developers had in it.”

Back in 2006, Worthington Group listed the lots at a starting price of around $170,000, selling about 36 lots before foreclosure. National Land Partners is currently advertising prices as low as $59,900 and has sold about 25 lots in Copperleaf so far this year, Sumner said.

“It’s doing very well,” he said Monday.

Continuing a ‘vision’

Sumner said National Land Partners had its eye on the property for a couple years, working with Wells Fargo to officially close on the property in October 2017.

“Copperleaf is a great, clean project that’s just, it’s amazing, actually,” he said. “The original developers had a vision and they worked really, really hard to create that vision — and we’re now the new purveyors of that vision, I would say.”

Sumner noted that all the infrastructure has been completed, including roads and utilities that include high-speed internet. He also highlighted the gated entrance, the “great” covenants and restrictions on the types of homes that can be built in the subdivision.

“It’s very well thought-out,” he said. “People are going to be very happy with the end result.”

From what he’s seen of National Land Partners, “I think they’ll do things right,” Parsons said, adding, “If the group of people that are there who fought in the first go-round continue to hold their feet to the fire and make sure that they do things right, I think it will continue to be a great development. It’s beautiful up there.”

Parsons believes that Copperleaf’s opponents thought they could stop the development “and they really couldn’t,” he said. “They stopped us, but they didn’t stop it.”

The 2010 foreclosure and Supreme Court ruling didn’t end all the legal disputes, either. Park County commissioners filed a complaint against the Copperleaf Homeowner’s Association in 2012 for pumping too much water from underground wells; they reached a compromise and tweaked the permit the following year.

Meanwhile, a dispute broke out between landowners who live across the North Fork of the Shoshone River in the so-called China Wall Tract and the Copperleaf Homeowner’s Association over who can access which open spaces along and near the river. That dispute reached the Supreme Court last year, marking the high court’s third decision involving the subdivision. Then, after the decision didn’t go their way, a couple living in the China Wall area filed a legal action against the county. That dispute is still pending, but, no matter how a judge rules, it shouldn’t bring any significant changes to the subdivision.

Sumner said National Land Partners did its homework before moving in. Over the last 50 years, National Land Partners has handled more than 600 projects, including some with histories that are similar to Copperleaf, he said.

Based on his own decades of experience, Sumner thinks the subdivision will benefit the local community over the long-term — including the jobs it will support as houses start going up.

“I think what will happen, like people who look at the past right now, they’re going to look forward,” Sumner predicted. “And pretty soon they’re going to look at Copperleaf and say, ‘Remember when?’ And then they’re going to look at it and say, ‘Wow, this is a great contribution to the area.’”