Windsor's Walmart Fight Was Settled in 2005. What That Means for the Field Behind Your Next House

A Windsor resident who bought a home near Main Street and 17th Street years ago told CBS Colorado the area's waterways, trees and open fields were what drew them there. Those fields are now the planned site of a Walmart Supercenter.

Kim Lambrecht, the town's long-range planner, answered in the same report. "Walmart has owned the property for nearly 20 years. It has been zoned to general commercial for nearly 20 years," she told CBS Colorado.

Both statements are accurate. When a buyer looks at the field behind a house, the field's future has often been decided already, sometimes before the house was built. The decision lives in zoning and plat records, not in the view from the back deck.

Colorado's disclosure form asks about the property you're buying

Colorado's current residential Seller's Property Disclosure, form SPD19, was adopted August 5, 2025 and became mandatory on January 1, 2026. Two of its lines touch on what happens around a home:

• "Notice of zoning action related to the Property"
• "Any proposed or existing transportation project that affects or is expected to affect the Property"

Both lines are written around "the Property," meaning the home being sold. The form has no separate question about commercial plans for the vacant parcel next door or across the street. You can read the whole form on the Colorado Division of Real Estate's SPD19 PDF. This is general information, not legal advice. If you have a question about what a seller must disclose in your situation, ask a Colorado real estate attorney.

In practice, finding out what's planned for a neighboring field is mostly up to the buyer, and in Windsor the public record usually has the answer.

Twenty-two years on one corner

Walmart's Main and 17th site has been through almost every stage a Colorado land-use decision can go through. Here is the timeline from local reporting and town records.

The June 2005 margin was three votes, according to the Greeley Tribune's November 2005 election coverage. The Tribune's 2,462 to 1,768 count for 2A/2E came with three precincts still uncounted. Even so, 58% voted no, which the paper called "a far cry" from June's near tie.

According to CBS Colorado's report, Lambrecht said Windsor had about 14,000 residents when the land was rezoned and has roughly 45,000 now. The town has more than tripled in size since the vote that settled what the parcel could become. The CBS resident said many neighbors had no idea the planning went back that far.

What 2½ hours of public comment can still shape

At the July 13 meeting, residents spent 2½ hours raising concerns about the project, the Greeley Tribune reported. The meeting minutes list traffic on 15th and 17th streets, noise, the lighting plan, and a red-tailed hawk nest that Colorado Parks and Wildlife had identified.

The board decided the site plan as a quasi-judicial matter. As the Tribune explained, that meant "the board had to find that the plan met the criteria to be approved based solely on information provided during the meeting."

According to the meeting minutes, Mayor Pro Tem Jason Hallett and board member Lainie Peltz both said the traffic analysis left questions open. Peltz moved to continue the item until the board had the CPW report, the lighting plan and a deeper traffic study, and her motion died for lack of a second. Ron Steinbach moved to approve, Rick Klimek seconded, and Mayor Julie Cline joined them, so the resolution passed 3–2. Board members Brian Jones and Ken Symsack were absent.

Cline told the Greeley Tribune where she thought the public input would land:

"I don't want people to think, 'I went and no one listened.' They were listened to, so we're trying to make sure that through our planning department and with the complete and final designs, that we can have the best version of a Walmart that we can."

The Tribune added that the board can still adjust the development to respond to residents' safety concerns. With the use settled at the zoning stage, the open questions now are about design. The current plan calls for a 191,300-square-foot store and fueling station on 33.91 acres, with about 20.28 acres developed, private drives extended through the existing Jacoby Farm center, and new access points on 17th Street. The same filing also creates two more retail pad sites.

According to Cline, the developers next finish design review and then file building permits before any dirt moves. No exact timeline has been released. The town's Development Activity Map, last updated October 8, 2026, still lists the project under review.

The east side shows the same pattern in its early stages

The second King Soopers that CBS Colorado described as approved but not yet built shows what the Main and 17th corridor might have looked like years ago. On March 23, 2026, the Town Board voted 7–0 to approve the final plat for the Windsor Industrial Park subdivision. That plat covers about 46 acres split into 13 commercial lots, at the northeast corner of SH 392 and Hollister Lake Road.

The store itself has a separate site plan for a King Soopers Marketplace of roughly 123,000 square feet, with a pharmacy next door and a fueling center. As of the October 8 map update, that plan was still under review. The Coloradoan reported in March that after some initial back and forth over the site, King Soopers appeared to be moving ahead on the east side.

The same corridor already has smaller plans filed. The map lists a 3,500-square-foot Bank of America northwest of Highway 392 and Hollister Lake Road, and a Murphy USA convenience store with eight fuel islands at the northeast corner of Highway 392 and Greenspire Drive.

A 13-lot commercial plat is a framework for future buildings on those lots. For a buyer comparing east Windsor homes, the March plat vote is the kind of record that would answer a question like "what goes on that open ground?" decades early, if anyone looks it up.

How to research the field before you make an offer

These are public records, and they take about an evening to go through.

1. Find the zoning on any vacant land you can see from the house. Zoning like the general commercial designation at Main and 17th can sit untouched for decades before a building permit is filed.
2. Open Windsor's Development Activity Map. It lists projects under review with their size, location and case numbers, from big-box stores to self-storage.
3. Search Town Board agendas and minutes for the case number. The minutes show who spoke, which concerns were raised and how each member voted, as they did for Resolution 2026-40.
4. Look for platted commercial lots. A plat that creates a dozen commercial lots, or a site plan that adds pad sites, tells you how much more development is coming.
5. Read the SPD19 transportation line closely. It's the one place on the seller's form that asks about a project beyond the home's own walls, and only when that project affects the property.

For the Walmart site specifically, the town keeps project updates on its Proposed Walmart Site page.

FAQ

Is the Windsor Walmart under construction? Not as of the town's October 8, 2026 map, which lists the project under review. After design review, the developers can file building permits, and no opening date has been announced.

How many grocery stores will be on Main Street? CBS Colorado counted one Safeway, one Esh's Market and two King Soopers stores along a roughly 2.5-mile stretch of Main Street, one of those King Soopers not yet built. A Walmart would join them.

Does the seller have to tell me about a store planned next door? SPD19 asks about zoning actions and transportation projects related to the property being sold. It has no separate question about development on neighboring parcels, so read the form and confirm specifics with an attorney.

If you're looking at a Windsor home near open land along SH 392 and want to know what the zoning and town records say before you write an offer, The Sledge Team can go through those records with you, at no cost and with no pressure. If you already own near one of these corridors, we're also happy to prepare a free home valuation.