TIMNATH >> Residents in this rapidly growing town southeast of Fort Collins have devised what some might say is an ingenious — or for others, a wily — way of trying to stop a proposed Topgolf entertainment facility from coming to town.

This week, a group of Timnath residents began gathering signatures for a ballot measure that would ban from town any fences that exceed 65 feet in height — a direct, if not overt, shot at the ball-catching netting Topgolf installs at its high-tech driving ranges, which easily stand taller than 100 feet.

The measure, which declares fences over 65 feet “harmful and contrary to promoting and protecting nature and wildlife within and around the town,” would effectively sink a Topgolf in Timnath.

“It’s the wrong business for that location and it’s wrong for that location because it’s part of the (Cache la Poudre River) National Heritage Area, with migrating bald eagles and other birds coming through,” said Bill Jenkins, a retired neuroscientist who moved to Timnath five years ago and is helping head up opposition to the popular entertainment concept.

Congress designated the Cache la Poudre River National Heritage Area in 2009, the first to be established west of the Mississippi River. It runs for 45 miles of the Poudre, from the edge of the Roosevelt National Forest in Larimer County to its confluence with the South Platte near Greeley.

According to an avian risk report published last year, 240 species of resident and migrating birds use the nearby Fossil Creek Reservoir, including bald eagles, great blue herons, ducks, geese, swans and cranes. It states that Topgolf’s nets pose a potential hazard to the birds as they move through the area.

Instances of birds flying into and getting hung up in Topgolf’s nets have occurred across the country, including an osprey that died after getting caught in a Topgolf net in Myrtle Beach, S.C. in 2019. Just last week, a hawk was rescued after getting tangled at an Orlando Topgolf.

Jenkins and dozens of other residents turned out at a community meeting Monday night put on by the developer of the 240-acre Ladera project, which sits at the southeast corner of Interstate 25 and East Harmony Road. Topgolf would encompass around 12 acres of the project.

“I don’t want it affecting a conservation area,” Chase Renick said at Monday’s meeting, during which a couple of Topgolf representatives were besieged by a crowd of dozens of Timnath residents condemning the proposal.

“That’s a compelling argument.”

Renick and his wife moved to this town 20 miles from downtown Fort Collins two months ago, one of the thousands of new residents who have exploded Timnath’s population from just hundreds less than a decade ago to around 8,000 today.

Topgolf director of real estate development Scott Wetterling, one of the company representatives taking pointed questions from residents Monday, told The Denver Post the company is in the “preliminary stages” of planning its moves in Timnath.