Moving to Windsor

What you are moving to

Windsor is a home-rule town that straddles the Weld and Larimer county line between Fort Collins, Loveland and Greeley, with a lake in the middle of it. It was a stage stop halfway between Greeley and Fort Collins in 1873, a railroad town from 1882 and an incorporated one from 1890, and for sixty years it was a sugar-beet factory town; Kodak took the factory’s ground in the late 1960s, and the 2008 tornado took a swathe of the east side. Then it doubled. The census counted 18,644 people in 2010 and 32,716 in 2020, and the Town’s own 2026 community profile puts it at 48,302 across about 27 square miles, with a median age of 40, a median household income of $121,758 and 17,781 homes, 78 percent of them owner-occupied. Main Street, Town Hall, the lake and Boardwalk Park are in Weld County; the neighborhoods west of the county line, toward I-25, are in Larimer, which matters for schools and water below.

Housing

Most of what has been built since 2000 is single-family housing in master-planned neighborhoods with metropolitan districts: developer-formed Title 32 districts that financed the streets, pipes and parks and that tax, charge fees and issue bonds to pay for them, so ask which district a house sits in and what its mill levy is. Water Valley, on the lakes south of the river, is the established one, built around the Pelican Lakes golf course, where the Chamber’s marathon and Turkey Trot start. Highland Meadows, by I-25, is on the Larimer side. Harmony Ridge and Alexander Estates get their water from a different district again, as the Town’s utility page explains. The old grid near Main Street and the lake has the small houses of the sugar years and the brick of the 1909 town hall. The listings sites in the sidebar show what is for sale.

Schools

Three districts fall inside the town limits, and the Town’s own school districts page lists them: Weld RE-4, the Windsor-Severance district, Poudre and Thompson. Most of town is Weld RE-4, headquartered at 1020 Main Street (970-686-8000): Windsor High and Severance High, Windsor, Severance and Ridgeline middle schools, and Grandview, Mountain View, Skyview, Hollister Lake, Orchard Hill and Range View elementaries plus Tozer Primary. The Larimer County side of town is in Poudre School District or Thompson School District, both based outside Windsor. Do not take the town name as the answer: check the address against Poudre’s neighborhood-school finder, Thompson’s school locator (970-613-5663) and Weld RE-4’s office, and ask the seller which district the house pays taxes to.

Getting around

By car. Harmony Road runs west from the lake to I-25 and into Fort Collins; Colorado 392 runs along the north side of town to the interstate and east to Greeley; County Road 17 (7th Street) and Colorado 257 go south toward Loveland and US 34. Wikipedia lists I-25, US 34, US 87 and Colorado 257 as the highways and the BNSF line as the railroad. There is no bus network inside the town, but there is one bus out of it: the Poudre Express, a weekday commuter route run by Greeley-Evans Transit between the Greeley transit center, UNC, Windsor, the Harmony Transfer Center in Fort Collins and the CSU campus, with Windsor stops at Eastman Park Drive and Colorado 257 and at Main Street and 15th Street; the first bus leaves Greeley at 5:45 am and the last leaves CSU at 6:57 pm on the fall 2026 timetable. Off the road, the Town counts more than 40 miles of trail, including the 2.25-mile loop of Windsor Lake and the Poudre River Trail, 21 paved miles from Island Grove Park in Greeley to Colorado 392 at Windsor and, since the last gap closed in June 2026, 45 continuous miles on to Fort Collins and Bellvue.

Utilities, trash, fire, police

• Water, sewer and stormwater come from the Town of Windsor inside the Weld County part of town, billed monthly and due on the 20th; the Larimer County part gets stormwater from the Town but water from the Fort Collins-Loveland Water District, and the Harmony Ridge and Alexander Estates subdivisions get water from the North Weld Water District. Utility billing is 970-674-2403.
• Electricity and natural gas are Xcel Energy or Poudre Valley REA, depending on the address: Xcel 800-895-4999, PVREA 800-432-1012.
• Trash, cable and telephone are private; the Town does not provide them, so check whether your metro district or HOA has contracted a hauler before signing up on your own.
• Police is the Windsor Police Department at 960 N 15th Street; 911 for emergencies, 970-674-6400 for dispatch and everything else.
• Fire and emergency medical response is Windsor Severance Fire Rescue, a special tax district with its own elected board and four staffed stations: Station 1 at 100 N 7th Street downtown, Station 3 at 7790 REA Parkway in Highland Meadows, Station 4 at 1350 New Liberty Road, and Station 2 in Severance; 970-686-2626.
• Library. The Clearview Library District runs the Windsor Library at 720 3rd Street, the Severance Library, a bookmobile and an outpost inside the recreation center.

Government

Windsor is a home-rule municipality with its own charter. A mayor elected town-wide and six board members, one from each of six districts, serve four-year terms and meet as the Town Board on the second and fourth Mondays at 7 pm at Town Hall, 301 Walnut Street, streamed on WindsorTV; packets are posted the Friday before. In October 2026 the Town calendar had the Planning Commission on the first and third Wednesdays at 7 and Mayor Julie Cline holding a Coffee with the Mayor at the rec center. The Town’s Parks, Recreation & Culture department runs the lake, the recreation center, the museums and the special events, and the Town has published its position on the data center proposed for the old Kodak campus in unincorporated Weld County to the east: it has issued a will-serve letter for water and sewer and approved nothing.

Living here

Summer is the swim beach and the boat rentals on Windsor Lake, the farmers market under the Boardwalk Park pavilion on Saturday mornings from early June to early September, movies in the park, the summer concerts and the Fourth of July. Fall is the Windsor Cruise-In in the high-school lot in early September, the Trifecta community art show at the free Art & Heritage Center in the old town hall, the Halloween Carnival at Boardwalk Park and the lantern tours of Lakeview Cemetery. Winter is Windsor Wonderland, the Town’s early-December evening at Boardwalk Park when Santa arrives by train and the Mayor lights the tree, then the wreaths at Lakeview Cemetery and the Santa Catch run round the lake. Year-round there is the recreation center with its indoor lazy river, the library, the river trail, and the brewery in the rebuilt mill on Main Street. What is on this week is on the events page.