RIC Robotics Builds Out Colorado's First 3D Printed Metro District at Cleora

A township, not a demonstration

Seven homes are finished and several are already sold at Cleora, a 55-acre development in Salida, Colorado, that its backers expect to become one of the world's largest planned 3D printed residential communities. Site infrastructure is complete, more houses are going up, and two autonomous printing systems from RIC Robotics are running on site. The full plan calls for 106 homesites, of which more than 65 are expected to be printed.

The buildout is deliberately slow. Cleora managing partner Greg Kenny told Homes.com the full community will take five to six years. The team is still refining its process, and printing is not yet cheaper or faster than conventional building. They are treating that learning curve as the point rather than a setback.

Why Cleora is structured differently

Most 3D printed housing to date has been single homes or small pilots. Cleora's distinction is that it is structured as a place rather than a showcase.

Dr. Ryan Cox, CEO of RIC Robotics, put it plainly: much of the conversation around 3D printed construction has centered on individual homes and demonstration projects. Cleora represents a significant step forward because it shows how robotics can be integrated into a real community at meaningful scale. The project is answering real questions about construction efficiency, workforce development, and long-term community growth.

Cleora will be the first development in the county to form a metro district around printed housing. That structure gives the community the means to fund and run everything beneath the homes -- water treatment, utility connections, shared recreational ground and commercial premises -- as a single package rather than a series of separate arrangements. The team expects that model to be the transferable lesson for developments attempting this scale later.

The hardware behind the homes

The project follows nearly seven years of research into construction technologies and development strategies. RIC Robotics was chosen after the team evaluated multiple providers. True North, the development's dedicated 3D printing general contractor, uses the compact RIC-M1 for single-story residential printing. RIC's PRIMUS platform, revealed at World of Concrete 2025, extends the technology to three-story structures of around 32 feet. The developer works with JF Hanson on structural engineering, RAD Studios on architecture, and JM Burns Construction on delivery.

Labor, not just concrete

RIC founder Ziyou Xu has been explicit that the aim is not automation for its own sake. Robotics is meant to subsidize labor rather than replace it, with an aging workforce retiring faster than it is being replaced.

That framing carries into a partnership with Colorado Mountain College, under which students get hands-on time with the robots, the printing process, and digital design software. The collaboration is expected to grow into training programs and certifications, and students are already working on site.

Xu argues the technology should widen what architects can attempt rather than narrow it. Distinctive homes can be delivered at scale without increasing costs for homeowners -- a claim the project has yet to prove, given its own admission that printing is not currently the cheaper route.

Where Cleora stands against the field

The field has moved toward selling the machines rather than the houses. ICON, whose 100-home Wolf Ranch development with Lennar in Texas set the community-scale benchmark, commercially launched its Titan platform in March, offering builders the full robotic printing stack directly for the first time.

Elsewhere, recent milestones have been about compliance and speed rather than headcount. PERI 3D Construction, COBOD, Holcim, and Plurial Novilia completed ViliaSprint2 in Bezannes, France in April: 12 apartments over three floors, roughly 800 square meters, cutting three months off a conventional timeline. In Japan, Kizuki delivered a 50-square-meter two-story reinforced concrete house that cleared government approval under some of the world's strictest earthquake rules.

Cleora's combination of robot count, printed share, and civic structure -- two machines running, more than 65 of 106 homes to be printed, and a metro district behind the infrastructure -- is what sets it apart. Seven finished houses is a small fraction of the target, and the timeline stretches most of a decade. The claim to be a blueprint rests on what the next 60 look like.