Changes coming to Cleveland Avenue in Wellington

By Steven Olson
Correspondent

There is a hole on the south side of Wellington's main street--Cleveland Avenue--where a pair of buildings used to be.

In August, Randall King of King Contracting in Loveland plans to break ground for a combination retail and commercial building on the spot. That's just one of the changes coming to Wellington's main thoroughfare.

The building's address will be 3707-3711 Cleveland Ave., but the structure will be known as the King Building. It will have two stories with a brick front, said King, with retail businesses on the first floor and condominiums on the second. Tenants will be able to buy or lease either the residential or the commercial units. "They can go either way," King said.

He has no commitments as of yet; the closest one is from a Denver lawyer looking to have an office in Wellington with living space above it. Other than that, King said, he has spoken to representatives of enterprises such as a bagel shop, insurance agencies and some retail businesses.

The King Building is the latest sign of development on a main street that will see changes along a half-mile stretch from the railroad tracks near the intersection of First Street to the Interstate 25 interchange, about six blocks to the east.

Across the street from the future King Building is the former Suzy's Market, the small grocery store that closed in February when Main Street Market opened on the south side of Wellington. Building owner Rolando Santos said he is in consultation now with someone about either leasing or buying the building, and an agreement should be reached this year.

A block further east sees the knitting and yarn shop Nanytutu's, which opened in May in the spot that once housed Greyrock Tavern. Across the street, new construction is being planned for the parking lot west of Groomer's Choice, a pet-grooming business.

For that site, William Schneider, owner of Vestige Press, is working on plans to build a three-story structure intended to house his history book publishing business and a county museum. The building would straddle a parking structure meant for the company's employees. Schneider said he will hang on to the existing Vestige Press building for now.

"It's a fine building," he said. "There's nothing wrong with it. It's just too small. It's nothing more than a private office now."

At the corner of Third and Cleveland, across the street from the T-Bar Inn, is a small house used as office space for Construction Management Works LLC. Steve Grobel, the head of CMW, said there are plans to build an office building on the site similar to the King Building, but that the owner of the property, Ed Rupert, is waiting for now.

"He wants to see what is going to happen with King before he starts," Grobel said.

In mid-July, Grobel hopes to begin construction on a new office on Sixth Street for Wellington Veterinary Clinic. The clinic is now located alongside the defunct Suzy's Market on Cleveland Avenue. Clinic owners Wayne and Tracy Jensen hope to be in the new building by late spring or early summer of 2008.

The next block east sports the addition of 5,000 square feet to a 1,400-square-foot youth and community center, The Filling Station. Construction began last summer. Owner/director Joshua Griffin said the addition, being built entirely by donated labor, will house a stage and a radio station. It needs about two months of interior finishing work before it will open sometime in August.

At the southwest corner of Sixth Street and Cleveland sits the small white house that was the site for BEI Concrete, a landscaping company. BEI has relocated, and the site has reverted to residential use. The permit that allowed commercial use of the site was not renewed.

However, Lou Kinzli, who owns all but one of the houses on the south side of this block, has plans for that piece of property, perhaps even that side of the street.

Kinzli, whose real estate business merged with ReMax Action Brokers on June 15, is thinking about putting a two-story office building somewhere on the corner property. The idea is nebulous so far. Kinzli doesn't have a use nailed down yet and doesn't see something like that happening for five years.

At the east end of Cleveland Avenue, tucked into the southeast corner of the I-25 interchange and Sixth Street, will be a new convenience store and gas station, the Kum & Go. Town Administrator Larry Lorentzen said the station will be 3,364 square feet and it will have a "food partner" of 1,479 square feet. The food business, Lorentzen said, will not have a drive-through lane.