Fort Collins finds harmony with shopping center

By Dan MacArthur
Fossil Creek Current

With approval of $22 million in incentives, Fort Collins is well on the way toward getting its very own open-air shopping center catering to lovers of bargains and libraries alike.

Shoppers will contribute the biggest share of those incentives through an additional 0.75 percent sales tax the developer was authorized to collect on all purchases at the center for 30 years. Projected to eventually yield $18.5 million, that "public improvement fee" will be in addition to the 6.7 percent sales tax already collected by Fort Collins. Three percent of that total is assessed by the city, 2.9 percent by the state and 0.8 percent by the county.

The arrangement is similar to that for the Promenade Shops at Centerra, which collects a 1 percent "retail sales fee" in addition to the same 6.7 percent sales tax, according to the Loveland finance office.

Work is expected to begin this month or next on Front Range Village on 109 acres at the northwest corner of Harmony and Ziegler roads. Completion is expected in the late summer or early fall of 2008.

The groundbreaking follows the city council's approval of the incentive package that the developer called essential to make possible the project that the council considers critical to capture escaping sales tax revenues.

The shopping center is projected to generate an additional 4 percent in new sales tax revenues directed to the general fund that pays for most of the city's day-to-day functions. In the first year of operation, the center will likely bring in $4.5 million in sales taxes, with $2.2 million of that in new revenues.

David Silverstein, a principal with developer Bayer Properties of Birmingham, Ala., said there will be distinct differences in Front Range Village compared with Loveland's smaller "lifestyle center." Perhaps the most notable one is that this 910,000-square-foot shopping center will feature four, two-story buildings constituting a central "town center." It will resemble College Avenue in downtown Fort Collins' Old Town, Silverstein said, bisected by a "main street" complete with diagonal parking in keeping with the historic theme.

Library branch

Located on a second floor above the specialty and service retailers, there will be offices and a new southeast branch library. Bayer will build the library shell, according to Silverstein, and the newly formed library district will finish the interior with the $5.5 million already set aside for construction. The 16,000-square-foot southeast library will be about half the size of the Main and Harmony libraries.

"I think the project will fit in nicely with the area," said Silverstein.

Surrounding that town center will be more than a dozen big-box stores, smaller shops and restaurants. The biggies will be a 140,000-square-foot Lowe's Home Improvement and 174,000-square-foot Super Target located on the northern side of the parcel. Interspersed will be second-tier stores offering books, imports, sporting goods and office and pet supplies.

Those tenants remain unspecified, although city planners say they're likely to be the usual suspects typically located in secondary markets such as Fort Collins. "We're very pleased with how the leasing has gone," said Silverstein.

Plans show six parcels set aside for future purchasers bordering Harmony Road at the Corbett Drive entrance. Silverstein said Bayer also is discussing purchasing for future expansion an additional 27 acres owned by LSI Logic, from which it bought the Front Range Village parcel.

Corbett Drive will serve as the main entrance, extending north from Harmony to the northern boundary of the Front Range property. If Bayer is successful in purchasing and developing the additional LSI property, Corbett eventually would be extended into the English Ranch subdivision. The extension would be indirect without connecting to Kingsley Drive to avoid creating a thoroughfare traversing the neighborhood. Secondary access will be from Ziegler Road, which atypically for Fort Collins will be a private road for the segment bordering the shopping center.

The incentive package will offset the estimated $115 million cost to design and build the shopping center, including $5 million for public improvements and $12 million in development fees and taxes collected by the city.

In addition to the $18.5 million public improvement fee, the city agreed to reimburse the developer $2 million for transportation improvements and $1.5 million in a "sales tax share back" after the opening of at least 550,000 square feet of sales-tax generating stores.

"We could not have done this project without the assistance of the city," said Silverstein.

The groundbreaking should bring to a close four years of work by Bayer and Fort Collins to fulfill their goals of bringing the sought-after open-air shopping center to the city. It was an epic more tempestuous than any celebrity drama dominating the tabloids.

The race started in early 2003 as different developers announced plans to build lifestyle centers in various locations: the Front Range Village property, the Centerra site, the Windsor entrance on Highway 392 and the intersection of Prospect Road and I-25. Later that summer, the competition narrowed to Fort Collins and Loveland.

Fort Collins amended its Harmony Corridor Plan to permit construction of a 450,000-square-foot lifestyle center and, in the summer of 2004, offered Bayer $13.7 million in incentives. That original deal fell apart, however, with the opening of the 700,000-square-foot Promenade Shops at Centerra in October 2005. Bayer then returned with the current plans, which lack the affluent-attracting amenities that typically define a lifestyle center.