Front Range Village completes strong first year

One year after it welcomed its first stores, Front Range Village on Harmony Road in Fort Collins now has around 600,000-square-feet of leased retail and continues to add stores — a fact David Silverstein credits to the local market.

Silverstein, founder and principal at Bayer Properties, has projects all across the United States. He said that Fort Collins is in a league with a few other sites around the country that are showing resilience in the current economic climate. He remains cautiously optimistic and feels that the economy has “bounced off the bottom,” but he points out that Bayer is not a company of speculators.

Silverstein came to Fort Collins on June 16 to dedicate a plaque to honor Glen Johnson and the Johnson family, who sold the 50 acres that made Front Range Village possible. He sat down with the Business Report to discuss the national market, the local market, the past and the future:

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NCBR: When you were choosing Fort Collins, what were you looking for in a project like Front Range Village?

Silverstein: We opened a project in Birmingham (Alabama) called the Summit. Consumers responded to this type of environment — an open-air concept with beautiful architecture, wonderful landscaping and a quality mix of retail. We began looking at the Birmingham success and we did a project in Louisville, Kentucky. After those two projects were opened, retailers asked us to go replicate it. A template started to be formed related to some of these emerging, secondary marketplaces around the country. We began to study the country — east coast to west — for these types of emerging marketplaces. Fort Collins immediately popped up as the market for us to look at, for a lot of reasons.

NCBR: What are some of those?

Silverstein: One, the consumer, although there was good retail here, was still being underserved and was traveling to Denver, perhaps, to shop. Fort Collins was the dominant shopping venue for Northern Colorado but there was still some retailers that were not here than need to be here and there were retailers here than needed some new concepts. And so, we began to look at Fort Collins as a market in general. Fort Collins, being absolutely candid, had a history of not welcoming development. We began working with city planners and the council, it seems like ages ago, in talking about the kind of project we wanted to bring. We were very pleased that we were able to do a project here, because we all understand the economic challenge we are in right now. But for retailers to continue to open here and do well with sales I think is a reflection, not only that the project is strategically located in the right area, but also a commentary on the strength of the Fort Collins market in general. Your market is probably a little bit more recession-proof than others.

NCBR: What are you seeing at some of your other developments around the country?

Silverstein: What we’re seeing is that if consumers are staying home, and not traveling as much, they are still going out and having dinner and shopping. The Birmingham project continues to do well – it’s an area that doesn’t have a lot of peaks and valleys. It’s just very steady. It’s the same thing with the project we did in Louisville. We have a project in Reno, for example, that is probably more impacted than some others, because the state has been more impacted.

NCBR: Have economic conditions put plans on hold for you?

Silverstein: Perhaps it’s a little luck, but perhaps we also saw the softening of the economy coming, so, we’re glad we’re not trying to open 700,000 square feet of retail this year, because it would be next to impossible. We don’t have one really scheduled to come online in 2010, either. But we still have a pipeline of several, what we think will be terrific, projects for the right time. We have a project in Slidell, Louisiana that is several hundred acres — a mixed-use project. That project will either open in late 2011 or 2012, largely dependent on the health and well-being of the retail world.

The retailers will let us know when they are on sound footing and the economy will let us know when it is on sound footing. The clouds will part. There will be some rays of sunshine that will start to peep through. There will be development down the road, for sure. There are still sites that we’re actively engaged in, but we’re not forcing the development sooner than we should be.

NCBR: Here in Fort Collins, you originally had additional plans for some of the vacant property. Are those still in the works for 2011 or 2012?

Silverstein: It just depends. The difference is that we have a project that is open and doing well here now. I think there are still retailers that we can bring to Fort Collins that are not otherwise here. When the timing is right, we’ll begin the next couple phases of this project. We’ll continue to nurture this project as it needs to be.

NCBR: A lot of developers — General Growth Partners being one — are in tight financial situations because credit is tight. Has that been a issue for your company as well?

Silverstein: Sure. It’s been very difficult to put a construction loan in place. But we really don’t need one right now. We’re not in a moment in time when a construction loan is staring us in the face. Credit is extremely tight, that is the key. Until banks start loaning money, there’s going to be a difficult time in seeing the true economic rebound.

NCBR: This project had a different vision when you first started talking to the city. How do you feel about the difference in the vision?

Silverstein: We were very disappointed that the first design for the project did not come to fruition. I still believe today that the true lifestyle center needed to be built in Fort Collins and not at Centerra. I can only be candid in saying that I don’t think that it is where that type of facility needed to be. Having said that, things have a way of working out. To have a Target in this project — they’re a terrific retailer. We have a blend of the larger format retailers as well as the specialty retailers along the Main Street. Certainly, we were disappointed on one hand, but we’re now very pleased that we’ve been able to bring this project to life here in Fort Collins.