‘Hybrid’ Harmony retail center plans evolve

FORT COLLINS – Alabama-based developers of the proposed Front Range Village retail center on East Harmony Road will return to Fort Collins late this month or early next to offer a view of the project’s evolving plan.

Four months after the city council opened the door for Birmingham-based Bayer Properties Inc., project developer David Silverstein said he was close to signing agreements with big-box retailers Lowe’s Home Improvement and Target, and would submit formal plans for the 800,000-square-foot project in early summer.

“We’re very close to being able to present something,” Silverstein said. “We’re optimistic that Lowe’s will be part of the development and that Target will be there, as well. The city of Fort Collins needs this project, and we’d be very disappointed if we weren’t able to deliver it.”

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The evolving shape of the plan makes it vastly different from any other retail project in the region, with a mix that would put the biggest of the so-called “value-oriented” retailers on the same platform as smaller, higher-priced specialty stores, with a town-square-style land plan encompassing all of them.

“It appears to be moving in the direction of a hybrid between an open-air, up-market retail center and a value-oriented retail project,´ said Cameron Gloss, the city’s director of current planning. “That’s the challenge for Bayer Properties and the city – to mesh these two formats together in a cohesive way.”

Bayer’s history with the city has not been a smooth one. The developer announced in 2003 it would build a half-million-square-foot “lifestyle” shopping center, the Summit Front Range, on 105 acres of land it acquired on the north side of Harmony Road adjacent to the LSI Logic Inc. campus.

But a year ago this month, after plans for the similar Promenade Shops at Centerra center in Loveland raced ahead, Bayer abruptly bailed out of the Summit project.

The abandonment meant a zoning change tailored to suit Bayer’s lifestyle plan was void, and the developer returned for a second zoning request – this time to accommodate “large-format” retailers. City council members in January, citing the erosion of Fort Collins’ sales tax base, unanimously agreed to the second zoning change.

Back-and-forth

Since then, an informal and unofficial back-and-forth between the developer and the city planning staff has brought the project plan to its current state.

Gloss, reluctant to discuss specifics of a plan that is yet to be formally submitted to the city, described the process as a “balancing act” that weighed the interest of the city against those of the retailers that Bayer is trying to line up for the project.

“There’s a tricky balancing act there for them,” Gloss said. “First, they have to meet our design standards, and then they have to work with those tenants. They’ve been here several times to talk with us, but we’re working without a formal application. We expect it soon, but we don’t have it yet.”

Gloss said a Bayer presentation was penciled in on the July 20 agenda for the Fort Collins Planning and Zoning Board.

A Target spokeswoman at the retail chain’s Minneapolis headquarters said the company does not comment on expansion plans until leases are in place.

Silverstein said April 28 he was “finalizing as we speak” letters of intent with Target and Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse stores, two seemingly sure bets for the Front Range Village project should it go forward. Borders Books and Music stores is also committed to the site, Silverstein said.

The Target store would be among the newer SuperTarget outlets, each about 200,000 square feet and with expanded grocery and home furnishing offerings. The company had a flurry of Colorado SuperTarget openings last fall, with three stores in metro Denver and one in Longmont all opening in October. Of Target’s 1,300 U.S. stores, about 140 of them are SuperTarget models.

Retail lineup

Silverstein introduced Lowe’s as an anchor for the project at a neighborhood meeting in late November, when he returned to Fort Collins to resurrect the project.

He also hinted then that negotiations with Gart Sports were also in progress, saying the sporting goods retailer “needs to have a larger format, a bigger presence in your community” than it has in the former Safeway store at the northwest corner of College Avenue and Mulberry Street.

Silverstein said Bayer remained committed to including a southeast branch of the Fort Collins library system in the project, if the city could find a way to pay operating costs.

“As I stated in the presentation to council, we’d love to have the library integrated in the development scheme,” he said. We’re going to make either the structure or the land available to them. But our understanding is that the operational costs were beyond what the city wanted to incur.”

Library director Brenda Carns said she was encouraged by Silverstein’s reiteration of the offer made earlier, and by the potential for getting operating funds to run the branch.

“I’m thrilled that David is continuing to look for a way to include us, and I have a great deal of optimism that a way can be found,” Carns said. “I know that people in the community and the city council are exploring a way that the library system can be funded as a regional service that would provide operational costs to open such a facility.”

As the review process for the project moves along, Silverstein said he hoped patience would rule. No dirt would be turned on the 100 acres of fallow land until a sufficient number of tenants were committed and until permits and entitlements were in place, he said.

“Your city has very stringent development criteria, but we knew that,” he said. “It adds additional time to make sure we can meet those criteria. The devil is in the details, as they say, but it’s the details that will make this project work. These projects take time, if you do them the right way.”