Windsor starts shedding bedroom-town image

WINDSOR — As commercial and industrial developments continue to proliferate throughout Windsor, town officials are proud to be moving toward shedding the label of “bedroom community” that many have placed on the town. And while most of the new developments are filling up with small businesses with five to 15 employees, they’re filling up quickly, expanding the employment base slowly but surely.

“I don’t think that Windsor should be characterized as solely a bedroom community,´ said Joe Plummer, Windsor’s director of planning.

With current population estimates at between 12,500 and 13,000, the community is expected to grow 6 percent to 8 percent each year over the next 15 years or so, Plummer said. When communities reach that population threshold, larger employers begin to show interest.

Second supermarket

A new King Soopers is expected to be open by this time next year. Plummer said the new supermarket will be 20 percent larger than the Safeway store built about two years ago. “Based on Safeway’s numbers, that will add at least 180 jobs,” Plummer said.

With about 1,800 employees, Kodak Colorado Division is by far the largest employer in Windsor. The sixth-largest private sector employer in the region has no plans to add employees in the near future. But with current economic conditions, the good news is that Kodak has no plans to downsize.

“We anticipate our employment base to remain at about 1,800 people,´ said Kodak Colorado spokeswoman Lucille Mantelli. “We’re hoping that will be for the long term.”

Encorp, which employs about 90, recently built an 80,000-square-foot facility in Windsor.

The energy technology company earned a space in Deloitte & Touche’s fastest-growing technology companies and is ranked as the fifth-fastest growing technology company in the state.

“We do have aggressive growth plans, but not necessarily aggressive hiring plans,´ said company spokesman Michael Clark. “We plan to expand revenues, but we’ll do that with the employees who are already in place.”

Central location

Clark said Windsor’s central location between Fort Collins, Loveland and Greeley made it an obvious choice for the founders in 1994. “There’s a very strong tech base here,” Clark said. “We’ve been very pleased with the work ethic and skill sets of the people in the area. You really can’t find that in many parts of the country.”

Next to Encorp’s new facility is the Windsor Tech Business Center, developed by Windsor Development Group LLC. The two-phase center has about 50 small businesses operating there, with all but two of the 29 lots in the second phase already sold.

Chris Ruff, manager of the development company, said Windsor’s central location will continue to attract new businesses, “as long as we don’t do something governmentally that drives them away.”

With plans for the nearby, new Larimer County fairgrounds to be operational in fall 2003, Ruff said, “the west side of town is just going to explode.”

Even the town’s chamber of commerce is seeing unprecedented growth. Michal Connors, chamber office manager, said membership has grown 44 percent compared to last year, with nearly 300 member businesses.

“I’d say 75 percent of our members have five employees or less,” Connors said. “But now we’re seeing members joining from Greeley and Loveland also. We’re the big boom right now and I guess everybody wants a piece of the pie.”

Because Windsor’s boundaries fall in both Weld and Larimer counties, the town is working with both the Greeley/Weld Economic Development Action Partnership Inc. and Larimer County’s Northern Colorado Economic Development Corp.

To qualify for incentives from the town, businesses must make a minimum $500,000 investment, export more than 50 percent of their product out of the state, pay employees at least 125 percent of the average wage and offer health-care plans where the employer covers at least 80 percent.

Ron Klaphake, president and CEO of the Greeley economic-development entity, said while there is lots of small-scale growth and activity going on in Windsor, most companies are not considering expansion during these uncertain economic times. “Most companies are just trying to decide if they can survive,” Klaphake said.

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