MBS heads south

FORT COLLINS — Downtown Fort Collins will soon lose a prized office tenant for the second time in a matter of months when Managed Business Solutions pulls up stakes to move to south Fort Collins.

MBS, an Inc. 500 company in 2000 and 2001, plans to relocate to the Oakridge Business Park near Harmony Road in early July.

MBS president Todd Kerr said the company wants to be closer to a “growing client list in Denver.” The move also makes MBS more accessible to the Front Range labor pool. The IT services company plans to add up to 20 new jobs by the end of this year.

“They (Denver-based workers) can drive and be in south Fort Collins in 40 minutes,” Kerr said. “We believe it provides a better positioning to bring in employees.”

MBS plans to move into 1201 Oakridge Drive, a building sometimes known locally as “Crystal Palace.” MBS will take over a 12,000-square-foot space vacated recently by Sixth Dimension.

MBS has been located in downtown Fort Collins since its founding in 1993. The company has 135 employees in Fort Collins, including 45 at its headquarters at 200 S. College Ave.

The existing headquarters is also 12,000 square feet.

The move by MBS follows RETEC Group Inc., a civil engineering firm, which left its Old Town Square offices in December. RETEC’s departure took 70 workers out of the central business district and left about 11,500 square feet of office space vacant.

In RETEC’s case, the company had run out of room and needed more space offered in a 16,000-square-foot building at the Centre for Advanced Technology.

Since RETEC’s departure, Old Town Square owners have leased about 5,000 square feet to new users.

In the meantime, downtown retailers stand to lose a chunk of business.

“It definitely affects all of downtown when a primary employer moves out,´ said Ed Stoner, president of Old Town Square Properties. “Those people go out to lunch and go shopping.”

Les Kaplan, owner of 200 S. College Ave., said he would like to find a single office user to fill up the property.

“I’m not anxious to convert it to retail,” he said. “I think it would be an excellent building for a company that had about 25 to 35 employees and wanted to be downtown and needed parking.”

The building lease includes 25 reserved parking spaces.

A likely solution is conversion of the office space to professional office suites, known as “Gold Suites” in the commercial real estate lexicon.

Stoner said he attracted tenants to the RETEC space after converting to Gold Suites.

The back-to-back moves by RETEC and MBS underline the downtown strategic plan now in formulation by the Fort Collins Downtown Development Authority.

“One of the things our strategic plan is identifying is the need for private employment opportunities,´ said Chip Steiner, executive director of the DDA. “That’s something we would like to see grow.”

Steiner does not see the two moves as an exodus. In fact, he points to the imminent arrival of In-Situ, a 65-person technology company from Laramie, Wyo., which plans to move into the downtown vicinity by next year.

“We’ve replaced one,” Steiner said. “We’re worried. We don’t want it to continue. But I don’t think it’s a trend.”

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