Real Estate: Agilent to sell former Colorado Memory site

LOVELAND — Agilent Technologies plans to shed the former Colorado Memory Systems building from its real estate holdings in southwest Loveland.

The 88,000-square-foot building is located at the intersection of Taft Avenue and Carlisle Drive, next door to the main Agilent campus at 815 14th St. S.W.

Agilent has not put a list price on the property, which includes 7.9 acres. But the site is likely to fetch in the range of $4.5 million to $6 million, based on the going rate of similar office property.

“There may be some aspects that make it more valuable, and they may be some aspects of the property that make it less valuable,´ said Joe Palieri, a broker with Loveland Commercial LLC.

The price can swing based on the intention of the buyer, Palieri said. A company that wants to buy the property for its own use is likely to spend more than a developer who wants to repackage the building for tenants.

The technology available in the building, such as fiber connections, would also influence the price.

“I’d think they have fiber going into the building — for a call center, that’s a big plus,” Palieri said.

The Colorado Memory building was constructed in 1984. Hewlett-Packard Co. later bought Colorado Memory, which specialized in computer-storage technology, in 1992.

When HP spun off Agilent in 1999, the real estate was turned over to Agilent. Currently Agilent makes light use of building, said Jean Mooney, a spokeswoman for Agilent.

“We have employees in there, although we’ve been moving them into this facility over time,” Mooney said. “We have about 100 folks in there now ? I don’t think it’s ever been completely full since we became Agilent.”

Including the Colorado Memory building, Agilent operates about 1 million square feet of office and manufacturing space in Loveland, and owns another 250 acres of undeveloped land.

Raindance Ridge “moving forward”

WINDSOR — Developers of the proposed Raindance Ridge project in southeast Windsor say the project’s design has withstood laboratory testing.

“We keep doing ‘fatal-flaw’ studies, and it hasn’t died,´ said Martin Lind, one of the developers along with partner Seth Ward. “That’s a really good sign. We’re moving forward with the utility side of it, which is the water-power side of it.”

About one year ago, Lind announced plans to develop 10,000 acre feet of storage on his hilltop property, roughly two miles east of the new Larimer County Fairgrounds.

He’s modified the water-storage plans to total 8,500 acre-feet in two separate reservoirs. But the concept is the same: scoop out tons of dirt, replace it with water that’s pumped uphill from the Poudre River.

Some critics have said that Raindance is too expensive to make financial sense, but Lind said he’s found a way to make it work.

The reservoirs would likely be “non-jurisdictional.” That means Raindance wouldn’t create any dams, thus keeping it away from the oversight of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and assorted other state and federal agencies.

A reservoir without dams requires deeper holes and the removal of even more dirt. “To offset that, we wouldn’t have to place rip rap (rock embankment material) to state standards,” Lind said.

The key to the project is finding water rights owners who would pay to store their water at Raindance Ridge.

“The drought’s helped us out – it’s helped us line up users,” Lind said.

One of the potential partners is the city of Greeley, which typically sees thousands of acre-feet worth of its water rights flow down the river each year.

Greeley has estimated that it can join in the Raindance Ridge project at the cost of about $8,000 per acre-foot — about half the cost of buying an acre-foot of Colorado Big Thompson water on the open market.

Lind thinks the project could be under construction “in less than a year.” Upon completion of the water-storage project, Lind would then develop estate-style residential housing lots around the reservoirs.

The lake surface would cover about 400 acres, about one-third of the project’s acreage.

Opera Galleria plans penthouses

FORT COLLINS — The owner of the Opera Galleria in downtown Fort Collins has proposed construction of luxury penthouse units, creating a fourth- and fifth-floor to the retail-office center.

As planned, the addition would consist of 10,000 square feet, creating three 2-story condominiums. The units, which range in size from 2,800 square feet to almost 4,000 square feet, would command up to $1 million on the market, said Mikal Torgerson, architect on the project.

Torgerson said his design would keep the two new floors from being visible on College Avenue. The project includes plans for a swimming pool for one unit and hot tubs in the other two units.

Torgerson plans to buy one of the units, and building owner Ed Orr, a Greeley-based investor, would have the other two to sell.

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