Real estate: Patient investor acquires Windsor Safeway Center

WINDSOR — Dale Boehner got what he wanted, albeit 14 months late.

Boehner, a Loveland-based real estate investor with holdings throughout Northern Colorado, recently acquired the in-line retail space at Windsor’s Safeway Center for $4.84 million.

Boehner, who also owns the Albertson’s-anchored Cottonwood Square center in Fort Collins, previously tried to buy the Windsor site in early 2002. The property eventually ended up in the hands of Fort Collins-based SDS Properties, which paid $4.4 million in April 2002.

SDS opted to shed the shopping center when the partners decided not to cut ties and “pursue individual interests,´ said Bob Pennock of ReMax Advanced Commercial, who brokered the deal.

When that happened, Boehner was still a willing buyer.

“I just think Windsor’s a growing town and it’s (the Safeway Center) fairly new and it’s a great little deal,” Boehner said.

The Safeway Center opened two years ago. Boehner’s purchase covers 23,050 square feet on both sides of Safeway. The deal gives the new owner some treasured national tenants such as Washington Mutual, Great Clips, Subway, the UPS Store and Papa John’s.

The center has one remaining vacancy of 1,650 square feet, Pennock said.

The wild card for Boehner — and Safeway — is the competitive impact of the new King Soopers-anchored shopping center now under construction a few blocks to the west of the Safeway Center.

Regency Centers, which is also developing the new Centerplace project in Greeley, is likely to attract a similar mix of clients — i.e., bank, sandwich shop, hair salon, mail store. But Pennock thinks the Safeway Center has an advantage of a lower-cost structure to offer its tenants.

“Our rents are below the cost of construction and fees in Windsor now,” he said. “We run $3 to $3.50 a (square) foot lower than building a new project in Windsor, and considerably less than building new in Fort Collins.”

Pennock added, “If everybody had their druthers, we’d rather not have King Soopers across the street ? It’s just going to come down to shopping preference and convenience and ease of getting in and out” of the rival centers.

Housing sales offer mixed message

Residential real estate sales in Northern Colorado continue to exhibit a split personality.

June sales throughout the region totaled 943 units, off 14.4 percent from 1,102 in June 2002, according to the latest figures released by Information and Real Estate Services. For the first half of the year, unit sales are down 11.9 percent across the region.

Still, lagging sales — and apparent slackening of demand — aren’t reflected in prices that successful sellers are getting for their homes.

Average sale prices were up in June in all three regional metro markets, which include Fort Collins, Loveland-Berthoud and Greeley-Evans. The Greeley market posted a 9.4 percent gain in average price, to $197,917 per sale, even though it saw unit sales fall 18.7 percent.

Similarly, average prices are up in all three markets for the first six months of the year: Loveland prices are up 1.64 percent, Fort Collins is up 3.62 percent and Greeley is up 5.23 percent.

Halfway through the year, Fort Collins sales are bringing the highest price in the region at $222,791 per home sold. Loveland’s average price is slightly behind at $219,267, and Greeley homes are averaging $190,044.

The relatively sluggish pace of sales is in step with the rising tide of real estate foreclosures in Northern Colorado.

As of late June, the Weld County Public Trustee had received 386 foreclosure notices, 25 percent ahead of the foreclosure totals on June 30, 2002. Larimer County had received 303 foreclosure notices through June, up 34.6 percent from the same point in 2002.

Similarly, counties in the Denver metropolitan area reported a 37 percent rise in foreclosures over the first five months of the year.

A major contributor to the spike in foreclosures is the collision of recent job losses with the declining demand for homebuying.

Financially struggling homeowners can avert foreclosure if they can sell the property quickly — a phenomenon that likely kept a lid on foreclosures during the 1990s in Northern Colorado.

As evidenced by the sales numbers reported here, the safety net of high demand isn’t happening in 2003.

Bestway puts spin on batch plant

MILLIKEN — Greeley-based Bestway Concrete has proven concrete can be flexible.

Bestway, a division of Hall-Irwin Corp., has agreed to build its new Milliken Batch Plant to look like a country barn from the outside.

Bestway said it agreed to dress up the batch plant to blend with the surrounding rural landscape.

Construction on the $1.5 million, 8,000-square-foot facility started in April and is scheduled for completion next month. The plant, located at Weld County Road 23 and Colorado Highway 60, will be one of four Bestway batch plants in the region.

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