Real Estate: Investor looks favorably upon Northern Colorado

LOVELAND — Don Tisdall is justifiably bullish on Northern Colorado.

The Castle Rock-based investor recently sold three lots totaling 12.67 acres of industrial-warehouse development land in east Loveland, collecting more than $1.5 million from the transaction.

Just four years earlier, Tisdall paid $525,000 for a 16-acre parcel, which he later subdivided into four lots. The site is located along Denver Avenue, one-half mile south of Wal-Mart Supercenter in Loveland.

The largest of the three lot sales was 8.24 acres purchased by the owners of 84 Lumber, a national wholesale-retail chain of building-supply stores. Two lots, totaling 4.43 acres, were bought by the owners of Allweather Wood Products, an existing business at 715 N. Denver Ave.

Tisdall, who has property holdings around Colorado, said he’s not persuaded by the conventional wisdom that Front Range real estate markets are lagging.

And he’s continuing to look for new opportunities in Northern Colorado.

“As you drive round you see ? stuff being built on almost every corner from Loveland going east to Greeley, and from Denver north to Fort Collins,´ said Tisdall. “In my mind, the market’s strong and certainly will be in the future.”

Certainly, that’s the attraction to 84 Lumber, which makes about 75 percent of its annual sales to professional contractors.

The Pennsylvania-based company, which is the largest privately owned building-supply business in the United States, hopes to break ground on its new facility later this month.

“Their target is to be open in April,´ said Ken McCrady, a commercial broker for Prudential Warnock Realty in Loveland, who helped broker the deal.

According to building-permit filings with the city of Loveland, 84 Lumber wants to construct at least two structures, including a 23,000-square-foot retail building.

The company’s other operation in Northern Colorado is a 57,000-square-foot facility in Greeley, which opened in March 2002.

The other buyer in the deal, Allweather Wood Products, treats and sells wood for use in the construction of decks, patios and docks. Allweather acquired the ground from Tisdall for future expansion, McCrady said.

Ranch a borderline opportunity

A 29,000-acre ranch property that straddles the Colorado-Wyoming border — once part of Francis E. Warren’s massive holdings in the state-line region — is on the market.

The Soapstone Ranch, currently owned by a group of Fort Collins-based livestock interests, carries an asking price of $7,975,000. About 60 percent of the ground is in Colorado, said Craig Harrison, the Loveland-based land and water broker who is marketing the property.

For perspective, 29,000 acres equals 45.3 square miles. The city boundaries of Fort Collins cover 49.5 square miles.

The Soapstone land has historic ties to the early years of cattle ranching in Northern Colorado and southeast Wyoming.

The Warren Land and Livestock Co., owned by one-time Wyoming Gov. F.E. Warren, once held approximately 500,000 acres. The Warren land was sold to Paul Etchepare in 1963, who then divided the property into six grazing associations to make it more marketable.

The grazing associations were sold to groups of ranchers who wanted ground to graze their herds during warm weather. One of the associations was Soapstone, which formed in 1965, Harrison said.

After 40 years, the varying ownership interests have decided the Soapstone Ranch was “getting more difficult to manage,” Harrison said, explaining the timing of the offering.

Likely buyers could include a large ranching concern, or an investor who would like a large contiguous piece of ground, Harrison said.

The Soapstone Ranch is located roughly between property that’s owned by the city of Fort Collins – the 26,000-acre Meadow Springs Ranch — and 17,000 acres owned by the city of Cheyenne.

“Who knows, maybe there could be some land conservation play,” Harrison said. “Given the fact this ranch would connect the city of Cheyenne and the city of Fort Collins, it would create a public buffer between the regions of the North Front Range and Cheyenne.”

In addition, Colorado Rockies part-owner Jerry McMorris has placed roughly 15,000 acres of his Red Mountain Ranch — which also borders Soapstone — on the market. Harrison is also marketing the McMorris land.

“That’s where this all links in,” Harrison said. A buyer could combine the McMorris land and the Soapstone Ranch “into one large 45,000-acre spread.”

Bob Baun can be reached at (970) 221-5400, (970) 356-1683 or via e-mail at bbaun@ncbr.com. His fax number is (970) 221-5432.

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