As town grows, so grows competition

WINDSOR — Windsor residents can count by twos to measure business growth.

The burgeoning town has two medical clinics located across the street from each other. Two major grocery chains — Safeway and King Soopers — now call Windsor home, and by next summer two national drugstore chains will have stores in town as well.

There are two hardware stores, two flower shops and two motels. Two newspapers compete to bring town residents the latest news. And the town, which straddles two counties — Larimer and Weld — even has two economic-development organizations.

Doing business in Windsor has grown more competitive as the town has grown, local business officials say. That competition has yielded better customer service and larger product choice, they say.

More choices, more local taxes

More businesses and more choices mean residents may be more likely to make purchases in their hometown rather than elsewhere in Northern Colorado.

“Choice is always good,´ said Michal Connors, Windsor Chamber of Commerce office manager. Connors said that as the town and its commercial residents grow, Windsor businesses are advertising more and beefing up service.

“A lot of them are increasing customer service,” he said. “They go above and beyond to get the customer. The customer service level has really increased, which helps the consumer.”

Connor said the chamber, too, has grown, swelling from 270 members in December 2002 to 355 members one year later.

Hungry for sales-tax revenue to feed a growing demand for municipal services, Windsor, like most Colorado towns, is eager to see residents return to the shopping habits of its history.

“A lot of people who lived here didn’t even leave the community,” Connors said. “They lived here, worked here, shopped here.”

But as the population changed from the German immigrants of Windsor’s roots to a mobile group of younger high-tech executives and their families, the town began to see shopping dollars move elsewhere.

Situated in the heart of the triangle formed by Fort Collins, Loveland and Greeley, Windsor easily embodies that Northern Colorado trend of the last decade where families live in one community and work in others. People tend to shop where they work, Connors said.

That could be more from habit than by desire. J.J. Johnston, president and CEO of the Northern Colorado Economic Development Corp. — which serves Windsor alongside the Greeley/Weld Economic Development Action Partnership Inc. — said he has found that people typically prefer to shop where they live.

“I’ve done retail slippage studies in other states,” Johnston said. “Usually 98 percent to 99 percent of people who live in a community would prefer to shop and buy their groceries in that community.”

More local shopping seen

With more choice and business competition in town, consumer behaviors could slowly change, said Julie Piotraschke, editor of the Windsor Tribune.

“I think more people are shopping here in town,” Piotraschke said. “With the new King Soopers, I don’t head out of town as much. So I think slowly, people are spending more time here.”

There is evidence that that’s happening. Sales-tax revenues have steadily increased over the past few years, said Dean Moyer, Windsor finance director. Sales-tax collection in Windsor has grown despite the flagging economy.

The two grocery stores are the town’s largest sales-tax generators, Moyer said. “It seems no matter what the economy is like, people always have to buy groceries.”

Moyer looks ahead to keeping not only Windsor residents shopping in town but also the growing possibility of drawing residents from rural areas outside Windsor. “I’m hoping that eventually we can draw in some of that money as well,” he said.

Windsor deserves praise for its balanced approach to growth, NCEDC’s Johnston said. The town’s 2020 plan, which looks ahead to that year and a population more than double the current 15,000, calls for “a really balanced strategy between residential and commercial growth to have sustainable economic health.”

“A business community does need balance, and all jobs are important from retail, commercial and service to government and primary,” Johnston said. “Windsor is attracting a lot of new capital investment, not just in commercial but with the primary development of Owens-Illinois just two miles east of town.”

Toledo-Ohio-based Owens-Illinois Inc. is building a glass-container manufacturing plant in Windsor, near the Kodak Colorado Division plant.

Observers say some of the commercial growth in Windsor may be speculative as big chains with staying power bet on the residential growth the town predicts.

“More people want to get in on the ground floor,” Piotraschke said.

The growing business competition in Windsor is energizing for business owners and customers, said Peggie Lipps, owner of the Li’l Flower Shop in Windsor with her husband, Gary, for three and a half years. She also serves as vice president of the Windsor Chamber of Commerce.

“I love good competition,” she said. “It’s good for any community. It keeps everyone on their toes and makes a more healthy environment for our residents and the community.”

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