REAL ESTATE: Sears, Ward develop real estate Landmark

GREELEY — Curtis Sears and Seth Ward made news in regional real estate circles three years ago when they left established firms in Greeley to create Renaissance Cos. LLC along with ex-partner Rod Guerrieri.
Sears and Ward have outgrown the Renaissance era.
The duo, which specializes in real estate brokerage and project management, recently changed their business name to Landmark Companies LLC. In a related move, Sears and Ward have also set up a new development venture called Landmark Partners, a partnership that includes Greeley-based DesignOne Consultants Inc.
The combined operations, which will do business as Landmark Communities, plan to relocate offices later this year to the Foxhill Office Park at 20th Street and 47th Avenue, one of the first projects of the new venture.
Landmark Communities offers a singular development operation in Northern Colorado, in which one company combines in-house planning and design skills with the ability to handle the entitlement process, construction management, and eventual sale or lease of lots and buildings.
Landmark?s only outsourcing in the development process will be for engineering and general contracting services.
?I don?t know of anyone who?s combined the design component with the brokerage component,? said Sears. ?It?s unique that we?re putting all of this under one roof.?
Said Ward, ?What we?re trying to be is a vertically integrated company.?
DesignOne is the least recognizable element of the new partnership.
The company was started in 2001 by Jason Sherrill and Jonathan Mosier after they left Sovereign Companies LLC, a development company that specialized in multi-family projects.
At the time he started DesignOne, Sherrill hooked up with Ward to work on a condominium project in Evans. After that, Sherrill took on a regular consulting role for Renaissance Cos.
?We decided then that we ought to do this together,? Sears said. ?Out of that was born Landmark Communities.?
The biggest customer for Landmark Communities will be Landmark Communities.
The new venture has already pulled the trigger on three projects in Greeley ? the aforementioned Foxhill Office Park, a three-building, 1.5-acre project; a 76-unit townhome project called Orchard Park at Grapevine Hollow in Evans, and The Homestead at Pioneer Park, a 24-acre mixed-use community that includes 245 residential units.
Foxhill Office Park is due for completion in July. Contractors will break ground on the two residential projects this summer.
?We have another half-dozen in the hopper,? said Sears, who estimated the investment in the first three projects at $30 million.
Landmark?s initial emphasis will be on mixed-use projects with multi-family units.
?At the heart of what we?re doing is to bring Greeley some new options with higher quality architecture,? Sherrill said. ?Neighborhoods that have amenities and a sense of place.?
Despite the lagging vacancies in the rental housing market, Landmark Communities thinks the right product will prosper.
?We feel very positive about the ability of the market to accept well-designed, well-located multi-family projects,? Sears said. ?That?s not to say it isn?t going to be competitive. We?re saying we?re good competitors.?
Landmark Communities has targeted ?anything north of 120th Street? as its geographic market, Sherrill said, referring to the northern suburbs of Denver. ?I think there?s a demand for this type of product.?
At the same time, Landmark Cos. ? the former Renaissance Cos. ? and DesignOne will maintain independent identities for other projects.
Landmark Cos. will continue to offer real estate brokerage and other third-party consulting services for a list of cleints that includes Advantage Bank at Fox Run, Berthoud Gateway park, the Greeley Tech Center and University Acres, DesignOne will carry on with its nationwide work on youth sports facilities.

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