Projects blossom along I-25 corridor

Projects blossom along I-25 corridor
It’s been said that Interstate 25 between Denver and the Wyoming border is Northern Colorado’s “Main Street,” and any community located adjacent to it has the opportunity to benefit greatly from that proximity.
“I think eventually we’re going to be calling it Main Street,´ said Doug Anderson, chairman of the Wellington Economic Development Association, talking about I-25 and the town’s latest construction, a 93-room Comfort Inn next to the interstate and a block and a half south of the interchange. “Everyone’s using it (I-25) for a road to Denver.”
Wellington is one of several Northern Colorado towns and cities seeing development come to its I-25 connection. Two housing developments are going up on each of the frontage roads paralleling the interstate just south of the interchange. The long-awaited Ace Hardware store that Anderson is working on will be located southeast of the interchange if not directly on it. Anderson said he would also be working on a 780-home development near the hardware store when it goes up. He just doesn’t know when right now.
“The state has designated the entire place an enterprise zone,” Anderson said. “We are just going to be accepting everything, but we are looking for some light industrial or manufacturing.”

Fort has four interchanges
Fort Collins has four interchanges that hook up with I-25: Mountain View Drive, Mulberry Street, Prospect Road and Harmony Road. There is also a bridge where Larimer County Road 48 crosses the interstate near the Waterglen development. Of all these, the Mulberry interchange, where Colorado Highway 14 crosses the interstate, has probably been the most active in terms of economic development.
The Edge, a new indoor sports complex, is approaching completion next to the McDonald’s restaurant. “Not a lot of what’s going on is in the city limits,´ said Ken Waido, chief planner for the city of Fort Collins. “Most of what is happening is in the county.”
The state, Larimer County and Fort Collins are talking about redoing the west side of the interchange, which has an intersection that’s been a problem for years. County planning director Russ Legg said he envisions that area as something of a neighborhood service center and said he and others have been trying to encourage businesses to locate there.
Legg said he doesn’t expect Fort Collins’ business heart ever to move closer to the interstate. “There will be some development in that area, but it’s not going to reach the magnitude of the businesses developing along the Harmony corridor,” he said. “It’s going to be a significant spot for the growth of old businesses and the birth of new ones in the region.”
Businesses have been springing up along the Windsor exit, Colorado Highway 392, but that has cooled recently. Windsor chief planner Joseph Plummer said the interchange is simply in a quiet period at the moment. “I don’t want to give the impression it’s dead,” Plummer said. “It’s not. It’s generating property taxes and retail taxes for Windsor. We have people calling us all the time about space. We just don’t have projects up day after day. We’re always on the lookout for new commercial activity.”
In the last five years, the area has seen a new bank, a liquor store, a residential development and other businesses. Plummer said the town has about 240 acres available for building. The only restriction is on the northeast side, where the state has restrictions on the number of businesses that can build in that area because of traffic impacts.

Centerra is I-25 jewel
It is impossible to talk about economic development along I-25 and not mention the 3,000-acre Centerra project, which runs about two miles from where U.S. 34 crosses the interstate north to exit 259. The mixed-use Centerra, being developed by McWhinney Enterprises, is almost the poster child for successful development along the interstate.
“We’ve got all kinds of stuff coming in here,´ said Donna Smith, economic-development manager for Loveland. “We have Embassy Suites building a hotel and conference center just south of The Ranch.”
The hotel will have 250 suites and an 80,000-square-foot conference center. Smith said the developer should break ground for the center in the spring of 2005. She said the project should take about 18 months.
Another large commercial development, Thunder Mountain Harley-Davidson, recently opened as the region’s largest motorcycle dealership.
Heska Corp. is building a 60,000-square-foot headquarters at Centerra near the intersection of Rocky Mountain Avenue and Crossroads Boulevard. The new headquarters is a move out of Fort Collins and into Loveland. It should be completed in late 2005, Smith said.
Kroll Factual Data, a mortgage-credit-reporting firm, will expand its office building in Centerra. Prime Outlets at Loveland on the west side of the interstate is the retail heart of the Centerra project, but another 650,000-square-foot open-air mall, The Shops at Centerra, is under construction on the east side of I-25 and should be open by Christmas 2005.
Also in Centerra, the $220 million Medical Center of the Rockies will open in 2006. The Poudre Valley Hospital System project will include a regional hospital and office building. The new hospital will be just south of the existing Cloverleaf Kennel Club dog track.
Also in the planning process are several smaller retail places and auto dealerships looking to relocate or build near the Crossroads Boulevard exit 262.
Located at Exit 240 where Colorado Highway 119 crosses I-25, Del Camino was once merely a collection of truck stops and fast-food places catering to truckers. No more. “There’s a lot more retail going out there,´ said Kathy Schulte, senior vice president of the Greeley/Weld Economic Development Action Partnership Inc.
Schulte said there has also been interest in the Johnstown interchange where Colorado Highway 66 crosses the interstate. For years, the spot had infrastructure problems, mostly sewer. “That’s all gone now,” Schulte said. “But it takes quite a while. Most of the businesses out there were on septic systems. It cost a lot of money to run a sanitary sewer line out there.”
One of the hottest areas in the south end of the Northern Colorado I-25 corridor is Dacono. “Dacono is very active,” Schulte said. “They did all that work on (Colorado) Highway 52. They got all the frontage roads in and it’s in a good location. For many years, infrastructure was the main problem there. Now it’s new and most of the infrastructure is in place,” she said.

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