Retail center in store for Wellington

WELLINGTON – A Fort Collins commercial real estate broker is stepping onto new ground and tearing it up, as he becomes a first-time developer.

Ron Young, managing broker for Re/Max First Commercial, is on the verge of purchasing 130 acres of land that’s currently platted for residential development in Wellington. Young is the managing member for an investment group, which intends to transform 23.4 acres from the purchase into a shopping center with an initial value of $4.2 million. The center will consist of 10 separate buildings with 196,000 square feet of retail space.

The shopping center, part of the Boxelder Commons subdivision, would be located south of Larimer County Road 62, between First Street and the Interstate 25 Frontage road.

Young, along with the land’s current property owners, Delmer Zweygardt and Fred Ziegler, will take the plans before the Wellington Town Board on June 9. The town must approve the rezoning of the residential land. The balance of the purchase would still have 219 residential parcels.

Zweygardt and Ziegler hired Young to market the property in November. The property was already platted for residential development when Young brought the idea of adding a commercial element to the development. The conversion was proposed after Young researched the amount of retail dollars that Wellington residents take out of the community due to a lack of services.

“I studied to see what leakage is going out of the community,” Young said. “There’s a lot of dollars leaving.”

While Young doesn’t have signed letters of intent for the shopping center, he indicated that the Boxelder Commons center would offer the same services of similar retail strip centers, including a grocery store anchor. Young estimated the center would keep $8 million in the community annually.

Other services may include a hardware store, a flower shop, a card store or a dry cleaner along with several restaurants including pad site occupants and other casual dining restaurants.

“I have another six tenants that have not allowed me to release their names yet,” he said.

Young hopes to break ground in June and have the grocer open nine months later. The entire project is expected to be completed in three phases over five years.

“We will start with the strip center and the grocery and probably those pads up in front,” he said.

Wellington has long been considered a bedroom community of Fort Collins. The town currently has a small grocery store, but it hasn’t been able to meet the needs of the town’s increasing residents.

“The reason this is all coming together is because (Wellington) has wonderful homes priced considerably less than the surrounding areas,” Young said. “It is an absolutely affordable area to live in.”

This is not the first grocery store to show an interest in Wellington’s burgeoning population. In fact, this is the fifth attempt to build a store in the area. Former suitors included an expansion of existing Susy’s Market, The Grocery Cart, L&I Family Market and an unnamed store to be built by a local partnership, Wellington Groceries LLC.

Doug Andersen, president of the Wellington Economic Development Authority, said he is hopeful Young can finalize the project and bring it to fruition.

“A project of this size will undoubtedly benefit the town in the short and long run,” Andersen said. “It has a highly visible location and I think it will be a stand alone project in northern Larimer County.”

Andersen said there are approximately 8,000 people living within a five-mile radius of Wellington that will benefit from the services provided at the center.

“The strip center will have a centralized location and is symbolic of exactly what Wellington needs … this will allow Wellington to be a stand-alone community,” he said.

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