Developers raise the roof on downtown buildings

A building in downtown Fort Collins that began as a church, then morphed into a movie theater, a sporting goods store and an office building, is changing the look of College Avenue.

Owners of Northern Engineering, a civil engineering firm with about 40 employees, are adding three stories onto the old Blue Cross/Blue Shield Building on the southeast corner of College and Oak, next door to the Aggie Theater. The $3 million project is expected to be completed in August.

“Last week I was able to stand on the fourth floor for the first time,´ said George Schock, president of Northern Engineering. “I think it’s the tallest building on College Avenue. It’s great being able to look down on Old Town Fort Collins.”

The building will include 10,000 square feet of office space for Northern Engineering, a company that started in 1987 and has more than doubled in size since 2000. Schock is excited about more than just the office space. He plans to live in a 2,000-square-foot loft being constructed above his new office.

The project includes 17 residential lofts that will be called Old Town Lofts. All but Schock’s unit will range in size from 660 to 900 square feet and are priced from $200,000-$275,000. Twelve units are under contract, and there’s a waiting list of would-be buyers for the others.

Adding stories onto an existing building is usually complicated, although it’s cost effective and it usually cuts down on the review and approval process required to begin construction.

Schock said the project cost Northern Engineering about $750,000 less than if the company had built a new building from scratch, Schock said. The sale of the lofts will help fund the office remodeling project on the first floor of the building.

The review process also took only nine months, whereas new construction usually takes about a year and a half to get everything approved, Schock said.

A similar roof-raising project in Fort Collins found the review process even more complicated than usual, though. Since 2003, a developer has planned to add three residential lofts on top of the Opera Galleria, a retail-office building downtown.

The hold-up is attributed to plans for a pedestrian bridge to connect Opera Galleria to the Fort Collins Civic Center parking structure, immediately west of Opera Galleria.

“With the bridge, people will be able to park and walk across the bridge to their front doors,´ said Mikal Torgerson of M Torgerson Architects, the architect on the project.

The last step is to get the bridge project approved by the Fort Collins City Council, which is expected to happen this month. Construction on the additional stories should begin by mid-summer and be completed by next spring, Torgerson said.

The challenge to adding stories is determining when an existing building is structurally sound enough to support construction on top of it.

In the case of the Northern Engineering building, which was built in 1901, builders dug a new foundation in the existing basement and dropped down at least 16 new columns to support the additional floors. The three stories of lofts will be structurally independent of the rest of the building, but finishing work will blend it all together.

The building was originally a church. It has also been a movie theater and a sporting goods store. “I’ve even heard it was the first Albertson’s in Fort Collins,” Schock said.

Managed Business Solutions, an information technology-consulting firm, moved out of the building in 2003 to new offices in south Fort Collins. Schock said his company, which currently rents space at Mulberry and Howes, thought the building would add character to downtown.

“We consider ourselves a downtown Fort Collins business, and we wanted to stay that way,” he said. “We like the way the new building interacts with Old Town.”

The Opera Galleria building was constructed in 1989, when developers overhauled the original opera house building. The facility is strong enough for additional construction without needing more columns. One of the lofts will be three stories. The others will be two stories. They will range from 2,800 to 4,000 square feet and will be marketed for upwards of $1 million.

Torgerson, who plans to live in one of the lofts, also worked on a project about five years ago that added stories to 816 S. College Ave., occupied by All State Insurance and Pudge Bros. Pizza. Torgerson said he is also working on two more projects that will add stories to existing buildings, but he declined to discuss those because they are in preliminary planning stages.

The trend is to construct lofts on top of existing buildings, particularly in downtown areas, in part to achieve the cost effectiveness mentioned by Schock. Torgerson said he thinks the development is good for downtown, although some people have questioned whether there are too many loft projects underway in downtown Fort Collins.

“The more people we get downtown, the more vibrant it’s going to be,” Torgerson said. “Living and working downtown is a lifestyle that’s becoming increasingly popular.”

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