Real Estate & Construction  August 18, 2006

Crossroads plan reaches for the sky

Two of Northern Colorado’s top-tier developers will collaborate to put a high-rise stamp on the junction of Interstate 25 and Crossroads Boulevard, with plans for twin office buildings totaling at least 160,000 square feet.

Martin Lind, developer of Windsor’s Water Valley, and Stu MacMillan, president of Fort Collins-based Everitt-MacMillan Development Inc., have notified Loveland officials they intend to build two buildings, at least eight stories and possibly 10, at the northeast corner of the junction, just south of the Budweiser Events Center.

The proposed project, likely to cost about $35 million, would put the new class-A office space on the market just three minutes from the new Medical Center of the Rockies, the regional hospital that Poudre Valley Health System will open in February.

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The words “Tech Center” creep into MacMillan’s and Lind’s descriptions of the plan.

“This is where we put our best foot forward,´ said MacMillan, who formed his development company with Everitt Cos. partner David Everitt last year with office space at the top of the project list. “It will have a Denver Tech Center feel, and will set the tone for everything that follows in that area.”

The words echo Lind’s earlier prediction that his 200-acre Eagle Crossing development, stretching eastward from I-25 on the north side of Crossroads, will be this region’s version of south Denver’s Tech Center within the next 15 years.

The project would also bring two of the region’s most prominent and highly regarded real estate developers together for the first time, in pursuit of the largest multi-user office plan in Northern Colorado.

“There should be plenty of horsepower in this partnership,” Lind said. “We’ve always been land guys and they (Everitt-MacMillan) are the guys with the leasing expertise. Both Stu and I have a real passion for Northern Colorado, and don’t have any interest in coming in and putting something up and then leaving. We make our homes here.”

Not a box

The partners enlisted Vaught Frye Architects of Fort Collins to design the two towers, with plans for them to be connected by a floating bridge suspended at the mezzanine level.

“This will not be a square box with windows punched out,´ said Frank Vaught, who has ushered the project through several architectural renditions under the name Eagle Crossing Office Towers. “Stu and Martin want to make a statement, and a strong statement, along the interstate. It’s going to be a signature building.”

Loveland’s development review process will determine the upper limit of the buildings’ scope, but MacMillan said each would be at least eight stories, the height approved for the nearby Embassy Suites Hotel and Conference Center.

That project is stalled while developer John Q. Hammons and Larimer County officials continue to negotiate following Hammons’ notice earlier this summer he would abandon the project.

Both MacMillan and Lind said they hoped their project would be approved for 10 stories.

“It’s time for Northern Colorado to go vertical,” Lind said. “You see it on a limited basis, but now land prices are going to dictate it.”

Land costs in the Crossroads/I-25 vicinity have been steeply escalating over the course of the past couple of years, and in some development push toward $20 per square foot.

On the south side of Crossroads Boulevard, at the 18-acre Crossroads Plaza office and retail center, a Denver medical office building developer plans another 100,000-square-foot office development, also going upward rather than outward to minimize land costs. Groundbreaking is scheduled for sometime in 2007.

More than medical

Lind said his project would not necessarily fit the medical-office pigeonhole, and that more conventional office users in Fort Collins, Loveland and Greeley had already shown significant interest in the project.

“I think there’s a significant number of what I call ‘tri-city’ businesses that want to consolidate in that area,” Lind said. “There’s also likely to be an influx of new tenants from outside the region into this project, people that are accustomed to that kind of a structure, and find it’s not available anywhere else here.”

MacMillan said his partnership with Lind stemmed in part from a longstanding friendship with Russ Sanford, who is corporate counsel for Lind’s Water Valley land development company.

Proximity to the Fort Collins-Loveland Airport will weigh in the formula that Loveland planners and airport managers will apply to the developers’ requests.

Airport Manager Dave Gordon was not available to return calls about the project as the Business Report was headed to press.

Lind said high-rise buildings in the Crossroads/I-25 vicinity were inevitable, and that the project he and MacMillan plan would be just the first step in vertical development along Crossroads to the east.

“I’m not even sure if this qualifies as a paradigm shift,” Lind said. “That’s a term reserved for things that people don’t expect to happen. I think most people realize that this would happen here.”

Two of Northern Colorado’s top-tier developers will collaborate to put a high-rise stamp on the junction of Interstate 25 and Crossroads Boulevard, with plans for twin office buildings totaling at least 160,000 square feet.

Martin Lind, developer of Windsor’s Water Valley, and Stu MacMillan, president of Fort Collins-based Everitt-MacMillan Development Inc., have notified Loveland officials they intend to build two buildings, at least eight stories and possibly 10, at the northeast corner of the junction, just south of the Budweiser Events Center.

The proposed project, likely to cost about $35 million, would put the new class-A office space on the market just…

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