May 11, 2007

Momentum building retail interest at Lincoln Place

LOVELAND – At the northeast corner of Fifth Street and Lincoln Avenue in Loveland, one of the current axioms of urban redevelopment is beginning to play out.

It goes like this: Get people living downtown, and businesses will move in to serve them.

Simple. But, as developers of the $25 million Lincoln Place project have found in the past four months, simple formulas sometimes require a lot of patience.

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The 200 apartments that account for about 90 percent of Lincoln Place’s 222,000 square feet of space went on the market in early January, shortly after Northern Colorado was blitzed with a pair of snowstorms that piled as much as three feet of snow around the region.

Residential leasing was slow going for the first few months, and interest in the 22,000 square feet of retail space was equally sluggish.

“For the longest time, I think people just wanted to wait and see what was going to happen there,´ said Chris Rebich, who is handling commercial leasing for the project’s Boulder-based developers, The O’Connor Group.

“Now, we’ve got 117 out of 200 residential leases firmed up. There’s getting to be a buzz around the project, and that’s helping.”

Rebich has two leases, each for 1,900 square feet of space, signed. One with coffee chain Dazbog was executed even before the space was ready for occupancy. Another is with a day spa and salon – “a swanky, boutique business model,” as Rebich said – that is, for now, keeping its name a secret. A spate of other inquiries from retailers has bubbled up as the apartments have filled.

Lease rates of $20 per square foot are slightly higher than other downtown Loveland retail spaces, but almost half the amount of those in some of the retail centers near Interstate 25 and U.S. Highway 34.

The rising interest has to be encouraging for developers who are hoping the market is made for other downtown residential projects, such as the Penny Flats project on North Mason Street in Fort Collins.

The difference, of course, is in the fact that Penny Flats’ 147 units will hit the market for sale, not rent, when the first phase opens next summer.

Rebich said the rental model was chosen for Lincoln Place because a market for downtown condominiums and lofts for sale had not yet been demonstrated in Loveland. The focus is on a market that ranges from young, single professionals to older empty-nesters comfortable with rents that average about $1,000 monthly for a maintenance-free and amenity-heavy living environment.

That’s not to say that some of the people who have investigated Lincoln Place haven’t inquired about buying a piece of it.

“We’ve had a number of people who have come in asking if these places are for sale,” Rebich said. “They’re disappointed that they’re not.”

Editor Tom Hacker covers real estate for the Northern Colorado Business Report. He can be reached at (970) 221-5400, ext. 223 or at thacker@ncbr.com

LOVELAND – At the northeast corner of Fifth Street and Lincoln Avenue in Loveland, one of the current axioms of urban redevelopment is beginning to play out.

It goes like this: Get people living downtown, and businesses will move in to serve them.

Simple. But, as developers of the $25 million Lincoln Place project have found in the past four months, simple formulas sometimes require a lot of patience.

The 200 apartments that account for about 90 percent of Lincoln Place’s 222,000 square feet of space went on the market in early January, shortly after Northern Colorado was blitzed with a pair of…

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