Loveland makes ACE official

LOVELAND – At a special meeting of the Loveland city council Thursday afternoon, staff from the Colorado Association for Manufacturing and Technology announced that the group has selected United Properties, a Minnesota-based developer with offices in Denver, to develop the Aerospace and Clean Energy Manufacturing and Innovation Center at the former Agilent Technologies site in Loveland.

The announcement officially confirms that the 167-acre campus will host the ACE park, which should house 70-plus companies and eventually create an estimated 10,000 jobs. Loveland Mayor Cecil Gutierrez thanked and welcomed CAMT and United Properties officials, who agreed that the city effectively wooed the project through letters from residents and Valentines from children.

Elaine Thorndike, CAMT CEO, said half a dozen companies have already written letters of interest and another 20 potential clients have also been identified. The development team, consisting of CAMT and United Properties staff, is recruiting tenants who have product prototypes or who are looking to accelerate commercialization. The ACE park, established through an agreement between CAMT and NASA last December, should fill a gap in the region between incubator organizations and established tech businesses.

Several environmental issues, including potential groundwater contamination, existing waste piles and asbestos, may need to be addressed or mitigated at the site before development can begin. Loveland city officials spent roughly $250,000 completing due diligence studies for the site and did not find any significant problems, according to Betsey Hale, city business development manager. Pending review of the studies, the city, which has agreed to purchase the 300-plus acre site from Agilent for $5.8 million, will sell the park parcel to the development team while retaining an additional 127 acres as city open space.

Agilent, which will still have roughly 350 employees in one building on campus, has agreed to work with the city to prepare the site for transfer to the developer, City Manager Bill Cahill told the Business Report Daily.

The development team will meet twice a week over the next 60 days to develop a draft business plan and select tenants, Thorndike said. The initial project is set to include two 50,000-square-foot buildings that will serve as labs for a number of ACE companies.

“The primary draw will be the shared services that we can put in the buildings,” Thorndike said, adding that CAMT hopes to receive donated equipment from other federal labs.

Among the signs of the high anticipation for the site, Larimer County Commissioner Tom Donnelly said the county Workforce Center has already received 2,000 applications from people looking for work at the ACE park.

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