2008 – Conoco made plans for Louisville campus

ConocoPhillips Co. in February 2008 purchased 432 acres in Louisville for $55.6 million and announced plans to build a global technology and corporate learning center focusing on renewable energy. The land had been owned by Sun Microsystems Inc., and was the home of Storage Technology Corp. before that company was purchased by Sun.

ConocoPhillips said it planned to open the Louisville campus by 2011, but those plans were put on hold as the economic downturn weakened the company’s profits.

Its preliminary plans called for 2.5 million square feet of research and office space, with the first 1.6 million square feet to be completed by 2013. It already had demolished the 1.8 million square feet of buildings on the site that previously housed StorageTek.

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The change in the project’s status was because of ConocoPhillips’ decision in 2011 that it would split into two companies, one focused on energy exploration and production and one focused on refining.

Some decisions about ConocoPhillips were reached. The new independent refining company was named Phillips 66 and is headquartered in Houston. ConocoPhillips became an exploration and production company and would stay in its current Houston headquarters.

Executives at ConocoPhillips Co. in December 2011 decided that the research and training center proposed for Louisville would be inherited by Phillips 66.

Not all economic news was encouraging in Boulder County in 2008.

Longmont’s dated Twin Peaks Mall had been losing tenants steadily, and in 2008 it was declared blighted, a condition for creating an urban-renewal authority for the site. The mall met nine of the 11 required conditions for a blighted property, according to a study.

Twin Peaks’ new owner, Sacramento, California-based Panattoni Development Co., which had paid $33.6 million for the mall in 2007, presented the first phase of a redevelopment plan to the city, but Longmont’s City Council balked because it wasn’t being shown plans for later phases of the plan.

By 2009, an urban-renewal district had been formed, but an economic downturn and tight credit put redevelopment out of reach.

NewMark Merrill Mountain States bought the mall in February 2012 for $8.5 million — nearly a fourth of what Panattoni had paid for it five years before. By late 2012, however, ambitious plans were being floated for demolition and redevelopment.