Hospital generates growth in Lafayette

Editor’s note: Construction Quest is a series of five installments that focuses on commercial construction projects in the largest cities and towns in Boulder and Broomfield counties. Previous installments focused on Broomfield, Boulder and Longmont. The final installment will feature Louisville/Superior.

LAFAYETTE — Since it opened in 2004, Exempla Good Samaritan Medical Center in Lafayette has stood high above the surrounding landscape like a mountain on the plains.

To the north, east and west has been mostly open land for much of that time. As the economy recovers, however, the hospital is proving a major driver in what is about to be a construction boom in south Lafayette.

SPONSORED CONTENT

Exploring & expressing grief

Support groups and events, as well as creative therapies and professional counseling, are all ways in which Pathways supports individuals dealing with grief and loss.

Medical offices are being leased as fast as they rise from the dirt. Apartments, a hot commodity throughout the Denver metropolitan area, are popping up to take advantage of the hospital’s employee base. Prospective retail also has its eyes on the population influx.

“Things are still a little slow,´ said Phillip Patterson, community development director for the city of Lafayette. “I think once construction on the Prasanna apartments starts, that will generate some more commercial interest because then there will be about 500 apartments down there.”

Prasanna is an $11.5 million, 240-unit apartment complex being built by Milestone Development Group that will be next to the 264-unit Prana complex just north of the hospital.

Developer Scott Boyd, who already has built a Montessori school across U.S. Highway 287 to the west of the hospital, is getting set to build a 28,000-square-foot medical office building in the same area. He also has about 2.5 acres where he eventually plans to build a 36-unit apartment complex.

“I knew eventually it had to pop,” Boyd said. “I’m really happy it’s starting to do it.”

A major player in the area is SoLa Inc., a group of investors from Illinois that sold the lots for Prana and Prasanna. SoLa Inc., still has about 50 acres of land to be developed north of the hospital. NAI Shames Makovsky broker Brian Bair, who helps represent the SoLa Inc., owners in selling finished pads, said about 20 of those acres are slated for office, flex and senior care buildings. The rest is zoned for commercial, retail, restaurants and hospitality, including a pair of potential hotel sites.

Bair said the hospital and the neighboring Kaiser Permanente facilities already are a big draw, with few amenities around them. But with construction under way on the $17.8 million, 87,552-square-foot Exempla cancer center being built by Saunders Construction Inc., there will be even more need for restaurants and lodging as the number of extended and specialized stays at the hospital increases.

“The hospital is a huge driver,” Bair said.

The boom isn’t limited to south Lafayette. Just to the north along Public Road, the Lafayette Tech Center is taking shape. Creekside Medical Campus at Old Laramie Trail is a five-building, 42,000-square-foot complex of mostly medical office buildings quickly going in. Colorado CyberKnife LLC, a cancer treatment center, already has a home in one of the buildings. Dr. Glenn E. Herrmann’s is building a 10,000-square-foot building there to relocate his Coal Creek Plastic Surgery from Louisville and lease out extra space once the building is finished in November.

A fourth building at Creekside will be coming soon, said Chris Jensen, president of Vista Commercial Advisors Inc., the real estate brokerage that is handling the condo sales, building sales and leasing for Creekside property owner Hans Brutsche. Eventually planned by Brutsche to the west of those five buildings, Jensen said, is a second phase that will include two three-story buildings totaling 185,000 square feet of professional and medical office space.

As more and doctors look to locate their practices near the hospital, Jensen said a big draw at Creekside has been about a 33 percent reduction in gross rent versus what practices must pay to locate in offices on the Exempla campus.

“We’re finding that medical users are coming out of the woodwork,” Jensen said.

Not all of the development picking up in Lafayette is new construction. One major revitalization for the city has been that of Plaza Lafayette, now called Lafayette Marketplace, along South Boulder Road just east of U.S. 287.

Jim Quinlan, owner of Jax Outdoors stores, owns Lafayette Marketplace and opened a Jax Ranch and Home store there. He also has worked hard to bring new tenants such as Front Range Brewing Co. to the center and added a pedestrian accessways through the center to its back parking lot where vendors for a farmers’ market locate.

“For this part of downtown, it’s been one of those shopping centers that we believe was still viable but it needed a little bit of energy to get it going,” Patterson said. “I think Jax has brought it to the table.”

For those looking to build, the city still offers plenty of options, and not just north of the hospital. Patterson said there are 40 acres north of Walmart along U.S. 287, sites south of the hospital near the Northwest Parkway and land at the intersection of Colorado Highway 7 and 119th St. that all are potential commercial sites.

To Jensen, all the pieces seem to be coming together for a major building surge in Lafayette: Commercial supply is low, available land is reasonably priced, and demand is starting to surface.

“As long as interest rates stay down,” Jensen said, “right there is a recipe for success for developers.”