Salud Health Center plans new Fort Collins clinic on former Forney site

FORT COLLINS — A chain of health centers providing care for underserved individuals and families in Northern Colorado plans to build a new clinic on a 22-acre site it purchased in northwest Fort Collins.

Salud Health Center LLC closed Friday on the purchase of the tract at 1830 W. Laporte Ave. for $2,383,385 from Forney Industries Inc., which was founded in 1932 and had called the location home since 1949.

“The property was valued around $3.1 million, but the other approximately $750,000 came as a grant from Forney,” said John Santistevan, Salud’s president and chief executive.

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Forney, which distributes metalworking and welding products, moved its corporate offices from its aging 90,000-square-foot warehouse and office building to 24,624 square feet at 2057 Vermont Drive in March. Forney had used about 17,000 square feet of the old building for office space and had moved its warehouse approximately five years ago to 3900 Canal St. Some tenants also occupy the building on Laporte, said A.J. Steger, chief financial officer of Forney Industries.

Broker Dan Eckles of Commercial Real Estate Brokers LLC listed the Laporte Avenue property last summer.

The building on Laporte will be razed to make way for a new Salud clinic that eventually will encompass about 34,000 square feet, Santistevan said.

“At full capacity we’ll be able to serve another 9,000 patients in the community with medical, dental, behavioral health and health-management services,” he said. “We could potentially develop a health-care campus there, but at this point that’s just a vision.”

A general contractor has yet to be selected, Santistevan said. Salud will finance the construction, he said, but when work will start also is indefinite, pending the expected receipt of a grant to begin operation of the clinic from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. HRSA last week announced more than $94 million in awards to train the next generation of health-care providers; recipients in Colorado included the University of Colorado and the University of Northern Colorado.

Salud currently serves about 70,000 patients in 10 clinics, including locations in Fort Collins, Estes Park, Longmont, Fort Lupton, Frederick, Brighton, Commerce City, Fort Morgan and Sterling.