Gene Mitchell, creator behind Old Town Square, dies

FORT COLLINS  — Gene Mitchell, a former Fort Collins developer who spearheaded the creation of Old Town Square in the 1980s, died last Friday. He was in his mid-90s.

When Mitchell first pitched his idea for Old Town Square in 1981, the area had “a lot of run down buildings full of pigeons,” said Mitchell’s former business partner David Sitzman at Sitzman-Mitchell & Co. But his vision for Fort Collins’ dilapidated downtown spurred him to persevere through the initial skepticism.

“He had an idea of what downtown Fort Collins ought to be,” he said. “His heart was really in it, as far as he really thought this was going to be a major benefit to the city of Fort Collins.”

Sitzman, an accountant by trade, said the plan was financially sound when Mitchell began renovating the area. But Mitchell’s fortunes took a tumble at the turn of the decade into the ’90s, when interest rates spiked and financial markets fell due to a recession. Prospective tenants couldn’t borrow cash to start businesses, and storefronts sat vacant.

Mitchell later lost most of his private holdings in Old Town Square to bankruptcy and receivership.

“His vision was right, but his timing was wrong,” Sitzman said.

Mitchell later developed the Scotch Pines Shopping Center and the Fort Collins Marriott, among several other projects scattered across the city. However, he remained adamant in his belief that Old Town Square was valuable to the community he lived in, even if his personal investment failed.

But the area continued to develop through the years, with some of the area buoyed by the Fort Collins Downtown Development Authority and its construction of the public parking structure nearby.

Matt Robenalt, executive director of the DDA, met Mitchell for the first and only time during Old Town Square’s renovation in 2015. He said Mitchell didn’t show any bitterness over his financial loss; he sent Robenalt a letter shortly after that meeting, thanking his contemporaries for the work they did to get Old Town Square into shape, and to keep it growing through economic booms and busts. That letter, Robenalt said, explains why Mitchell is remembered as a visionary developer above all else.

“The difference between what we had in mind and what we did accomplish constitutes the vision,” the letter reads. “What we did indelibly forecasted the future, but without the follow up work of all, including the good people who picked up the project and worked with the chips that were left on the table, we wouldn’t have the hope and the promise we have today.”

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