Demolition begins for 55+ apartment complex near downtown Greeley

GREELEY — After months of delays caused by the pandemic, crews will begin initial demolition of a former car dealership in downtown Greeley to make way for a four-story, 85-unit housing complex for adults 55 and over.

The project, dubbed 55+ Resort at the Maddie, is meant to bridge a housing gap for people who are close to retiring and don’t want to maintain a home but don’t need an independent-living or memory-care facility’s level of support. It’s the second Northern Colorado project under the 55+ Resort name, following in the same vein as its sister development in Windsor.

It would sit on the Garnsey and Wheeler dealership building at 1100 Eighth Ave., on the intersection of 11th Street and Eighth Avenue.

It was originally slated to begin development this spring, but Todd Parker, the senior vice president of development for Edison Equity Management Corp., said the economic fallout of the health crisis made the group pause new construction.

“When the pandemic really started to take off this last spring, we did hit the pause button and just kind of waited to see how things may or may not shake out,” he said.

During that time, 55 Resort Management Corp. merged with Dallas-based Edison Equity Partners LLC to form Edison Equity Management and take a broader look at multi-family housing investments.

The company is under contract for a parcel of land to develop an age-restricted housing complex in Loveland’s Centerra master-planned district, Parker said.

The company also had to re-analyze the building plans in the wake of COVID-19, particularly because some of its residents may fall into a high-risk category in a future pandemic. However, Parker said the building’s air-filtration systems are separated enough where they can treat tenants as if they are in individual apartments rather than a communal-living arrangement.

“The concern in the marketplace is more around the assisted-living and the skilled-nursing memory-care facilities because of how those facilities operate,” he said.

The development was also slightly delayed due to the work-from-home situations forced by the pandemic and because of an engineering issue. Builders were originally supposed to maintain the historical facade of the building, but that option was not structurally sound enough to guarantee the safety of workers.

Instead, the entire facade was deconstructed and reconstructed in a structurally safer way, a process that took up two months last year.

Parker now expects construction to begin in earnest in January and be completed in the first quarter of 2022.

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