Medtronic on the verge of Lafayette campus approval

LAFAYETTE — After more than a year of preparation and several iterations of its plans, Medtronic Inc. could be just days away from winning approval to begin construction on a new office campus in Lafayette.

The Lafayette City Council is poised to vote on a consent agenda Tuesday evening that includes the second reading of a measure to the medical-device maker’s final planned unit development plan. A consent agenda is a group of typically noncontroversial or housekeeping items that city councils can approve simultaneously.

Given that Medtronic’s plans have already won approval recommendation from Lafayette’s Planning Commission and praise from members of the City Council when plans were formally introduced to the body during a February hearing, the proposal appears likely to move forward.
Should the company meet a few conditions likely to be set forth by city leaders — for example, paying the full public land dedication cash-in-lieu fee rather than the 50% payment it had previously proposed — Medtronic’s new campus would be located on a roughly 42-acre parcel just south of SCL Health’s Good Samaritan Medical Center, northeast of the interchange of Northwest Parkway and U.S. Highway 287. That parcel had previously been eyed by Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT) for a new retail store location prior to the Great Recession, but those plans were scrapped during the economic downturn. 

The campus, planned to be built in two phases, will consist of 600,000 square feet of office spread across three, five-story buildings that will be linked by two, three-story connector buildings. 

The project will also include 2,393 parking spaces.

Phase one of construction, expected to begin this spring to be ready for its first occupants in early 2022, is planned to include two of the five-story buildings and two of the three-story connector buildings plus 1,693 parking spaces, all site landscaping, infrastructure, and solar car canopies.

Lafayette mayor Jamie Harkins remarked on “the opportunity and jobs and economic development that comes from an exciting proposal like this” during February’s hearing.

Medtronic will move its existing operations and employees from Louisville and Gunbarrel to Lafayette. It recently offloaded its seven-building, 453,565-square-foot flex-office campus in Gunbarrel in December. The new facility will house as many as 3,000 workers with about 1,000 of those representing new hires. The average salary of a worker at the new campus would be $130,000, according to planning documents. 

“Over a year ago when Medtronic started to explore the opportunity to grow jobs in the state of Colorado, our goal was, and remains today, to create a world class innovation location where employees working collaboratively can strive to achieve the goals of our mission: to alleviate pain, restore health and extend life,” Medtronic global facilities vice president James Driessen said when plans were introduced to council members last month. 

Lafayette wasn’t Medtronic’s first choice to house the new campus. 

The Medtronic campus was initially planned to be part of the Redtail Ridge development at the long-vacant Phillips 66 (NYSE: PSX) property adjacent to U.S. Highway 36, but the company backed out of the development as local residents and city leaders balked at the scope of the ambitious proposal.

In May, revised plans called for a total of 5.22 million square feet of new construction, down from previous plans of 6.4 million square feet. Of that current total, 2.25 million was planned for office uses, 1.8 million for a roughly 1,500-home senior-living community operated by Erickson Living LLC, 200,000 for hotels, 70,000 for retail and 900,000 for residential rental units.

Scaled-back Redtail Ridge plans now include 3.1 million square feet and no residential element.

“I’m grateful [Medtronic] chose Lafayette and made [their] way a little farther east to us,” Harkins said last month. “I’m really excited about the opportunities [Medtronic] is bringing to town. I think it is a great project.”

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