McWhinney, Prism want to talk: Town halls Monday, Tuesday

FORT COLLINS — The new owners of Foothills mall plan to meet-and-greet locals at two gatherings on Monday and Tuesday of next week.

Events are Aug. 23 at the Elizabeth Hotel and Aug. 24 at the former Loft Outlet, at the mall. Each starts at 6 p.m.

McWhinney, in Loveland, and L.A.-based Prism Places in June bought Foothills out of bankruptcy for $45 million. It had been there since its prior owners, a joint venture of Greenwood-based Alberta Development Partners and Walton Street Capital, defaulted on the remaining $47 million of their $150 million construction loan.

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The buy included everything but city-owned parking and an activity center.

Next week, community conversations begin.

Gatherings

A McWhinney press release when the acquisition closed said it planned to “gather input on potential future improvements to the property,” and a press release on the two evening events referred to “real-time feedback” from attendees.

Clyde Wood, McWhinney vice president of commercial development for Northern Colorado said this will be participant, text-based survey responses via smart phone and tabulated in real-time and interaction via direct questions and conversation.

Stenn Parton, president of retail developer and manager Prism Places, is also set to appear.

“It’s an opportunity for us to hear from the community,” Wood said. “The format is interactive [and] we do anticipate open comment.”

One thing not ready for a close-up: actual plans.

“We are not presenting development plans for the property,” Wood said.

The partners have nothing on paper “though of course we have ideas that we’re kicking around,” he said. “This is too big and too important for us to start drawing yet.”

This is the start of a process, he said.

“We’ve only owned it for 2½ months,” he said. “This is a process of outreach and discovery … the first of many community outreach events and workshops.”

After residents, businesses, and city officials weigh-in — “once we’ve collected their input” — the mall’s owners will put pen to paper. He expects it will be several months of talking, with preliminary concepts in some kind of visual rendering by year-end.

“This is still before submitting anything to the city.”

50 Years

Foothills is nearly a half-century old and has seen more than one retail apocalypse.

Nothing is stone-carved yet into its foundation but Wood pledged, “We will create something special.”

McWhinney Chief Executive Ray Pittman has said the company wants to combine retail, restaurants, and multifamily housing into a place for people to gather.

Wood said the partners want to know “what folks like, what they think is missing, and really try to get a sense of what they feel like is missing in the mall specifically and mid-town in general.”

He marked out the shops facing College Avenue as doing well but inside stores “have struggled; that’s no secret. The conventional interior mall, and we’re seeing this in retail sectors across the country, has had its day.”

Wood said, “Something dramatic needs to be done that’s viable and worthy of its prominent mid-town location. We certainly have no interest in owning a struggling mall in perpetuity.”

He called out McWhinney’s work at the Elizabeth Hotel in Fort Collins, site of Monday’s confab, and the Dairy Block in Denver, which on its website describes itself as a “micro-district” of shopping, eating, co-working space and luxe shopping combining for “a celebration of artful and unexpected experiences.”

He noted Foothills’ 63 acres and said more housing could be part of the mix. McWhinney owns the 405-unit Cycle Apartments nearby.

A Denver Post article this week noted former Foothills co-owner Alberta Development Partners’ plans to replace two department stores at its SouthGlenn layout in Centennial with housing, tripling the total units there. A June item from California said developers in the state are doing similar reviews and City Journal in New York in Spring 2020 detailed national efforts along the same lines.

The Wall Street Journal this week offered up another potential element, saying Seattle-based ecommerce-focused Amazon.com Inc. is looking at retail department stores for certain of its products.

Prism’s website entry on Foothills cites nearby trails, CSU’s campus, live music, the winter ice-skating rink, and calls it “a community hub for all seasons [and] ‘Main Street USA’ [for] Northern Colorado.”

The mall website itself carries the focused tagline “Your Place.”

Wood said no matter what, Foothills “will be one of one.”

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