Greeley HP building to be demolished for school expansion

GREELEY — If all the permits fall as predicted, the former Hewlett-Packard Co. facility along 71st Avenue in Greeley will cease to exist, ending a chapter in Greeley’s business history that began in 1984.

HP envisioned the facility at one time as a key component of HP’s Colorado strategy, with plans for three additional buildings plus a training facility on part of the land where the Boomerang Golf Course now sits. Hundreds of people — about 800 at one time — worked there as part of the three-facility, Northern Colorado presence for HP in Greeley, Loveland and Fort Collins. The Greeley site was home to HP’s printer division.

HP shut it down in the early 2000s, moved workers and functions to Fort Collins and Loveland, and it was completely empty by 2003, never again to see business activity in the building.

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An entity called LaSalle Investors LLC, a division of Waltel Cos. Inc., purchased the nearly 20-acre site where the 228,109-square-foot building sits. It will demolish the building and resell part of the empty site to the neighboring Westridge Charter Academy, which has plans for an athletic field and additional parking for staff.

Brian Bartels, who with his partner Adam Wallace are the principals behind LaSalle, confirmed the property sale, which he said closed Tuesday. Documents are not yet filed with Weld County. He would not disclose the purchase price but said it involved a “property trade and a convoluted transfer.” The Weld assessor valued the 19.83-acre property where the building sits at $1.75 million.

Bartels, who served at one time on the board of Westridge, said the school wants to build a six-lane track, which is large enough for the school to host track meets. Bartels previously helped Westridge purchase 11 acres of the original HP site that contained a cafeteria and training center attached to the main building by a walkway. The walkway was demolished to sever the connection to the main building.

Seller of the property that sold Tuesday was City Center West LP, which shares an address with Westside Investment Partners Inc. in Glendale. City Center had purchased it along with additional acreage in 2007 for $8.36 million from Boomerang Properties LLC, which had purchased it from HP in 2004 for $8 million.

Boomerang was composed of Northern Colorado investors Bruce Deifik, Jeff Bedingfield and Rhys Christensen. Their purchase included 135 acres, and it had been listed by HP for $14 million.

The latest sale involves the main HP building, two stories with 110,000 square feet on each floor, plus a 10,472-square-foot warehouse building.

The community had high hopes for the site after HP’s closure, but it was unable to attract one or more large companies to take the space. 

Headlines in BizWest and its predecessor publication, the Northern Colorado Business Report, speak to the hope.

“Greeley ex-HP complex an economic ace in the hole,” said one. “Empty Greeley HP campus could land user soon,” and “After more than a decade, HP property in west Greeley could see new life,” say other headlines.

While property owners were unable to land a big employer, they did subdivide the land and sell off parcels for a bank, restaurant, tire store, car wash, storage facility and more. 

Bartels said the main building was vandalized with copper stolen from it, graffiti painted on the walls and windows shattered. “It was beat up and abused,” he said. “It’s time for it to come down and repurpose the land.”

He said LaSalle has already been in the building and has handled environmental mitigation that is necessary prior to demolition. He said asbestos was found in the adhesive used to hold down floor tiles and that had to be removed. 

“We’ve already done the state permitting. The state will do its final inspection this week and is expected to sign off. Then we’ll pull the city demolition permit next week,” Bartels said.

“We’re not a vertical developer, so we’ll demolish the building” and sell the property, he said. They’ll seek rezoning from its current industrial to RH, or residential high, which would permit the school to do what it wants with the property, he said.