Local construction firm buys last parcel left at St. Michaels

GREELEY — A local construction company has snapped up the last bit of available ground in the St. Michaels development, and plans to develop it into retail, restaurants or possibly a hotel in the future.

The 2.5-acre site is just west of UCHealth Greeley Hospital off of U.S Highway 34 Bypass. SRI Investments/Stucco Rite Inc. closed on the property in late June for $1.75 million. The property comes with 4.2 acre feet of water as well.

Kurt Georgeades, CEO and chairman of Stucco Rite Inc. and SRI Investments LLC

said he was fortunate to leverage a long-term relationship with Spirit Hospitality LLC to buy the property, which Spirit had owned for eight years with plans on building a hotel.

“It was actually already permitted through the city of Greeley,” Georgeades said. “It was supposed to be a Holiday Inn and then COVID hit. That’s when they said hospitality is going down the drain, and banks didn’t want” to lend to hotel projects anymore.

Spirit Hospitality hit the brakes and started downsizing, leaving the land vacant since.

Georgeades said the sale came at a fortuitous time in which he was looking at buying the land, and got an offer on a warehouse he owned off of Crossroads Boulevard in Loveland. He sold the warehouse for $3.15 million and bought the land at St. Michaels for $1.75 million. The proceeds, he said, are going in the bank, while they wait out a tough market with high interest rates.

“We took the proceeds from the sale, purchased the land and put the rest of the money into the bank to figure out when we decide what we’re going to do,” Georgeades said, adding that he’s hoping interest rates will go back down after the November general election.

“We’re taking a breather, just because of the fact that rates are so high, and we’re still seeing high cost in materials,” he said. “We’ve gotten a lot of interest in it.  But we’re going to see what the election does and see what the rates do, and see if we’re going to develop it ourselves into some kind of strip mall/medical; a hotel would be the last option. At this point we’re sitting back and seeing what the market does.”

Georgeades said the site would be ideal for a podium build, which involves retail or a restaurant on the first floor, topped by a hotel, much like the DoubleTree Hotel in downtown Greeley.

“We’ve been in contact with two or three hotel hospitality companies, one out of state and two from Denver, that would either want to purchase or partner with us in doing a podium build,” he said.

“It’s amazing how many people come from eastern Colorado or southwestern Nebraska for medical care there,” he said. “A hotel would be a great opportunity to bring customers to the front door, and with so many employees at the hospital, having a restaurant on the first floor would allow for employees to have a little different place to eat as well as a captive audience from the hotel” to use the restaurant.

The “icing on the cake,” he said, was the dedicated water that comes with the land.

“(Water availability) is what’s holding up a lot of construction in the state,” he said. “The other part is that water is expensive. Without that you can’t do much. It will allow us to do anything on the property. Being commercial high density, the only thing that would require more water besides a hotel would be a car wash.”