Spirit of ’76

Brighton and the Interstate 76 corridor have emerged over the past few decades as a hotspot for both large-scale industrial facilities and retail centers that attract locals and Denver-area shoppers.

As Brighton’s Prairie Center district continues its years-long buildout, the city’s 76 Commerce Center industrial park has been fully leased. 

And as Brighton holds out hope for luring Amprius Technologies Inc. (NYSE: AMPX) and 300 jobs to the city, the nearby neighboring communities of Hudson and Lochbuie are locking horns over which town will be home to BNSF Railway Co.’s planned intermodal facility and logistics park.

Brighton’s Prairie Center is building out

If you haven’t been to Brighton in recent years, you may not recognize it. This fast-growing town is quickly becoming a retail stop for people in and out of Denver. Prairie Center, specifically, is gaining new business, including the all-important Olive Garden that residents have been asking about for the past 10 years, which has helped push the town over some thresholds for other major retail outlets to come to town.

“Prairie Center is definitely a great attraction for the city,” said Robin Martinez, economic development manager for the city.

Prairie Center, a 2,000-acre community located along Interstate 76 directly northwest of Barr Lake State Park, is planned for an ultimate buildout of 4,500 residential units and 190 acres of parks and open space, in addition to its commercial and retail center.

“We’re really in a position of hitting the market that retailers are looking for when it comes to rooftops. Location is everything,” Martinez said.

So far, the proof has been in the numbers. Total sales at the Prairie Center have increased dramatically in the last five years. Sales there have grown 33% to $248 million in 2023 from $187 million in 2019, according to figures released by Brighton’s finance director. While the five-year swing was a big one, the growth from 2022 to 2023 was relatively flat. It also grew less in 2023 than other retail centers around town. But that may change soon.

The center is gaining five new businesses: Raising Cane’s, In-N-Out Burger and Olive Garden are all under construction now. Aspen Dental and Dutch Bros Inc. (NYSE:BROS) locations are under review with city planning officials. The center is anchored by the likes of Super Target (NYSE: TGT), Home Depot (NYSE: HD), Kohl’s (NYSE: KSS), Dick’s Sporting Goods (NYSE: DKS), JC Penney, Michael’s and Pet Smart (NYSE: PETM).

“We opened Smoothie King at the end of June. About five junior anchors are coming, but they have not been named,” Martinez said. “They’ll be announced for sure by the end of this year. They’re continuing to develop new buildings. There’s plenty of growth.”

City officials recently were able to get Olive Garden to agree to come to town, though it likely doesn’t meet the resident and income thresholds the company normally seeks. Though the town only has around 43,000 residents, it gains in business because of the draw from other areas, Martinez said.

“They also look at the existing companies and how they’re performing,” Martinez said “So a lot of businesses in the Prairie Center are high-performing. Even if we are not hitting that threshold in rooftops or incomes, because we’re the first stop into Denver and the last stop as they go home, a lot of people stop in Brighton. So that brings in a lot more numbers.”

Martinez said one factor that helps bring those numbers to Prairie Center’s business is from the sporting tournaments there are in town. Brighton is a central stop for many softball and baseball tournaments, which bring in large families willing to spend at the local retail outlets.

“People fly in from out of state, they’re coming from all parts of Colorado to attend weekend-long tournaments,” Martinez said. “We stay very busy and booked on our fields throughout the seasons. It’s definitely a draw and we see an increase in our restaurants when those tournaments are going. They’re filling our hotels, eating at our restaurants and frequenting our entertainment venues outside of softball.”

Plans still on for Amprius battery factory

Brighton city officials continue to hold out confidence that Amprius Technologies of Fremont, California, will bring more than 300 jobs to town.

In May, the Brighton City Council approved extending the company’s incentives agreement to open in the former Kmart distribution center by another year. The plan is for the lithium-ion battery manufacturer to open by June 1, 2025.

“The project is still moving forward as planned,” Martinez said. “It’s bringing in a good number of well-paying jobs, and it is backfilling a building that has been vacant for several years. They are a great partner to our community.”

“You always see them at the various events the city has, or the community has,” she said. “They’re always involved. You can always find their representatives at our events.”

The company has planned to lease 775,000 square feet of the 1.3-million-square-foot property at 18875 E. Bromley Lane that used to be a Kmart Distribution Center. The company has received approval for incentives from the city of Brighton, Adams County and the Colorado Economic Development Commission.

In the incentive agreement, which City Manager Michael Martinez said was the main reason the company chose Brighton, the City Council agreed to rebate the company half of the use tax that otherwise would be collected in the redevelopment of an existing building. Use tax on the estimated $54 million project would total about $1.01 million. Half that amount, and the maximum under the deal, would be a rebate of $506,250. In addition, the city would commit to refund 100% of the property tax it would otherwise collect on the facility. In total, rebates of the two taxes would total about $929,500. The Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade previously committed $5.9 million in job-growth tax credits. 

The company would add up to 332 jobs in the city at an average pay of $69,458, with the plant operational by 2025. Its products will be used in electric vehicles, drones, and by the aerospace industry.

Amprius chose to locate in Brighton in May 2023. Along the way toward its city approval, residents fought against rezoning it, worried about the uses on site, and how it could affect their health and property values. One resident filed a lawsuit to overturn the rezoning from distribution and warehouse uses to allow for industrial, manufacturing technology, public and civic uses, commercial and wireless-communications facilities. The lawsuit was dismissed in January.

In a May 10 earnings call, Amprius officials reported that the company had made progress on the Brighton plant. “We have completed 30% of construction, design, drawings, and specifications for the facility and have taken several regulatory steps including submitting our site plan and advancing all other regulatory plans and applications for the facility,” Amprius CEO Kang Sun said.

In the call, company officials noted that they had introduced a SiCore battery, which complements SiMaxx, the company’s existing silicon nanowire platform. Officials reported that “the SiCore platform services applications that demand both high energy density and longer cycle life, offering up to 400 watt-hour per kilo and as many as 1,200 cycles at the full depth of discharge,” Sun said.

With those innovations and the market’s strong reaction, Sun said, “We have updated our plans for the Brighton facility to redesign our initial production line” to be focused on SiCore. 

“While we have long known that our products are yet to be matched at the commercial level, we are proud that the industry is taking notice as well,“  Sun said in the call. “It is clear that our recent customer expansion and the new industry recognition signals a strong start to 2024 for Amprius. We are working hard to expand our production capacity to meet our sizable demand, and we are confident in the path forward for Amprius.”

Wind turbine-maker Vestas gusts new investment into Brighton 

The American business of Danish wind turbine maker Vestas Wind Systems A/S last summer began a $40 million investment to expand and upgrade its manufacturing facilities in Windsor and Brighton, where it is building a new turbine product for the U.S. market: the V163-4.5MW, which is optimized for low to medium wind speeds.

To support the new turbine production, Vestas expects to add as many as 1,000 new workers between the plants. Many jobs at both facilities are still being advertised.

The 265,000-square-foot Brighton plant on East Crown Prince Boulevard became fully operational in 2010 and specializes in manufacturing hubs for wind turbines and nacelles, a housing unit that covers the turbine’s generator, gearbox and drivetrain. 

Vesta’s new investment is a significant turnaround from 2021, when Vestas laid off about 450 workers across its operations in Brighton and Pueblo. It has since sold its Pueblo tower manufacturing plant. 

So far this year, Vestas has received three major North American orders for the V163 turbines, two in the United States and one in Mexico. In the last two months of 2023, however, U.S. orders for the new turbine totaled 3.9 GW for 874 turbines, which all will be delivered and commissioned in the next year or more.

76 Commerce Center fully leased

When Georgia-based supply-chain company Broadrange Logistics LLC grabbed the last two buildings at 76 Commerce Center in July, the complex’s 1.7 million square feet became fully leased, with no more room to grow.

Daniel Close, a broker for CBRE, of the 155-acre site, said, “There’s no land left.”

Broadrange, which distributes solar-panel components, will take up 1.13 million square feet in September in what CBRE calls the largest speculative lease in Colorado.

“We had multiple prospects that would take all or a portion of one of the buildings,” CBRE broker Todd Witty told BizWest. “This is the only prospect that would take both. What is interesting, if you look at the entire Denver real estate market, the weakness in the market was this type of space of 500,000 square feet or more. There were six available, so the lease of these two buildings cut that by a third. It’s one of the biggest needle movers in terms of overall absorption.”

CBRE arranged the sale of the center’s first two buildings in 2022 for Mortenson Properties and Hyde Development, who remain in partnership with the new owners on those assets.

The center’s first two buildings, at 22600 and 22700 E. I-76 Frontage Road, totaled 618,480 square feet and were completed in 2018 and 2020. All the center’s buildings have Class A features throughout, in addition to fenced outside storage, trailer parking and office space.

Retail giant Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT) in 2019 signed a lease for 91,997 square feet in the first completed building on the park’s grounds, while the holding company for Denver-based logistics firm Great Plains Moving & Storage signed a lease for 81,773 square feet. Sigma Corp., a New Jersey-based producer of water industry products, also leased 58,845 square feet, and Farmers Business Network Inc., a California-based agricultural data and analytics firm, leased a 128,831-square-foot space there in 2021.

Amenities at the center include trail systems for walking and biking that are festooned with native plants and landscaping, an onsite food truck court, exercise areas including volleyball courts, and a bicycle repair station.

Lochbuie, Hudson battle over BNSF

A few miles north of Brighton along I-76, the Weld County towns of Lochbuie and Hudson have been embroiled in annexation battles over BNSF Railway Co.’s planned intermodal facility and logistics park.

The massive development, which could generate billions of dollars in economic impact, includes more than 2,400 acres that are — for now — located in unincorporated Weld County. Both communities would like to annex the development and have annexed various parcels around the project, sometimes with overlapping rights of way.

Those overlaps have led to three separate lawsuits filed by Lochbuie against Hudson, with a Weld County District Court judge ordering the towns into mediation.

BNSF, for its part, applied in May to annex its properties into Lochbuie, forgoing Hudson, where it operates a separate, 430-acre Logistics Center Hudson.

In a statement emailed to BizWest in May, a BNSF spokesperson stated, “On May 4, BNSF Railway filed Petitions for Annexation with the Town of Lochbuie to support BNSF’s plan of operating an Intermodal Facility and Logistics Park in Weld County. Lochbuie is well positioned to meet the project’s infrastructure demands and help the railroad keep pace with future customer growth.BNSF has existing operations in Hudson at its established Logistics Center and continues to invest in northern Colorado, bringing world class freight logistics that benefit the Rocky Mountain region’s economy. We look forward to a continued partnership with both Lochbuie and Hudson.”

Mediation between the two communities has been scheduled for Aug. 8.

— Christopher Wood contributed to this report.

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