Whole Foods says Centerra South store still on track

LOVELAND — Contrary to speculation in some social-media platforms that Whole Foods had withdrawn from the proposed Centerra South development on the east edge of Loveland, a spokesperson for the grocer says the plan remains on track.

“These reports are not accurate,” Carrie Rodgers, a corporate communications specialist at Amazon subsidiary Whole Foods Inc., said in an email to BizWest. “Whole Foods Market has not pulled out of this project.”

A statement issued by McWhinney Real Estate Services Inc., developer of the controversial project on Loveland’s eastern edge, was not quite as decisive.

“Centerra South continues to progress as planned, and we are encouraged by the enthusiastic response we have received regarding the future of retail in the area. Community engagement and tenant outreach remain robust, reflecting the strong interest in this project,” the emailed statement said.

“At this time, we are not in a position to make any formal tenant announcements. However, we can confirm that leasing is on track, and we remain excited about the positive momentum in the retail sector at Centerra South. We look forward to sharing more updates as the project advances.”

Some of the rumors may be rooted in a passage contained in a response filed July 22 in Larimer District Court to the City of Loveland’s request to dismiss a lawsuit against it over the newly elected City Council’s actions regarding Centerra South. That passage, written by Loveland-based attorney Russell Sinnett, stated that “the development lost its intended anchor tenant, and numerous other various tenants.”

In the lawsuit, eight plaintiffs including former Loveland City Council members Richard Ball, Dave Clark, John Fogle, Don Overcash and Chauncey Taylor are seeking the ouster of Mayor Jacki Marsh, Mayor Pro Tem Jon Mallo, and council members Troy Krenning, Erin Black and Laura Light-Kovacs, alleging that they violated the city charter last Nov. 21 by not calling for a public vote on its rescission of urban-renewal and financial agreements with McWhinney that had been approved in April and May 2023 for its proposed Centerra South development.

The lawsuit claims that the public vote would have been required under Ballot Issue 301, which was approved Nov. 7 with 70% of the vote, largely driven by vocal opposition to McWhinney’s Centerra South plan. That vote amended the city charter to add a section that requires any Loveland City Council action approving or modifying an urban renewal plan to be ratified by city voters.

The council, reacting to a breach-of-contract lawsuit filed by McWhinney over its rescission of the Centerra South agreements, emerged from an executive session in the wee hours of Feb. 21, reversed its decision and reinstated the agreements under the terms of a settlement that McWhinney had offered the previous day.

Reached Thursday, Sinnett would not name a specific Centerra South tenant that was “lost” because it could undermine his case if the lawsuit goes to trial. However, he told BizWest that he was just trying to illustrate “the scope of the damage” from the council’s actions.

“That is a response generally to what happened in reality to the city’s allegation that because they reversed the rescission, there was no harm, no foul,” Sinnett said. “They’re saying it fixed everything, and it didn’t. They can’t undo what they did.”

Sinnett wrote in the July 22 response that, “to save the development which had already lost an estimated $10 million because of the city’s withdrawal, the developer had to offer additional funds paid to the city: $750,000, of which $250,000 has already been paid, according to the settlement agreement, and the remainder to be paid in the future.”

One significant tenant that did pull out of Centerra South this year was the Children’s Museum of Northern Colorado. BizWest reported in April 2023 that Ryan Howard, the museum’s executive director, and his board had been in talks with McWhinney for six years and finally reached an agreement to locate the facility there. However, in May of this year, the museum’s organizers said they had changed their minds and instead decided to locate in Loveland Yards, the new name for the Outlets At Loveland on the northwest corner of Interstate 25 and U.S. Highway 34. The Yards are now owned by the Windsor-based Schuman Cos.

When McWhinney in January 2023 unveiled its preliminary development plan for Centerra South, a 148-acre project south of U.S. Highway 34 across from the existing Marketplace at Centerra, the plan included a 40,000-square-foot Whole Foods grocery store that would be located in the development’s northeast corner.

Chad McWhinney, the developer’s co-founder and chairman, told the council at the time that his company had begun working with Whole Foods for about 16 years and that, although the grocer was looking at five communities in Northern Colorado. McWhinney was able to get a lease signed. He told the council that the lease agreement was contingent upon the company meeting certain time requirements.”

In a related development Wednesday, Clark, the former city councilman who is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the city to which Sinnett filed a brief on July 22, gave the Loveland city clerk’s office petitions containing more than 2,000 signatures in an attempt to place a recall of Krenning on this fall’s general election ballot.

Clark and two co-sponsors had to gather 1,615 valid signatures from Ward 1 voters by Wednesday. That figure represents one-fourth of the votes cast in the election Krenning won last Nov. 7 as one of several newly elected council members who were far less amenable to McWhinney’s development plans than were the members ousted by Loveland voters.

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