Greeley council to hear update on proposed ice arena, hotel, water park

GREELEY — The Greeley City Council will get an update Tuesday night on Windsor-based developer Martin Lind’s proposal to build an arena for the Colorado Eagles minor-league hockey team along with three ice sheets for youth hockey and an adjacent hotel and water park on public and private land on the west edge of the city.

“The core intent is completely intact, and we are all working as hard as we can to make it happen,” Lind told BizWest on Monday. “It’s been an amazing collaboration with architects, engineers, contractors and the city.

“The City of Greeley staff has been phenomenal,” he said. “They see the big vision, and they’re working as hard as they can to get it to the council so they can make good decisions.”

According to a note in the informational packet for Tuesday’s meeting, “the update will cover key developments since the approval of the non-binding Memorandum of Understanding in July, which initiated a feasibility study, economic impact analysis and entitlements process for the project.”

The memorandum of understanding reached between Lind’s Water Valley Co. and the city outlines a series of milestones concerning financing models and conceptual documents that need to be finalized by the end of October, Lind said, and the city’s presentation before the council on Tuesday projects substantial completion of the project’s first phase by July 2028.

According to the presentation the council will hear on Tuesday night, “the voices of Greeley residents will be central to this process. Meeting the community where they’re at will provide multiple opportunities for participation and feedback as the project moves forward through targeted meetings, presentations to stakeholder groups, one-on-one meetings/coffees with key leaders, surveys, website and social media engagement, site visits and open houses.”

According to the presentation, a community meeting will be held in October or November, including adjacent neighbors to the project and focusing on zoning issues. It said a project website would be launched in November, and initial briefings with “key influencers” would be held late this year and early in 2025.

Lind has been purchasing parcels of land in the area of U.S. Highway 34, Colorado Highway 257 and Weld County Road 17, some of which are contiguous to land purchased by the city of Greeley and would be the site of the proposed development as part of a public-private partnership with the city.

The Greeley development could also include retailers as well as mixed-income and affordable housing, all served by a transit center and multimodal hub with connections to local, intercity and national bus connections.

The proposed new arena would be able to seat 8,500 to 9,000 people for hockey and 10,000 to 12,000 for concerts, up from 5,200 and 6,800 respectively at Blue Arena, the 21-year-old facility at The Ranch Events Complex east of Loveland.

That facility, formerly known as the Budweiser Events Center, has been home since it opened to the Eagles, an American Hockey League franchise affiliated with the National Hockey League’s Colorado Avalanche.

The master plan for The Ranch called for that arena to be “repurposed” and a new arena to be built that would seat 8,000 people for hockey or 9,000 for concerts, both including suites, and have a youth-hockey training center with multiple ice sheets.

Lind’s Ranch Development Partners had responded to the county’s request tor proposals to build that new, larger arena for the team, and on Feb. 20 was informed that, pending negotiations, it had been selected as developer and operator of the new event arena and youth sports training center at the Ranch as part of a public-private partnership.

However, a document signed May 14 by Heather MacMillan, manager of Larimer County’s purchasing division, and obtained by BizWest, informed Lind that “Larimer County terminates further negotiations with your firm. Larimer County appreciates RDP’s collaboration regarding the negotiations, however, our teams were not successful in negotiating mutually agreeable terms and conditions consistent with the RFP, and the award is hereby rescinded.”

Lind’s Greeley plan envisions locating a hotel and water park across a plaza from the arena. He has envisioned that project for several years and also had proposed locating it near The Ranch.