Grown-up Greeley

GREELEY — There’s an old saying in the economic development game in Northern Colorado: drive east until you can afford it.

For Greeley, a historically and culturally significant city in the old West for more than a century, movement has been in the opposite direction.

Families moved to the Greeley area in wagons hoping to build their farms and live life free of the modern-day evils of liquor and gambling endemic in much of the rest of the West. Greeley is now on the precipice of becoming a sprawling metropolitan area whose population is expected to more than triple in the coming decades and a place where people come for the reduced housing prices.

“We always say that the Front Range economy has always moved west to east in a drive-‘til-you-can-buy flow,” said Rich Werner, president and CEO of Upstate Colorado Economic Development. “However, Greeley has been really expanding west once they opened up opportunities for developers through financial vehicles like metro districts. They’ve been more proactive in offering an alternative to the high prices we see further west.”

While it took almost a century for Greeley to stretch seven miles to 59th Avenue, the eight-mile stretch west from 59th Avenue to Weld County Road 17 may fill up within 20 years.

“It’s too early to tell, but as we look to the future, I don’t see a lot of community separation,” said Greeley Mayor John Gates, discussing growth to the west. “There are plans for virtually every ounce of that.”

By every ounce, he’s hardly exaggerating. Developers have flooded Greeley’s planning department in recent years, laying out their plans to fill some much-needed gaps in the northern Colorado housing market, where prices west of Interstate 25 have priced many out of the market.

Several subdivisions in and around the U.S. Highway 34 corridor will bring roughly 15,500 residential units to Greeley in the next decade, in addition to commercial uses filling up any available pocket left over.

“That’s just a huge corridor,” said Larry Buckendorf, CEO of Journey Homes LLC, which is developing the Union Colony West subdivision at 83rd Avenue and 10th Street. “There’s an incredible amount of traffic, but it’s just a natural progression of how Greeley has grown where the available land is. It’s tough to develop on the east side of Greeley, it’s hard to develop the north because of the river, and the south, you run into Evans.”

West of Delantero, a major subdivision planned at the southwest corner of U.S. 34 and Colorado Highway 257, the Roche family has planned its own commercial development called Uptown just south of U.S. Highway 34. AJ Roche said development there is just a natural progression.

“Obviously, all the land in Greeley is to the west and that’s where everything is going, and we’re doing our best to secure another large retail center, a sales tax-generating” property, he said.

Just to the north of Uptown and Delantero, Windsor-based developer Martin Lind has grand plans with hundreds of acres planned as a new entertainment district, which could be the home of the Colorado Eagles minor league hockey team, with a new arena, hotels and a water park. To the northeast of that, the City of Greeley is planning a 978-acre natural area called Arroyos del Sol, complete with hiking and biking trails that will eventually connect to the Poudre Trail in Windsor, which already extends south to U.S. 34 along Weld County Road 17 with car dealerships and a manufacturing facility.

Greeley’s 10th Street west to Colorado Highway 257 will look like its own city with shiny new streetlights, restaurants, retail outlets and mixed-use subdivisions on both sides of the highway. There’s West Greeley Commons Two Rivers Marketplace, Union Colony West, The Cache, Lake Bluff, and Poudre Heights subdivisions, all stacked from 83rd Avenue to U.S. 257.

“The reason west Greeley is growing so strong is we have the room,” Gates said. “But there is also growth potential in east Greeley. We have a grandiose plan in concert with our airport, which could be dynamic, and we hope to have some industrial on east Eighth Street.”

In east Greeley, the city is partnering with Weld County on a 20-year vision to overhaul the Greeley-Weld County Airport into a Northern Colorado alternative to Denver International Airport, complete with easy transportation from Interstate 76.

The Richardson Family, which has been infusing millions into refurbishing Greeley’s 8th Avenue corridor has backed Greeley’s downtown hotel, still has its Wake Recreation District on the books to redevelop an older, empty part of downtown and east Greeley into a recreational park with mountain bike and ATV trails, courts for basketball, pickleball, volleyball and tennis, as well as open space in the vein of Central Park in New York City.

Greeley city manager Raymond Lee and city leaders are examining the idea of a complete revamp of downtown Greely offices into a new city center, which could mean razing the round City Hall building, and starting from scratch. Cost will be an obstacle, and decisions on moving forward haven’t yet been made.

What makes all this possible, of course, is Greeley’s abundance of water. Water prices have been helping drive up home prices in other areas for years. While that has held true in Greeley, too, the city has a better cushion with more than 100 years of planning and developing high mountain water storage, as well as the new Terry Ranch aquifer near the Wyoming border. With that, Greeley secured enough water to handle a community of 400,000, Lee said.

“We’re going to be known as one of the best places to live in America when all is said and done,” Lee said. “I would say get your popcorn ready. This will be an exciting time, a pivotal time. You can pinpoint where things change. One of those pinpoints for the community today as we look at how we support innovation, future-proofing our infrastructure, bridging the gap of housing solutions, and housing across the spectrum, and how we’re creating a regional destination.

“When you look at Greeley as a whole, this is a world-class city where people feel safe and secure, where they can raise a family and be prosperous.”

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Sharon Dunn

Sharon Dunn is an award-winning journalist covering business, banking, real estate, energy, local government and crime in Northern Colorado since 1994. She began her journalism career in Alaska after graduating Metropolitan State College in Denver in 1992. She found her way back to Colorado, where she worked at the Greeley Tribune for 25 years. She has a master's degree in communications management from the University of Denver. She is married and has one grown daughter — and a beloved English pointer at her side while she writes. When not writing, you may find her enjoying embroidery and crochet projects, watching football, or kayaking and birdwatching on a high-mountain lake.