Fort Collins eyes site for possible municipal building

FORT COLLINS — A pair of old buildings north of downtown Fort Collins that had been used for automotive sales and services might one day be the site of a new municipal office building.

But will it? City officials will get a better idea at a meeting scheduled for Thursday morning.

When the two buildings at 425 and 429 N. College Ave., just east of the Museum of Discovery and with 300 feet of frontage along the busy thoroughfare, went up for sale for $1.69 million earlier this year, the city’s Real Estate Services Division thought it was worth a look.

“We actually have no plan and no money, but it’s an interesting property because it’s so close to our downtown municipal campus, and great proximity to the museum there,” said Ginny Sawyer, a project manager in the Fort Collins city manager’s office who is listed as the project applicant. “So when it came on the market, we were like, ‘Oh, well, this is interesting.’ So the only way to find out what the limitations on the property are, how big of anything could go there, is to take it through conceptual review, so that’s why we’re doing that.”

She said she hopes to get answers to questions about the site such as, “What can you do and what can you not do? How much room does Poudre Fire need for a turnaround, and how much does that cut into the lot? And what environmental impacts have there been from a service station? It’s an interesting location, so what are the limitations and what are the possibilities?”

Sawyer’s application envisions a 30,000-square-foot, two- to three-story building that could house city office and meeting spaces as well as what she called an “object archive gallery.”

“We talked to the museum folks as well,” Sawyer explained, “and asked, ‘What’s your footprint 50 years out? What do you think you might need?’” She said the museum has a collection of objects such as furniture and other things people have donated to the city. “Right now they’re stored in a trolley barn, and this way the public would have more access to see them.”

The property had recently housed J M Precision Auto, but a telephone call to that business went unanswered.

Michelle Hickey-Crawford of Re/Max Commercial Alliance is the real estate agent listing the property, and both buildings, built in 1946 and 1958, are being sold as a set.  One is a 2,927-square-foot structure on a 9,026-square-foot parcel, and there other is 1,092 square feet on a 7,405-square-foot tract. The entire parcel is within the scope of Fort Collins’ Downtown Development Authority, in the North Mason Downtown District, and within an Enterprise Zone.

What the city decides it could do with the parcel might not even be an office building, Sawyer said. “We’re trying to get a handle on whether that’s parking, storage, office space, just trying to look across the board at all these things,” she said.

The concept will be presented to the city’s development review staff in a 45-minute Zoom meeting beginning at 10 a.m. Thursday.

“Out of that we’ll get a finalized comment letter,” Sawyer said. “Out of that, we’ll get a finalized comment letter.

“We’re a long way from taking any action,” she said. “We’d hate to miss an opportunity, but we don’t want to overreact in case it’s actually not a good opportunity. We actually have no plan, but conceptual review is free, so let’s find out.”

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