This is Johnstown: Blink twice, and believe what you see

JOHNSTOWN — It won’t be long. In fact, it may have already happened a couple of times. Driving through your favorite little old town — which is not so little anymore — you may wonder, “Where are we?”

Did you blink and miss it? Where’s the Johnstown that I remember?

As you drive north on Interstate 25 from Longmont, the once purely pastoral scenes now give way to earthwork and construction. Crews work to fill the gaps between U.S. Highway 34 and Colorado Highway 56, which in a very short few years, will light up with commercial and residential all along I-25. Commercial centers, golf clubs, housing, more housing, or a massive apartment complex appear suddenly over that one hill, making you second guess your memory of the area.

“In a matter of two to four years, the general public is going to be shocked by the community that seemingly comes up out of nowhere,” said Ryan Schaefer, CEO of Fort Collins-based brokerage NAI Affinity and Affinity Partners LLC., which is brokering much of the land around Johnstown.

This once tiny farm town is not so tiny, as you may have already seen. Construction lines both sides of the interstate. The town’s once tiny population — 3,827 20 years ago — ballooned to 19,511 in 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, with projections topping 22,000 by 2027.

Johnstown’s long-term path of growth can be traced back to the development of the 2534 site. Then Scheels ushered in the boom of Johnstown Plaza, drawing interest from billionaire owners of major sports teams, Schaefer said. 

“The Pohlad family that owns the Minnesota Twins invested in hundreds of thousands of square feet of industrial space for Swire Coca Cola, and US Auto Force and Trade@34, and the Spanos family — which owns the Los Angeles Chargers — developed Gateway Apartments,” he said.

“So you had these large billionaires committing to projects about the time that Scheels was coming in,” Schaefer said. “That level of sophisticated money coming into a relatively small town validated what a lot of us believed at the time that I-25 and U.S. 34 was becoming the center of Northern Colorado.”

CaliberCos. Inc., an Arizona-based developer, got into the game about five years ago. The company began buying distressed property and now controls about 800 acres that will become a master-planned community with the potential to transform Colorado Highway 402 corridor like Scheels and 2534 did to the north.

“What was different about Caliber was we don’t see a lot of master- planned community developers from outside of the region,” Schaefer said. “But traditionally, master-planned communities were from local developers, like McWhinney and Martin Lind. So it was new to me that we were having someone come from outside, and it was a sign of maturation and growth.”

Now, Caliber is not only developing The Ridge at 402,  they’ve also got acreage at the far northern end of town for the company’s Encore project, a 453-acre parcel that’s expected to eventually include homes, commercial space and new Catholic high school.

Add that to the many infill projects in between, such as the looming Ledge Rock development east of the interstate from Buc-ee’s travel center on Colorado Highway 60 and I-25. It will include an 85,000-square-foot grocery called Woods Supermarket — set to open in early 2025 — and enough shops and services to eventually become a day-trip destination. Rural shopaholics, rejoice!

Go a little further south to Colorado Highway 56, and by next summer, you’ll see Bella Ridge Golf Club, developed by the Podtburg family, who moved their longtime dairy farm to open a 100-acre, 18-hole course. The Podtburgs have another 200+ acres nearby that will eventually become residential and commercial development.

Don’t even think about counting how many homes this town will soon see. With multiple developers from Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Texas, it will be a lot, enough to give its average fast-growing population growth rate a whirl.

“There’s going to be significant impacts for the community,” Johnstown’s economic development director Sara Crosthwaite said. “When it comes to not only their fiscal investment, such as purchasing land, they’re creating new property tax revenue for us, there’s new sales tax revenue, but also what you can’t quantify is their investment in our community that puts Johnstown on the map as an appealing place to develop and live.”

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