Investors agree to buy HP complex in Greeley

GREELEY — A group of Northern Colorado investors has agreed to purchase the former Hewlett-Packard Co. complex in Greeley, a representative of the investor group has confirmed.
The investors are led by Bruce Deifik, a Greeley-based real estate magnate who has a track record of large-scale purchases on the Front Range.
“We have struck a deal with Hewlett-Packard,´ said Jeff Beddingfield, a Greeley attorney who represents the investment group, called Boomerang Properties LLC. “We anticipate closing in the latter part of this month.”
The HP property is located at the northeast corner of West 10th Street and 71st Avenue, just east of the Boomerang golf course. HP vacated the site in April 2003, when the company finished relocating workers to HP?s Fort Collins and Loveland facilities.
The asking price for the Greeley complex, which includes 355,000 square feet of office and industrial space along with 156 surrounding acres, was $14 million. But Beddingfield declined to release the contract price between Boomerang and HP.
HP has been courted by a series of potential buyers over the past two years, only to have deals fall through. The latest proposal to come forward was from Aims Community College, which considered taking over the property in lieu of investing in a major remodeling of its existing campus. The school opted to stay put.
“Up to this point, HP has not been willing to divide the property or divide the facility,” Beddingfield said. “Their desire is to sell everything and let the buyer determine how best to use it.”
Boomerang Properties will immediately begin work on developing a master plan for the project, which includes plans for the acreage on the north side of the property.
The main building “lends itself to be divided into quarters,” Beddingfield said.
“There?s been a lot of talk that you can?t get big blocks leased, that the best thing is to bulldoze the facility,” Beddingfield said. “It?s too fine of a facility to begin talking about any kind of changes to that place, other than demising it into large blocks.”
HP opened the Greeley facility in 1982. The company used the site for its computer printer division and has employed up to 800 people at the site. In January 2000, HP announced that it would move out, a process that concluded last year.
“I think it offers a tremendous opportunity to bring in high-profile businesses and new jobs,” Beddingfield said. “It is an amazing facility when you compare it to other facilities on the Front Range. It offers systems and technology you just don?t get in many other buildings that would be available. And it is ready to go now, as far as tenants looking for space.”
If the sale closes, it would mark the second major sale of a corporate facility in the Greeley area in less than a year. Last fall, Denver-based investor Marcel Arsenault acquired the former State Farm regional office in Evans. The State Farm building, now called TriPointe Business Center, is available for lease to office and manufacturing tenants.
Deifik, lead investor in the Boomerang Properties group, is known for finding high-profile properties at bargain rates. Among his purchases in recent years include the Denver-located 10-story Centerpoint I building for $15.9 million, and the 31-story Lincoln Center office building, also in Denver, for $26.1 million. Both acquisitions were estimated to be at half of the replacement value of each property.

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