Weld County?s ?white elephants? sit and wait

GREELEY — They?re known as ?white elephants,? a term the American Heritage College Dictionary defines as ?a rare expensive possession that is a financial burden to maintain.?
It?s also a term used in the commercial real estate industry to describe a building that is hard to sell because of its size or because it was perfectly adapted for its original purpose but difficult to adapt for any other.
In Weld County, mention ?white elephant? among real estate insiders, and the conversation turns to the former Hewlett-Packard Co. complex in west Greeley, the former State Farm headquarters in Evans, the former Kmart building on West 10th Street and the former Flextronics building in Del Camino.
The biggest of these white elephants is the 157-acre, 350,000-square-foot HP campus at 700 N. 71st Ave.
Brigida Bergkamp, an HP spokeswoman at the corporation?s Palo Alto, Calif., office, said the company is discussing a possible sale to Aims Community College but declined to say more.
?Aims has expressed interest in the property,? she said. ?Discussions are still preliminary and exploratory.?
In February, Aims president Marsi Liddell said the community college was considering buying the property to relocate its campus, now located on Greeley?s near west side. The list price for the HP campus is $14 million.
When it comes to the longest-running white elephant in Weld County, Greeley can again claim the distinction of being home to that beast.
The former Kmart building at 2829 W. 10th St. in Greeley has been an eyesore for the city for about 15 years, according to Bernie Blach, real estate broker with Realtec Commercial in Greeley. That?s when Kmart moved to its present location at 2400 W. 29th St. Blach said only part of the spacious, one-story building is occupied, with a pizza restaurant and bingo parlor occupying the eastern portion of the structure.
?There is a group actively working to redevelop the site, and there are a couple of tenants on the east side, but that?s it,? Blach said. ?It would lend itself to a couple of rental pads, but someone needs to control the entire property.?
According to Blach, one owner controls the building and another controls the lot, complicating a sale of the property.
The former State Farm headquarters in Evans has been vacant for about a year after a new State Farm campus was built in Promontory in west Greeley and employees were gradually transferred to the new facilities. The building was initially made available to the University of Northern Colorado as an extension of its campus, but UNC ultimately decided it did not want the facility.
The building was recently purchased by Broomfield-based Colorado & Santa Fe Real Estate Co., which intends to lease sections of the 238,000-square-foot building to tenants at bargain lease rates starting at $2.95 per square foot to larger tenants, said company CEO Marcel Arsenault.
Julia Crawmer, leasing agent for the building, said it?s in immaculate shape. ?It?s wired and everything,? Crawmer said. ?It?s in very good condition.? Crawmer said Colorado & Santa Fe plans to divide the building for multiple tenants but is also actively seeking a sole tenant to take it over.
Meanwhile, in Weld County?s southwest corner, in the Interstate 25 area of Del Camino, another white elephant sits and waits. The 128,422-square-foot former Flextronics headquarters and manufacturing site at 4076 Specialty Place once employed 650 but moved its operations overseas in 2002.
?It?s still available, and I?m working on a lease transaction right now,? said J.R. Bitzer of Denver-based Bitzer Real Estate Partners. ?We?ve had quite a few offers actually ? about five on it, one of them pretty close ? and when I say five offers I mean about five groups of investors presenting proposals to buy it.?

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