Northern overexposure

Houses, shops and factories springing up on land once occupied by barns and beet fields

Roger Fillion, Rocky Mountain News

Published May 26, 2007 at midnight

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WINDSOR - Janice Glines can track this town's explosive growth and the transformation of northern Colorado's farm landscape by eyeballing what customers buy at her half-century-old Manweiler Hardware.

Corn and sugar beet farmers trekked in the door during the 1950s and 1960s to buy irrigation piping, plowing equipment and other gear.

Now, workers at nearby businesses come in to scoop up different goods: paint, plumbing equipment, electrical supplies and the like.

"We've gone more to home improvement and things the homeowners use," said the 59-year-old Glines, whose grandfather founded the store on Main Street in the 1940s.

Windsor was a burg of some 1,200 when Glines was a youngster delivering advertising fliers house to house.

Today, it boasts about 17,000 residents, not to mention a swank eatery near the hardware where diners can savor seared foie gras with a $400 bottle of Bordeaux.

It's a population surge that reflects what's happening across northern Colorado, changes that are stoking joy about jobs and wealth, and concern about sprawl.

"There are just houses all over the place, and we don't know people as well as we used to," Glines said.

From Loveland and Johnstown up to Windsor and Fort Collins, building projects are springing up like mushrooms after a heavy rain.

Hundreds of acres of vacant land and farmland are getting bulldozed to create vast retail developments and factories that make beer bottles and ethanol. Homes are popping up on land that barns and sugar beet fields once occupied.

Construction workers recently broke ground here for a $60 million windmill blade factory for a Danish company that is the world's No. 1 maker of wind turbines, Vestas Wind Systems.

The activity, for now, shows few signs of slowing.

Developers are poring over plans to build more retail, office, residential and light industrial projects up and down the Interstate 25 corridor, from Loveland to Fort Collins.

Looking ahead, investors and developers are snapping up additional parcels of vacant land, betting the acreage will make for prime building sites.

It's growth that's creating jobs and putting money in local government coffers.

It's also growth that's fanning worries the region may be headed toward sprawl, traffic and a glut of retail businesses.

"A lot of land deals are going on with projects of expansion," said Maury Dobbie, CEO of the Northern Colorado Economic Development Corp. "I see this as more households becoming economically sound."

But others don't see it that way.

Elise Jones, executive director of Colorado Environmental Coalition, dubbed the corridor "a poster child for sprawl."

"The northern I-25 corridor is perhaps Colorado's best example of unplanned growth," she said.

A drive up I-25 from Denver underscores the area's flurry of development. Farms and livestock still occupy tracts. But that's giving way to new projects.

At Loveland, for example, motorists can exit to the east side of I-25 and visit the new "lifestyle center" called The Promenade Shops at Centerra. It opened in October 2005.

Featuring a movie theater and more than 60 shops and restaurants, the development covers 86 acres and encompasses some 700,000 square feet of building space.

Walking along sidewalks there on a recent day, a visitor hears jazz drifting up from green Bose Corp.-made speakers set in the ground. Red and yellow tulips and wild grasses sprout from landscaped beds. Water spills over a fountain.

It's one of four big projects that McWhinney, a Loveland developer, has drawn up for Loveland, near I-25.

Together, the four Centerra projects - ranging from an auto dealership "motorplex" to mixed-use development - are slated to expand across nearly 300 acres.

"We're about 20 percent, maybe a little less, done," said Rocky Scott, president of McWhinney's Centerra unit.

Too much shopping?

The Centerra projects aren't the only big development slated for the area.

On the other side of U.S. 34, south of the Promenade Shops and within Johnstown's city limit, sits 2534.

Slated to cover nearly 600 acres, the project will feature retail shops, homes and offices. A Bank of Colorado recently opened its doors at 2534, named for the intersection of I-25 and U.S. 34.

It's another venue that will give shoppers along the northern I-25 corridor more opportunities to open their wallets and support the local economy.

But will such projects create a retail glut?

"The jury is still out on that," said Todd Williams, manager of Loveland-based Thompson Ranch Development Co., one of the 2534 landowners.

Martin Shields, a regional economist at Colorado State University, put it this way: "We see continued announcements of projects. But we're a little concerned about saturation."

While there are signs that Fort Collins' aging Foothills Mall has lost traffic to newer retail outlets in Loveland, established retail businesses in Loveland don't appear worried about the nearby growth.

Jeanette Job, who operates PCs & Parts, a computer store at the Orchard Shopping Center in Loveland, said: "Either it's going to have no impact. Or it's going to be beneficial because of all the people moving in."

Referring to the Promenade Shops at Centerra on the other side of I-25, Job added, "The only competition I have over there is Best Buy" - the big electronics retailer.

About 15 minutes up the road from Loveland, former Windsor Mayor Wayne Miller has occupied a front-row seat to the region's changes.

Standing outside his Windsor home, Miller pointed to a much smaller wooden house on the other side of a fence, behind his residence.

"I moved into that house in 1954," said the 79-year-old Miller, a retired veterinarian.

"None of these houses were here," he added, referring to the surrounding homes, including his current abode.

"This was all open space," he added, noting he once enjoyed a "beautiful" mountain view. But he can't see Longs Peak and other mountains to the west anymore from his property.

"They screwed it all up," Miller half-joked.

Kodak saved the day

A farm that grew sugar beets, corn and alfalfa was located in front of where his present home sits.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, the biggest business in Windsor was Great Western Sugar Co., which operated a sugar beet processing plant.

The plant was shuttered in 1968 with the decline in sugar beet farming. A pickle plant also closed.

But a milestone occurred in the late 1960s when Eastman Kodak Co. executives unveiled plans at Denver's Brown Palace Hotel to open a large factory in Windsor.

Construction workers began work on the film- and paper-manufacturing plant in 1969.

It would employ as many as 3,600.

"When Kodak came to town, it got us started," said Miller, who served 24 years as mayor.

While Kodak has since cut back its Windsor work force and operations significantly, other companies have moved in to open key facilities.

Recent businesses include a high-tech Owens-Illinois Inc. plant, which employs 210 and churns out beer bottles for the Anheuser-Busch brewery in Fort Collins, and Front Range Energy's ethanol plant, which employs 20 and produces 40 million gallons a year of ethanol.

"It has benefited the area because of employment, taxes, and money for schools," Miller said.

Like Vestas Wind Systems' new factory, the bottle and ethanol plants are among the tenants situated in the Great Western Industrial Park, a 700-acre development in eastern Windsor owned by Denver-based Broe Cos.

Broe, through its Great Western Development unit, has accumulated a total of 1,543 acres in Windsor, including the industrial park.

The 1,543 acres are expected to house 8.2 million square feet of industrial space, 1.4 million square feet of retail and offices, and 2,000 housing units.

A 2005 University of Northern Colorado study, commissioned by Broe, estimates the development will deliver a $6 billion economic impact to Colorado over the ensuing decade and create more than 2,000 jobs.

It's that kind of growth that worries Roger Hoffmann, a Loveland consultant who works with area groups on land use and transportation planning.

"My biggest concern is that a sound planning and development process is compromised by shortsighted goals, with congestion-promoting sprawl the result," Hoffmann said.

He said "rapid" development is occurring "even as regional leaders struggle" over how to bankroll future transport projects - such as roads or mass transit - that would serve the growing population.

He noted that area officials estimate the region needs roughly $4.5 billion worth of such projects.

"But projected government revenue for such projects is about a fifth of that or less," added Hoffmann, a member of a committee considering development of a rural transportation authority.

Such a quasi-governmental body could raise money to fund transport schemes.

Wayne Miller, the former Windsor mayor, isn't too worried, however. He's among those who are philosophical about the potential for traffic congestion that additional growth may bring.

"You take a little bit of that stuff with the good," he said.

fillionr@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2467

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