Loft Development in Northern Colorado

Loft-style Developments Infiltrate Northern Colorado Communities

Infill developments and redevelopments featuring loft-style residences over businesses are breathing new life into Northern Colorado communities’ downtowns.

And similar units are providing the “live” element for the live-work-play scenario offered in proposed new developments, as well.

In the last four years, the inventory of loft-style residences has grown to nearly 800 units throughout Fort Collins, Loveland and Greeley.

Eric Nichols, a broker with Realtec Commercial Real Estate Services in Fort Collins who has been involved in three downtown loft projects, said the demand for loft-style dwellings is primarily coming from baby boomers retiring or planning to retire soon. They are buying lofts as their second homes or making them their primary homes and getting rid of the bigger homes they had built for their children and pets.

“They want to lock the door and disappear for a few months, especially in the winter time,” he said.

Many loft dwellers want to live where the “intellectual energy” and strong cultural environment are concentrated – which is near Colorado State University, performing arts venues and other amenities in or coming to downtown Fort Collins, Nichols said.

“With that type of a venue, you walk out your front door and down the street, you have dinner at one of many venues, go to a performance and have cocktails afterward” without ever needing a car, he said.

The boomers are the target market developer McWhinney expects to attract to its Grand Station development within Centerra at I-25 and U.S. 34 in Loveland, said Chris LaPlante, vice president of mixed-use development for McWhinney.

“We’ve got a lot of interest from folks in that profile,” he said.

Though both LaPlante and Nichols said they expect the loft-style residences to appeal to young professionals of the “Y” generation, Nichols said that market has yet to show much of an interest in them. With prices ranging from $250,000 to more than $1.5 million, with the majority going for $400,000 to $650,000, that generation may have yet to find secure employment since the downsizing within the high-tech industry, he said. Yet he expects a more even split of the market between boomers and Gen Y over the next decade.

Mike Jensen, broker/owner of Fort Collins Real Estate who lists 170 of Fort Collins’ loft units, said he is seeing interest from folks from every stage and walk of life, from undergraduates and graduates who purchase lofts with their parents, young professionals and young families to single people in their 40s and retirement-bound baby boomers. He said lofts he lists are selling for between $275,000 and $450,000, with the most activity in the $300,000 to $350,000 range.

“There’s this trend of people moving back into the urban city centers for a lifestyle,” he said.

During a recent shopping center conference, Jensen said he learned that in 1990, about 72 percent of the nation’s population was living outside of urban centers, or a 1-mile radius of downtowns, but in 2010, more than 50 percent of the population will live within that radius.

“That’s millions and millions of people,” he said. “Lofts and infill development projects are really the wave of the future.”

By RE/MAX of Boulder, Inc.