Loveland City Council Will Focus on Downtown Loveland

Key downtown development projects appear on councilors' menu Tuesday
By Tom Hacker, Reporter Herald

Loveland city councilors will be asked, twice, to set the table for downtown revitalization projects.
First, they'll hear a recommendation from planners to expand a taxing district set up for the Lincoln Place project to include a planned five-story, 70,000-square-foot mixed-use building on the southwest corner of Sixth Street and Lincoln Avenue.

Then, they will get a request to remove a development roadblock by buying the contaminated site that housed a dry-cleaning business at Third Street and Lincoln Avenue.

Those two actions, planners say, would unlock the potential for developers to breathe more life into Loveland's downtown district, and ignite further redevelopment in the city's core.

"These two, together, are really key pieces in the downtown redevelopment plan," Loveland senior planner Mike Scholl said.

The Sixth-and-Lincoln project proposed by Fort Collins-based Brinkman Partners would put 72 rental apartments, plus several combined live-work spaces, on the downtown market.

A groundbreaking planned for early next year will depend on some creative financial strategies, including the expansion of an urban renewal authority established eight years ago to generate revenue from the full-block Lincoln Place project.

That will require a "blight" study by city planners to demonstrate the area meets requirements established by state law for the creation of a URA.

"The URA law was specifically designed for just this kind of project," Mayor Cecil Gutierrez said Monday.
Under the URA, a portion of taxes generated by the added value of a project are returned to the developer as an incentive for building -- a so-called tax increment financing tool.

The URA contributions to the developers of Lincoln Place, amounting to about $150,000 annually, expire in two years and could then be directed to Brinkman in time for the project's opening in spring 2013.
Councilors in June asked the planning staff to provide specifics on the proposed URA change for the $12 million Brinkman project that would take shape on the quarter-block occupied by the former Home State Bank branch.

"I saw pretty good support for this at that time," Gutierrez said. "It looks to most of us that it's a project that will move things forward downtown."

Downtown planners also want to add the Leslie the Cleaner to an assemblage of city-owned real estate on Third Street, opening doors for redevelopment of the decaying downtown neighborhood.

"A site like that, if it's not cleaned up, will really put a drag on downtown," senior planner Mike Scholl said.
Costs of purchase, cleanup and demolition of the site will total $555,800, but a $313,000 grant from the Colorado Department of Health and Environment will account for more than half that amount.

"The dry cleaner is really the final piece of the Third Street project that we're looking at," Scholl said. "The $313,000 in grant funds is a huge bonus for us."

Posted by Loveland Commercial