By Molly Armbrister
Northern Colorado Business Report
FORT COLLINS - A panel of commercial real estate professionals expressed slowly-returning confidence in the Northern Colorado market Wednesday.
Specific segments of the market are definitely beginning to pick up speed, including office space, according to Josh Guernsey, a partner at Brinkman Partners.
"The office market took a pretty solid hit," Guernsey said, but office real estate, particularly Class A space, is making a comeback. Class B and C are also improving, but not at the same rate, Guernsey said.
Guernsey was joined on the panel - hosted by the Everitt Real Estate Center - by Russell Baker, a vice president at Cassidy Turley Fuller Real Estate; Mike Hill, vice president of multi-family development operations, McWhinney, and Nathan Klein, partner and broker associate at Loveland Commercial. The panel was moderated by Steve Stansfield, president of Realtec Commercial.
Loveland office space has not seen the same improvements as Fort Collins, according to Klein, because Loveland has less Class A space to offer.
Retail is another segment that is seeing improvement, and Northern Colorado is on the radar for a number of national retailers, said Guernsey, whose company manages Front Range Village in Fort Collins. The shopping center is at 92 percent occupancy, Guernsey said.
The multi-family market continues to serve as a strong presence in the market, according to Hill, whose company was not involved at all in the mulit-family market four years ago and is now a major player.
McWhinney's customers tend to be more educated when they begin looking for a place to live, have done their research and are ready to negotiate, Hill said. Many of those McWhinney serves are also "rent by choice" customers who could afford to buy but choose to rent for a variety of reasons.
Conventional loans for commercial real estate are still hard to come by, according to Baker, who said that most of his customers are building with cash. Baker estimated that it could be another one or two years before local banks begin financing projects again, but that some national banks have begun making their way slowly back into the commercial realm.
Showing posts with label McWhinney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label McWhinney. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Monday, August 22, 2011
Loveland's ACE developer cuts bait
United exits negotiations for Agilent campus
By Tom Hacker For The Times-Call
LOVELAND -- Plans for the Aerospace Clean Energy Manufacturing and Innovation Park (ACE) remain on track despite Monday's exit of the lead developer, city officials and project backers say. Minneapolis-based United Properties, which partnered on the ACE project with the Colorado Association for Manufacturing and Technology (CAMT), abruptly ended its negotiations with the city to buy the Agilent Technologies Inc. campus where the technology manufacturing park is taking shape.
The Agilent Technologies Inc. campus in Loveland, pictured in an aerial view on Jan. 21, emerged on April 5 as the choice for the Aerospace Clean Energy Manufacturing and Innovation Park. Monday, United Properties of Minneapolis pulled out of the project, saying it could not close the deal under the current lending environment and under tight deadlines. ( RICHARD M. HACKETT )
"It is going to go forward, and it's going to explode," CAMT chief executive Elaine Thorndike said following the United Properties announcement. "The things that are crucial -- the interest from companies and our own initiatives -- are going better than we ever could have imagined," she said. "There are so many exciting things going on that we're not discouraged by this."
Thorndike and Loveland officials said within hours of the United Properties announcement that they had scheduled meetings with other developers -- including Northern Colorado companies McWhinney, Loveland Commercial, and Neenan Co. -- to fill the void left by the Minneapolis company.
7,000 potential jobs
Thorndike also said her agency, along with NASA and the Golden-based National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), are in talks with scores of manufacturing companies that are interested in locating at the ACE park.
Project organizers say they plan to have as many as 100 companies, employing up to 7,000 people, engaged in turning NASA and NREL technology patents into products, getting them to market on a fast-track schedule.
United Properties president Frank Dutke said Monday that interest from large, national companies was insufficient to continue with the project. "It has always been our view that this not be a speculative project, and that there be users identified before we begin the redevelopment there," Dutke said. "We believe that in order to finance a multistory, multitenant industrial project that there must be at least some national companies on the rent roll."
CAMT and United Properties announced their partnership, and Loveland's choice as the ACE location, on June 21. United Properties then entered into an exclusive, 60-day negotiating process with the city to buy the 812,000 square feet of buildings and 130 acres of developable land at Agilent.
'Very good tenants'
City Manager Bill Cahill said he thought the decision by United Properties to pull out of the project was driven by the company's business plan. "I think UP had a business model that called for a certain proportion of the buildings to be filled by credit tenants by a certain date," Cahill said.
"A lot of the companies that have expressed interest in the project are very good tenants but do not fill the credit-tenant requirements." Credit tenants, in commercial real estate parlance, are large, national companies whose resources guarantee fulfillment of long-term leases, and whose presence would help secure favorable project finance terms.
City and CAMT officials will meet this week with four developers that Loveland officials had earlier identified as top prospects for the job of developing the ACE project. McWhinney, Loveland Commercial LLC and Fort Collins-based Neenan Co. all responded to the city's request for proposals on the project in February. The fourth is Richmond, Calif.-based Orton Development Inc.
Discussions with developer prospects likely will be the topic of a special closed-door meeting of the Loveland City Council that will convene tonight.
By Tom Hacker For The Times-Call
LOVELAND -- Plans for the Aerospace Clean Energy Manufacturing and Innovation Park (ACE) remain on track despite Monday's exit of the lead developer, city officials and project backers say. Minneapolis-based United Properties, which partnered on the ACE project with the Colorado Association for Manufacturing and Technology (CAMT), abruptly ended its negotiations with the city to buy the Agilent Technologies Inc. campus where the technology manufacturing park is taking shape.
"It is going to go forward, and it's going to explode," CAMT chief executive Elaine Thorndike said following the United Properties announcement. "The things that are crucial -- the interest from companies and our own initiatives -- are going better than we ever could have imagined," she said. "There are so many exciting things going on that we're not discouraged by this."
Thorndike and Loveland officials said within hours of the United Properties announcement that they had scheduled meetings with other developers -- including Northern Colorado companies McWhinney, Loveland Commercial, and Neenan Co. -- to fill the void left by the Minneapolis company.
7,000 potential jobs
Thorndike also said her agency, along with NASA and the Golden-based National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), are in talks with scores of manufacturing companies that are interested in locating at the ACE park.
Project organizers say they plan to have as many as 100 companies, employing up to 7,000 people, engaged in turning NASA and NREL technology patents into products, getting them to market on a fast-track schedule.
United Properties president Frank Dutke said Monday that interest from large, national companies was insufficient to continue with the project. "It has always been our view that this not be a speculative project, and that there be users identified before we begin the redevelopment there," Dutke said. "We believe that in order to finance a multistory, multitenant industrial project that there must be at least some national companies on the rent roll."
CAMT and United Properties announced their partnership, and Loveland's choice as the ACE location, on June 21. United Properties then entered into an exclusive, 60-day negotiating process with the city to buy the 812,000 square feet of buildings and 130 acres of developable land at Agilent.
'Very good tenants'
City Manager Bill Cahill said he thought the decision by United Properties to pull out of the project was driven by the company's business plan. "I think UP had a business model that called for a certain proportion of the buildings to be filled by credit tenants by a certain date," Cahill said.
"A lot of the companies that have expressed interest in the project are very good tenants but do not fill the credit-tenant requirements." Credit tenants, in commercial real estate parlance, are large, national companies whose resources guarantee fulfillment of long-term leases, and whose presence would help secure favorable project finance terms.
City and CAMT officials will meet this week with four developers that Loveland officials had earlier identified as top prospects for the job of developing the ACE project. McWhinney, Loveland Commercial LLC and Fort Collins-based Neenan Co. all responded to the city's request for proposals on the project in February. The fourth is Richmond, Calif.-based Orton Development Inc.
Discussions with developer prospects likely will be the topic of a special closed-door meeting of the Loveland City Council that will convene tonight.
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