September 21-October 4, 2016 —
COLORADO REAL ESTATE JOURNAL
— Page 17
Larimer & Weld Counties
by Jill Jamieson-Nichols
With large, rail-served indus-
trial sites increasingly hard to
find, Great Western Industrial
Park in Windsor is looking to
attract more big users – and jobs
– to Northern Colorado.
Home to companies including
Vestas, Carestream Health, Hal-
liburton, Front Range Energy,
Schlumberger and others, the
3,000-acre park is able to offer
something few industrial parks
can: sites from 2 to 200 acres
with rail service to both Union
Pacific and BNSF railroads. Its
affiliation with OmniTRAX,
one of the country’s largest rail-
roads, also enables it to assist
companies through the entire
real estate development, trans-
portation and logistics process.
Great Western Industrial Park
and OmniTRAX, both owned by
the Broe Group, recently teamed
up with Newmark Grubb
Knight Frank to market the park
regionally and nationally.
“With the industrial renais-
sance happening in the U.S.,
we are seeing an increase in
companies that need to move
large quantities of their prod-
ucts far distances, and rail has
always been the effective way
to do that,” said Tony Manos,
senior vice president of industri-
al development for OmniTRAX
Inc.
“It’s getting extremely difficult
to find rail-service properties
like the sites at the Great West-
ern Industrial Park,” said Mike
Wafer, NGKF executive manag-
ing director. “Our hope is that
by working together, we can fill
the park with more manufactur-
ing and distribution businesses
that have been providing eco-
nomic and job growth through-
out the region.”
Equidistant from Interstates 80
and 70, the park is just east of
I-25 and approximately 40 miles
from the metro area. “With two
Class 1 railroads, it offers a lot of
different distribution avenues,”
Wafer commented.
Just under 2,000 people cur-
rently work for companies
within Great Western Industrial
Park, which is located within
Weld County’s enterprise zone
and is a designated foreign trade
zone. The park also is within the
town of Windsor, which offers a
fast-track system for commercial
development.
According to Tim D’Angelo,
NGKF senior managing direc-
tor, some sites that advertise rail
service aren’t necessarily engi-
neered to make service read-
ily available. At Great Western,
“When these rail users drill
down, they have a rail-ready
site,” he said.
“Having the rail component
can be really complicated and
intimidating for users of the rail,
and also the brokerage commu-
nity,” Wafer added. “Our goal
is to help make the users more
comfortable and educate them
on the benefits of our park and
having everything under one
roof.”
Something that sets Great
Western Industrial Park apart is,
“Rail made easy is a big part of
our mission,” said Erik Halver-
son, OmniTRAX director of land
development and acquisitions.
“We deal with folks who are
going to be coming in and build-
ing a new facility who are excep-
tional in the industries they’re
in, but they may need a con-
nection between the real estate
side and the railroad. Our opera-
tion gets involved from the very
beginning of the conversation.
We work with their logistics pro-
fessional to make sure they have
the perfect solution.”
While the vast majority of
companies within Great West-
ern are rail users, the park also
has land available for those who
don’t require rail. There also
may be companies that haven’t
considered rail and would ben-
efit from it, in which case, “We
want to break the ice and at least
help them determine if it is or is
not an option,” Halverson said.
The park can do land sales, land
leases and build-to-suits.
Land prices start at $2.95 per
square foot. “It could be two or
three times higher in the Denver
metro area, so we think there is
a real value proposition here,”
said Wafer.
According to Halverson, Great
Western has experienced interest
from companies new to the park
as well as significant “organic”
growth from companies like
Vestas, which has gone from 700
to more than 1,000 employees.
s
An aerial view of Great Western Industrial Park
demand – there has been an
increase in the number of buyers
that are seeking student housing
– and Fort Collins was histori-
cally underserved as far as stu-
dent housing, so we had proper-
ties that were built by merchant
developers with the intent of
selling them,” said Stack.
The 220-unit State on Campus,
formerly The Summit on Col-
lege, and The Grove, a 281-unit
property, also changed hands
this year.
Carriage House, located at
1171 Springfield Drive, consists
of one-bedroom, one-bath; two-
bedroom, two-bath; and three-
bedroom, three-bath units with
full-size washers and dryers,
oversized windows, Energy
Star appliances and a Craftsman
design featuring timber accents,
and rough-sawn posts and win-
dow headers. Some units have
front porches and front doors
accessible from the sidewalk,
and most have private outdoor
balconies or patios. There also
is a private, outdoor courtyard
with a barbecue grill and built-
in stone picnic tables.
Pura Vida, completed in 2012
at 518 W. Laurel St., offers simi-
lar unit sizes and amenities. It
includes two private, outdoor
courtyards, also with a barbecue
grill and built-in picnic tables,
along with two common area
study rooms, and community
and club rooms with large-
screen televisions, built-in seat-
ing, a foosball table and com-
munity library.
The communities maintain
high occupancy and were 100
percent leased at the time of the
sale, Bailey said.
s
The longtime lumberyard has
been vacant for many years. The
site comprises two parcels of 4.78
and 0.9 acres, along with 23,748-
and 3,902-sf buildings. Railroad
tracks split the two parcels, and
little value was attributed to the
smaller parcel, said Patyk.
“I think Dealin’ Doug is going
to be able to use it for storage
of vehicles, which is perfect
for him,” he
said.
Mo re l and
plans to reno-
vate the large
building on
site andmove
the
Jeep
d e a l e r s h i p
that’s part
of Fort Col-
lins Dodge
Chrysler Jeep to the property,
according to Craig C. Hau, a
commercial broker with The
Group Inc. Real Estate who rep-
resented Moreland in the deal.
It’s one of the last locations on
Harmony Road where zoning
allows car dealerships. Most
prospective buyers were inter-
ested in the property’s retail
and multifamily potential,
according to Patyk.
Patyk represented the seller
with CBRE’s Marty Roth, Eric
Roth and Tyler Carner.
Moreland has been making
headlines inNorthern Colorado
recently with his decision to sell
113 acres along Interstate 25 in
Windsor rather than continue
to seek approvals for car deal-
erships he wanted to develop
there. Windsor and Fort Col-
lins have an intergovernmental
agreement covering uses in the
area around the Highway 392
intersection, and those don’t
include auto dealerships. They
do include offices, fast-food res-
taurants, grocery stores, mixed-
use residential, apartments and
a number of other commercial
uses, however.
Hau has the property listed
for sale at $28.79 million.
s
Student
Harmony Rd.
The property at 224 Harmony Road is next to a MAX bus rapid-transit station.
Craig Hau
