2025 Market Facts VRP - Flipbook - Page 66
58 | ECO NO MI C PRO FI L E & MA R K ET FACT S 2025
LUCAS HIGH/BIZWEST
Redtail Ridge will be developed into a 2.5-million-square-foot biotechnology- and health-care-centric business park.
LOUISVILLE
Redtail Ridge groundbreaking a symbol of town’s recovery
LOUISVILLE — Those collective sighs of relief that can be heard
around Louisville these days aren’t just because the Boulder County town
has largely recovered from the disastrous 2021 Marshall Fire.
Some of them also may be because, after a half-decade of work,
construction is finally underway on a 2.5-million-square-foot biotechnology- and health-care-centric business park on the empty, roughly 400-acre
Redtail Ridge property, which was previously home to a massive Storage
Technology Corp. campus.
In April, the Colorado Economic Development Commission gave its
blessing to a plan by Louisville officials to establish a CHIPS Zone in the
city that would encompass Redtail Ridge as well as the Colorado Technology Center business park.
Not that scars don’t remain from the conflagration, including lingering fiery debates about city codes and the cost to rebuild versus the desire
to protect properties. But what wasn’t lost in the fire is Louisville’s prime
location, its foundation of quality housing and its dedication to being a
great place to do business. The blaze also ignited an ambition to build back
better, more affordably and more sustainably.
The City Council last year adopted a sweeping plan focused on having
12% of Louisville’s housing stock be “permanently affordable” through
zoning and fee policies designed to increase residential development opportunities, expand access to affordable housing and diversify the city’s
housing stock. The council also set a goal to be carbon neutral by 2050,
partly by reducing all of its municipal, residential, commercial and industrial energy-related emissions 60% below a 2016 baseline level by 2030.
Louisville was first in the nation to use a 100% electric fleet of trash and recycling collection vehicles after renewing a contract with Republic Services.
Many businesses that put down roots in the city are following their
dreams and achieving sparkling success – much like the space-systems division of Sierra Nevada Corp., maker of the reusable Dream Chaser orbital
spacecraft, which won a NASA contract in May to develop the aerospace
firm’s expandable space station technology on the moon.
Louisville in January approved amending its business assistance program so that startups or businesses looking to relocate to the city get help
with large up-front costs.
Three Louisville-based companies — Sierra Space, Infleqtion and EOI
Space — are among the nine Colorado companies that made the NatSec100
list from the Silicon Valley Defense Group, a Virginia-based nonprofit that
seeks “to align and connect the people, capital, and ideas that will ensure
allied democracies retain a durable techno-security advantage.” Infleqtion
makes software-configured, quantum-enabled products, and EOI Space
builds low-flying satellites to collect ultra-high-resolution imagery.
Solid Power’s pilot production line is making silicon, solid-state battery
cells to be delivered to its partners Ford Motor Co. and BMW. Quicksilver
Scientific Inc., a developer of delivery mechanisms for CBD and other
supplements, is bringing its technology stateside as part of a new line of
CBD-infused sparkling water made in part by beverage giant Molson
Coors Beverage Co.
JumpCloud left Boulder for a new Louisville facility at 361 Centennial
Parkway. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Co. acquired Loxo
Oncology Inc. in 2019 in an $8 million deal, and in 2022 the merged companies opened Loxo@Lilly, Lilly’s oncology business unit, in Louisville’s
Colorado Technology Center.
Intrepid Fiber Networks hosted a groundbreaking event in March
to mark the continued construction of its open-access fiber broadband
network.
The city has two major business parks, with a range of buildings for
high-end corporate use such as industrial research and development. Both
parks have room to grow. Louisville also serves as headquarters for notable
companies such as Gaia Inc., RGS Energy, GHX and many others.
