2025 Market Facts VRP - Flipbook - Page 68
60 | ECO NO MI C PRO FI L E & MA R K ET FACT S 2025
SOURCE: CITY OF LOVELAND
A mockup depicts a post-and-panel exterior sign on Fourth Street in downtown Loveland.
LOVELAND
Sweetheart City pulses with business heartbeat
LOVELAND — When Loveland’s Pulse municipal broadband service
was rated best in the nation by PCMag this summer, it symbolized the
Sweetheart City’s high speed of growth and development, from new retailtargeted efforts to residential projects and a continuing commitment to
culture.
Despite its contentious politics and often heated debates among residents, Loveland works to lure business and industry to its central spot on
the booming northern Front Range urban corridor and persuade tourists
headed for Rocky Mountain National Park that this city “on the way up” is
worth more than a brief visit or a pass-through.
Progress is happening downtown with the $24.5 million Heart Improvement Plan, locally known as the “HIP Streets” project, an initiative
talked about for nearly 16 years that is designed to transform a five-block
stretch of Fourth Street between Jefferson and Garfield avenues into a
modern community hub.
Part of that downtown revival is embodied by the largest redevelopment effort in its history: the $76 million Foundry project. Minnesotabased nonprofit Artspace is redeveloping Loveland’s historic Feed and
Grain building to provide live-work space for artists and others, and The
Rialto Bridge Project included an expansion and renovation of the city’s
historic Rialto Theater.
On Loveland’s eastern edge, online retailer Amazon has a 3.87 millionsquare-foot fulfillment and distribution facility — one of Loveland’s largestever developments and one of Amazon’s largest facilities — waiting to come
to life and employ around 1,000 people to work alongside robots to fill
customers’ orders. Nearby, a new U.S. Customs office hit full stride at Discovery Air, adjacent to Northern Colorado Regional Airport. Jointly owned by
Loveland and Fort Collins, the airport last fall opened a $22 million,19,400square-foot, two-gate terminal, and will widen the main runway in 2026 in
hopes of luring scheduled airline service back to the facility.
Just across Interstate 25, a 130,000-square-foot Bass Pro Shops mega-
store will soon join the area’s crowded cohort of outdoor retailers.
Meanwhile, one of the city’s most controversial projects, McWhinney Real Estate Services Inc.’s Centerra South, finally survived voter and
council opposition and will add up to 2,277 housing units in the 150-acre
South development. Just to its east, Evergreen DevCo Inc.’s partnership
with Schmer Family Farm Inc. also won a green light to build a 30-acre
commercial development, potentially including a King Soopers and a gas
station, on the northwest corner of the 119-year-old farm.
Elsewhere in the city, a zoning change was approved that will allow the
Loveland Housing Authority to build Legacy Crossing, an affordable-housing development on a 74-acre tract it bought in 2023 that includes the 16acre Crossroads Church campus southeast of 57th Street and Taft Avenue.
To make more room for city services and departments, councilors approved the $12 million purchase of an 89,000-square-foot administration
building and an adjacent 33,000-square-foot warehouse on Loveland’s west
side, both of which have been used by Group Publishing Inc., a 51-year-old
provider of curriculum materials for youth and adult Sunday-school and
vacation-Bible-school classes. It also bought a 6,000-square-foot unit in the
former outlet mall complex now known as Loveland Yards.
Loveland is world famous for its annual program in which valentine
cards are funneled through its post office to have holiday postmarks added.
McKee Medical Center and the Medical Center of the Rockies — now
designated a Level 1 trauma center — top the city’s employment charts.
Banner Health is adding new mental-health services for older patients
at McKee, while UCHealth made MCR the first hospital in the Rocky
Mountain region to offer the implantable Remede System for patients with
central sleep apnea.
The Colorado Eagles, a minor-league professional hockey franchise,
play at the county-owned Ranch Events Complex — at least until a new
home is built for them on the west side of Greeley — and the annual Loveland Sculpture in the Park exhibit brings artists from all over the world.
