2025 Market Facts VRP - Flipbook - Page 70
62 | ECO NO MI C PRO FI L E & MA R K ET FACT S 2025
PROFILE
9,102
POPULATION
12.82
SQUARE MILES
CHRISTOPHER WOOD/BIZWEST
The monument sign marking the entrance to Milliken.
MILLIKEN
3,073
HOUSEHOLDS
Weld County town has
colorful past, present
MILLIKEN – Could the founders of a trading post catering to a railroad and an agricultural economy have ever envisioned that in 2025 the community would be known for
an award-winning skate park, a “marijuana church” and a key location on a burgeoning
urban corridor?
Probably not. But that’s Milliken, the Weld County town just east of Johnstown that
Safewise last year declared the safest city in Colorado.
The trading post, established by investors who dreamed of building a railroad line
between Denver and Seattle, was founded in the 1860s, and the community that grew
around it was recognized as Hillsboro in 1905. A neighboring settlement to the northeast
that was named for Judge John David Milliken, president of the Northwestern Land and
Iron Co. and general counsel of a legal department that oversaw three companies involved
in the railroad line, annexed Hillsboro in 1910. Fires destroyed much of the settlement and
the railroad venture failed, but Milliken became known for growing sugar beets, potatoes,
corn and wheat as well as cattle feeding.
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, a building boom swept through Milliken, and the
town turned its dirt roads into paved streets in the 1980s. A community complex was
built in 1996, and by the dawn of the 21st century the town began seeing steady growth. It
completed a new public-works facility in 2004 and a new police station in 2009.
Development has kept pace, and the town’s prime location along the northern Front
Range has gotten the attention of investors and developers of both residential subdivisions
and industrial sites.
By 2015, the town of Milliken, in partnership with Upstate Colorado Economic Development, amended its Enterprise Zone boundary to include nearly all the town’s commercial- and industrial-zoned areas. It also decided to update its comprehensive plan and development code to reflect the community’s interest in attracting a balanced economic base.
Last year, Pro-Vac, a Puyallup, Washington-based provider of subsurface infrastructure
services, acquired Kinetic Industry, a Milliken-based company that provides hydro excavation services.
With the legalization of sales of medical and recreational marijuana in Colorado has
come Nature’s Herbs and Wellness, whose cannabis compound includes a three-story,
10,000-square-foot building that locals have dubbed the “marijuana church” and its owners call “the Taj Mahal of dispensaries.”
Milliken’s Parks Division oversees and maintains 12 developed parks and open space
areas totaling more than 220 acres and more than 13 miles of mixed-use trails.
In 2018, Hillsboro Skate Park in Milliken, a 14,000-square-foot outdoor concrete park
known for its quarter pipes, wedge ramps and half pipe, won a Starburst Award from the
Colorado Lottery for “excellent use of lottery funds for the betterment of communities via
public projects.” The skate park opened in 2014 with the help of a $314,399 grant Milliken
received through Great Outdoors Colorado.
Milliken is served by the Weld Re-5J School District. Children in the town attend Milliken Elementary School, Milliken Middle School, and Knowledge Quest Academy, part
of the Weld Re-5J School District. High school students attend Roosevelt High School in
Johnstown.
$100,567
MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD
INCOME
FOR SALE
OPEN
TAX
$453,000
MEDIAN HOME
SALE PRICE
94
NO. OF BUSINESSES
5.4%
CITY, COUNTY,
STATE SALES TAX
27.8%
BACHELOR’S DEGREE
OR HIGHER
ONLINE RESOURCES
Town of Milliken
www.millikenco.gov
Elizabeth Austin, mayor
eaustin@millikenco.gov
Cheryl Powell, town administrator
cpowell@millikenco.gov
Upstate Colorado Economic Development
www.upstatecolorado.org
Rich Werner, president & CEO
rwerner@upstatecolorado.org
