MAVD News: 2007

Colorado Real Estate Journal
The communication channel of the commercial real estate community

Front Range 03/07/2007 - 03/20/2007

New business park planned on Harmony

By Jill Jamieson-Nichols
Editor
Colorado Real Estate Journal 

A blockbuster land sale in Fort Collins will usher in a new high-end business park. MAVD West, LLC will develop Harmony Technology Park on 105 acres of land on Harmony Road, a major employment corridor in Fort Collins. Hewlett-Packard, which has a campus across the street, sold the land for $14 million.

“There are a lot of requirements for employment-sized parcels that don’t exist in Fort Collins,” said Realtec Commercial Real Estate Services broker Larry Stroud. There’s been enough interest from primarily employers that, with the city government now beginning to reach out to them, Fort Collins is ripe for a new business park, he said.

“It’s the best piece of ground up there for commercial development,” said Fuller Real Estate broker Mike Kboudi. “Fort Collins is going to be pushing people to this site because it’s in their employment corridor. It’s just a nice piece of ground that has a ton of potential.”

The site, which has 800 feet of frontage on Harmony Road, is a half-mile from Interstate 25 with a signalized intersection at Lady Moon Drive. Intel, AMD and Poudre Valley Health System are major employers on the corridor, where more than a million square feet of new retail development also is getting under way.

MAVD West is a subsidiary of Michigan-based MAVDevelopment, which is owned by members of the Vlasic family, as in Vlasic pickles. The company opened a Colorado office last year.

Harmony Technology Park will offer sites from two to 30 acres for sale or build-to-suit in a campus environment featuring native landscape materials, pedestrian paths and outdoor seating areas. MAVD also plans to develop about 250,000 sf of Class A office and flex space facing Harmony Road, initially including approximately 50,000 sf of speculative development, according to Randy Hughes, MAVD West director of acquisitions.

The ready-to-go development ground is zoned for office, technology and light-manufacturing uses. It will be able to accommodate tenants and user buildings of 10,000 to 20,000 sf or larger, Hughes said.

Fort Collins has a reputation of being a difficult place to develop property, but that no longer is the case, according to Rob Aldrich, MAVD president. The city, which is targeting information technology, clean energy and biotech firms, all of which would be a “perfect fit” for Harmony Technology Park, has pledged to help make the development a success, he said.

MAVDevelopment owns more than 2 million sf of space worth more than $500 million, primarily around Ann Arbor, Mich. MAVD West has its local office in Blake Street Terrace, a 92,000-sf Lower Downtown Denver office building it bought for$15.4 million last year.

Stroud represented the company in the acquisition of the HP land and will market Harmony Technology Park. Kboudi, along with Fuller Real Estate brokers Jim Capecelatro and R.C. Myles, represented Hewlett-Packard. Tom Wooten of Ross Consulting Group also advised HP in the transaction.   

Colorado Real Estate Journal ©2005

Back to top

Back to News