Presidio plans go forward

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A year after going public with his proposed 100-acre Presidio development on Harmony Road, developer Les Kaplan plans to unveil the first major piece of the project Monday night.
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Kaplan and Milestone Development Group of Denver want to build 240 apartments on the back 11½ acres of the site, across Harmony Road from Hewlett-Packard.

The “upper-end” apartments would be divided among 10 three-story buildings on 11.5 acres and rent for $900 to $1,200 a month.

Office, retail and a hotel/conference center are planned for the remaining 87 acres and will be built as market forces allow, Kaplan said.

Rental vacancy rates currently hover at about 5 percent, considered an equalized market.

With decreasing mortgage rates, increased demand and stabilized construction costs, it’s the perfect storm of opportunity, he said.

Multifamily units are just about the only residential units still being built in Fort Collins as housing starts continue to drop, credit tightens and mortgages become harder to get.

Through September, 518 units of multifamily housing – apartments, condos and townhomes – have been permitted in Fort Collins compared to 128 through September last year.

Conversely, single-family permits have plunged by almost a third from 2007 to 2008.

“When there appears to be low vacancy rate, there is also a corresponding perception that there’s a need for more units,” Chief Planner Ted Shepard said.

The presence of Colorado State University and its projected increase of 5,000 more students in the next few years They’re looking at the city’s projected 3 percent growth, low vacancy and mortgage rates, nearby Wal-Mart Supercenter under construction at Interstate 25 and Harmony Road and proximity to thousands of workers scattered along the high-tech Harmony corridor.

“There are probably a few hundred people at HP alone who are renting somewhere,” said Ken Kiken, owner of Milestone Development Group, which has developed about 5,000 apartment units.

“We see that area of Fort Collins as not really having enough apartments,” Kiken said.

The Apartments at Presidio expects to attract young professionals such as teachers, firefighters, police officers and engineers in their 20s and 30s looking for upscale amenities including WiFi, on-site workout facilities and a pool, Kiken said.

To meet those needs, the development plans to build a 5,000-square-foot clubhouse including seven-lane junior Olympic-size heated swimming pool and 2,000-square-foot workout room.

Presidio and the adjacent 110 acres owned by Michigan-based MAVD – known as the Harmony Technology Park – could eventually be home to 450 housing units and about 2.5 million square feet of office, retail, dining and commercial space.

Because much of the infrastructure has already been built, including most of the roads, Presidio and Harmony Technology Park could get approval rather quickly, Shepard said.

The Apartments at Presidio are still in the design phase and no formal plans have been submitted to the city for review, he said.

Architect Paul Campbell of Kephart Architects in Denver, which is designing the project, said unit sizes will be “more on the modest size.”

“The trend for the Y generation renter, compared to apartments designed five years ago, is for unit sizes to be more modest and that the clubhouse, a social gathering space, has much higher priority because people will spend more time socializing at the clubhouse than in their individual units.”