GREELEY — A Utah development company has purchased Greeley’s Elk Lakes Shopping Center at U.S. Highway 34 Bypass and 35th Avenue, as the company eases more into Colorado.
Technically, Elk Lakes Owner LLC purchased much of the 95,311-square-foot shopping center, but that is a subsidiary of Wadsworth Development Co., based in Draper, Utah.
The Ranier Cos., under the Elk Lakes SC Acquisitions LLC, sold portions of the shopping center for $14.65 million to the Utah company, which owns and develops properties throughout the Rocky Mountain West. The deal does not include Home Depot, which has anchored the shopping center since 1998, according to the special warranty deed filed with the Weld County Clerk and Recorder.
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Wadsworth Development has a flex industrial property in Frederick, and reports on its website that it has developed Burger King restaurants in Colorado. It also purports to be a preferred developer for Starbucks coffee shops. Most of its properties are in Utah and Arizona.
Representatives did not immediately return a call for comment.
At the turn of the millennium, Elk Lakes was seen as Greeley’s retail saving grace. It was supposed to bring in the stores to stop the sales-tax leakage that Greeley had lost for years to other cities in Northern Colorado. But problems with its original developer, Scott Fish, had delayed its opening for a year before one of his investors bought him out in 2001. The new owner, Rod Guerrieri, said Fish also was reneging on deals he made for upgrades to the property, such as paying for the installation of a stoplight at the main entrance of Home Depot and burying a ditch at the south end of the property.
The project was so marred by problems that an actual closing on the deal was stalled four times by people claiming that they had an interest in the property. Guerrieri said at the time that he had four lawyers trying to decipher it all for four months.
Fish, who left town in the early 2000s with a string of bad debts and unpaid loans and judgments against him, still has judgments on the books through Weld County records, many for personal loans he never repaid, and for bad debts when he owned the Stampede Truck Stop in Evans.
Elk Lakes, however, has stood the test of time, having been anchored by Home Depot. The eight other leases on the property are a part of the deal, which includes Office Depot, PetSmart, Car Toys, and various other smaller retailers. It also has the lease to UCHealth, which recently opened in the former Natural Grocers site.