Loveland's 80 MPH main street: following the McWhinney brothers, other developers flock to Interstate 25.

• Author: Titus, Stephen
• Position: Who owns Colorado

BARELY NINE YEARS AGO, THE INTERSECTION OF INTERSTATE 25 AND U.S. HIGHWAY 34 in Loveland was a sea of farmland punctuated by a newly opened Outlet Mall. The family that owned the land around the mall since 1866 had just lost its patriarch to cancer, and two of his sons--both barely in their 20s--would take over their father's fledgling development company and grow the business into a major player in Colorado real estate development.

The McWhinney brothers' Centerra project is now the fastest growing and most successful development in the city of Loveland, and the most prominent project along 1-25 between E-470 in north metro Denver and the Wyoming border. While McWhinney Enterprises controls most of the land around the intersection, its success has attracted other commercial and residential developers, creating a growth and tax-revenue bonanza for Loveland and its 63,000 residents.

In essence, it has made 1-25 Loveland's main street.

"Even small shops like The Lighting Shop have display windows facing 1-25," said Greg George, director of planning for the City of Loveland. "It seems crazy to be going 80 miles per hour and trying to pick out a light fixture, but that's what's going on."

George said about half of the developable land in Centerra and surrounding area has been spoken for, and Loveland has annex plans for most of the other parcels with development written on them. "There is still a lot of vacant land east of 1-25. All of that land will be annexed into the city of Loveland," George said. "There has been a lot of pressure put on local government to keep up with commerce. It's amazing that our poor little building department has kept up with all of this growth."

Loveland's population grew 12.8 percent from 2000 to 2004, more than double that of Fort Collins and Larimer County as a whole, while adjacent Weld County grew more than 20 percent, with 543,000 people living within 20 miles. Surprisingly, neighboring Fort Collins has yet to reap some of the developer's love that has been heaped upon Loveland's northeast corner, though the larger Northern Colorado college town--and other nearby communities--have tried.

Four different developers with land offerings in the region were once in the running for a new lifestyle center similar to Flatirons Crossing in Broomfield. While Fort Collins touted its big population of CSU student shoppers, it couldn't match Centerra's shiny master-planned look, proximity to the highway, and potential for...