A tale of two cities--in one: entertainment venues are hot in downtown Fort Collins, but residential demand isn't ready for prime time.

• Author: Lewis, David
• Position: WHO OWNS colorado

Fort Collins is about as hot and cold as it is possible for a municipality's downtown real estate market to be at one time.

The hot part is what has been going on in Fort Collins downtown for the past five years or so, and what it all could add up to a few years hence.

This part of the Fort Collins story is so hot that some have portrayed conflicts among all the power brokers looking to add to the central city's roster of entertainment venues. This is not true, however, as it appears all of the power brokers are going to build new entertainment venues downtown.

The not-so-hot part is that the Fort Collins real estate market, like most but not all real estate, has cooled. Here is an example: A development called Mason Street North, a mixed-use development near downtown Fort Collins and adjacent to 90-acre Lee Martinez Park, next to where billionaire Pat Stryker has planned one of those entertainment venues, and right by the projected kayak park. Of its original 20 condos, Mason Street North has six units for sale, including a one-bedroom for $179,900.

Now, $179,900 is not a number you will see in Boulder, for instance, where residential real estate demand continues at an exuberant pace.

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Mason Street North has cut prices of its remaining six residential units. So how about a 1,280-square-foot two-bedroom condo with mountain views for $325,900?

"Some things have picked up recently: We have two recent tenants. But that $179,000 unit would be selling for $500,000 in Boulder, and the standard two-bedroom unit would be, you know, $800,000, not $250,000," says John Wolff, principal of Boulder-based Wolff Lyon Architects and both partner in and designer of the Mason Street North project.

"I don't know what to say about the Fort Collins market," he adds. "We had really hoped that some of the trends we've seen in other places, like Boulder, were going to be as strong in Fort Collins. I'm not sure that's the case. There does seem to be life in the downtown market, which is good, but maybe not as much as the people involved in projects like ours had hoped."

A lot of the visible progress around downtown fits right in with the city's plan to encourage residential and mixed-use infill development on the circumference of the center, which would be Old Town Fort Collins, and attractions such as Beet Street (named for the sugar beet industry that used to fuel northeast Colorado's ag economy). Beet Street, as we speak, is a Fort Collins...