The Loveland Feed and Grain building has been saved, but how the empty, aging structure might be used is open to plenty of speculation.
The Loveland City Council voted 7-2 Tuesday night to deny an appeal to raze the 115-year-old building, called a monument to Loveland’s agricultural past. The owners, Dean and Betty Anderson of Berthoud, had hoped to demolish it to make way for apartments.
But a determined group of residents successfully stopped the Feed and Grain’s pending destruction in hopes of transforming the ragged building that towers over downtown Loveland into a cultural centerpiece.
The next step is figuring out how to renovate it. Backers of saving the building say it could become an arts studio, farmers market or a restaurant.
“There are lots of ways this could turn out,” said Erin McLaughlin, leader of the preservation movement.
Just this week, three people offered the Andersons $400,000 for the building and the land it rests on. The structure has plenty of promise, but the cost of renovation could run to nearly $5 million, said City Councilman Gene Pielin.
“I think the battle to transform the Feed and Grain has just begun,” Pielin said.
Dean Anderson is the last surviving owner of the building, which once produced 275 sacks of flour a day and stored up to 50,000 bushels of wheat.
But when farming started to fade in Larimer County in the 1990s, business at the Feed and Grain dried up and it finally closed in 2003.
The Andersons got a historic designation for the building in 2005 in hopes of getting tax credits and grants to fund a developer’s plan to turn the Feed and Grain into apartments.
But the funding fell through, and the developer now wants to level the Feed and Grain to build apartments.
The Andersons asked in January for the city’s permission to tear down the structure, saying that leaving it as is would be a financial hardship.
A majority of City Council members, however, were not convinced the Andersons were suffering financially. That’s because they were receiving offers to buy the building, said Councilman Glenn Rousey.
“I would have liked to see property tax records over the past three or four years or some other documentation that this building was causing financial hardship,” Rousey said, “but there just wasn’t anything.”
Anderson couldn’t be reached for comment.
The trio of prospective buyers could end up reselling the property to McLaughlin’s group or to another nonprofit, or becoming a partner in any renovation effort. Pielin and other city leaders said they just don’t want to see the old Feed and Grain remain dormant for too long.
“This is an integral part of downtown and it does give us character,” Pielin said.
Staff writer Monte Whaley can be reached at 720-929-0907 or mwhaley@denverpost.com.
