Loveland city councilors late Tuesday unanimously approved the purchase of the Agilent Technologies Inc. campus, the key to its bid for the ACE manufacturing park.
The vote to appropriate $5.8 million to cover the purchase price and other costs came after a 3 1/2-hour closed meeting during which councilors huddled with lawyers to go over the intricacies of the deal.
“This is a very complicated, complicated issue,” Mayor Cecil Gutierrez said as the council reconvened following the closed meeting.
“As a council, we have to move through this very diligently because it is such a significant project.”
At stake are thousands of jobs that could be created at the site under the stewardship of the Aerospace Clean Energy Manufacturing and Innovation center.
The co-sponsors — NASA and the Colorado Association for Manufacturing and Technology — plan to lure as many as 100 companies to the site, all engaged in commercializing technology patented by NASA and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Tuesday’s action sets the stage for a June 23 closing date for the purchase, and the eventual transfer of the property to the ACE developers.
The city will keep 127 acres to add to its open space holdings and 128 units of Colorado-Big Thompson Project water, one of the region’s most sought-after commodities.
City Manager Bill Cahill prior to the council vote described the volumes of documents the city already had assembled in its examination of the property.
“We’ve got a pile of documents a foot and a half tall,” he said. “We have found no fatal flaws.”
