The former Agilent Technologies property in Loveland will be redeveloped faster with a Kentucky-based firm than with the Colorado Association of Manufacturing and Technology, city and company officials said Friday.
Loveland wants to create high-quality technology jobs at the site, said Betsey Hale, Loveland’s business development director. While the CAMT plan “is still a very powerful statewide economic development initiative,” she said Friday that the partnership between the city and the Northern Colorado Economic Development Corp. is “more robust” and more “Loveland-centric.”
CAMT had envisioned a campus called the Aerospace and Clean Energy Park — or ACE — in which aerospace and clean-energy companies could share resources and equipment to develop and commercialize new products.
In a Thursday e-mail, CAMT chief executive Elaine Thorndike said the association is looking for other potential locations in the Denver/Boulder area for the ACE Park. The city’s plan for the property “is not aligned” with CAMT’s vision, the e-mail said.
Bill Murphree, a principal with purchaser Cumberland & Western Resources, told the Loveland Reporter Herald that the company’s strategies for the project — now known as the Rocky Mountain Center for Innovation and Technology — “are much more real, and much more ready to implement.”
After CAMT’s developer — United Properties — bowed out last fall, the city was increasingly interested in recouping its investment in the Agilent property, Hale said. In December, the city sold the property to Cumberland & Western Resources for $5 million.
CAMT spokeswoman Merrily Hill Smith said she has no further information about possible ACE Park sites, adding, “We are moving forward on a multitude of programs. Our programs haven’t changed.”
Ann Schrader: 303-954-1967 or aschrader@denverpost.com
