THORNTON —The steady stream of money flowing into Thornton from all the freshly opened retailers and development projects surrounding Cabela’s has influenced a potential budget increase for next year. And city estimates predict that revenue will stay strong through 2016.
The city’s sales taxes are up nearly 5 percent the first six months of this year compared to the same period in 2014, and that’s primarily due to new businesses in the Grove, the shopping center along 144th Avenue and Interstate 25, where sales tax revenues are up 34 percent.
“We’ve enjoyed two years of strong Cabela’s activity, as well as from most of those ancillary retailers that have been open there for less than a year,” said Chuck Seest, Thornton’s finance director. “The Grove has had double-digit growth every quarter since it opened in 2013 … and we expect that to continue through the end of 2016 as new retailers come into that development.”
One such new business is the Summit, a 50,000-square-foot entertainment center that will be built on 5 acres behind the Grove at the southwest corner of Washington Street and 144th.
The restaurant-arcade combo will look like the Summit in Windsor, which has a full bar, laser tag, bowling, an outdoor patio and a VIP lounge.
Tyler Carlson is a principal at Evergreen Development, the company that is leasing much of the land around the Grove, including the acreage where the Summit will break ground in October.
Evergreen owns 12 acres along Washington Street, which Carlson said he hopes to begin leasing once Thornton’s land deal for a goes through.
“It will really pop once Premium Outlets goes up and once Grant Street is fully built out,” Carlson said. “We’re expanding Grant from where it ends now at the roundabout south of 144th to the McKay Channel, and then (Denver Premium Outlets) will take Grant where we leave it off, down to 136th. Then it will start being a really interesting street for us.”
All that development will surround the Grove. The 65 acres that make up the Grove itself are just a few leases away from capacity.
“Overall, the center’s performing very well,” said Max Gansline, a leasing representative with TSG Properties. “We’re about 80 percent full now.”
He said there are three free-standing buildings left to be leased by something like a bank, drive-through or sit-down restaurant, as well as two larger junior anchor sites, which are comparable in size to the 55,000-square-foot Hobby Lobby that opened there last year.
Candlewood Suites will open next spring, and a 32,000-square-foot Stein Mart discount store will open shortly thereafter.
Lennar Colorado is also building a 465-unit apartment complex on 27 acres behind Cabela’s. There will be 20, three-story buildings leased at market rate in that community, which will be called Parkhouse, said Lee Busse, development manger with Lennar Multifamily Communities. The apartment complex will have two pools and two clubhouses.
“It’s basically going to be its own community over there,” Busse said. “We looked at what happened in Lone Tree, and how that area, once the hospital came in, really took off with growth. We see the 144th and I-25 intersection doing the same thing.”
That development has been under construction for 10 months, and Busse said the first units will be available early next year.
“The Grove is definitely a success project for us,” said John Cody, director of the Thornton Office of Economic Development. “It is overall a very important development in the city and an important development on the North I-25 corridor.”
For Thornton, increased income generated from sales taxes and building permits citywide (but most notably at the Grove) could mean a bump for the city’s budget.
“It should definitely help increase the city’s budget, which will actually be discussed Sept. 22,” Seest said. “There is an anticipated increase in terms of additional resources made available for other services and capital needs in the city.”
Megan Mitchell: 303-954-2650, mmitchell@denverpost.com
Updated Sept. 16, 2015, at 11:45 a.m. This article has been revised to reflect the following correction. Originally, due to a reporter’s error, some sales tax figures were wrong. Sales tax revenues increased 34 percent year over year at the Grove and just under 5 percent for the city of Thornton as a whole.
