Retail Space In South Fort Collins Filling Up

New tenants plan to move into two long-vacant big-box stores at Harmony Road and College Avenue, boosting one of Fort Collins' major intersections and filling some of the city's 800,000 square feet of empty retail space.

Harbor Freight Tools, a longtime tenant at 105 W. Prospect Road, has signed a lease for about half the former Circuit City building, or about 14,000 square feet, on the northeast corner of Harmony Road and College Avenue. The move doubles its retail footprint and provides more visibility, said Realtor Debbie Tamlin with SullivanHayes Commercial Real Estate in Fort Collins.

Sitting empty behind Circuit City is Linens 'N Things, which closed in December 2008 when its parent company went bankrupt.

A national retailer is interested in signing a lease for much of that building, according to David Spriggs, a Realtor with Legend Retail Group of Denver, which is marketing the building. Spriggs declined to name the store.

"We've picked our horse ,and we're going with it," Spriggs said.

Harbor Freight will occupy about half of its building, leaving 14,000 square feet vacant at the Circuit City site.

Tamlin has a second retailer interested in sharing the building with Harbor Freight, although there is no signed lease yet, she said.

The move to one of the city's busiest and recently reconstructed intersections with more than 70,000 cars passing by each day is part of Harbor Freight's new business model intended to compete with home-improvement stores Lowe's and Home Depot, Tamlin said.

"They have not been a drive-by location that people think to stop and see what they have," Tamlin said.

Harbor Freight, tucked next to Chuck E Cheese at College Avenue and Prospect Road, "was more of a destination location," Tamlin said.

The new location "will give them a higher presence of mind that they're here in Fort Collins. They didn't get that before. You saw it if you took your kids to Chuck E Cheese, but that's not the time to think about buying a new drill."

If Legend Retail nabs a new tenant for Linens 'N Things, it will help fill a large percentage of retail space that has languished unoccupied for almost two years and boost retail activity at the intersection that has suffered under the weight of three large, empty buildings including Walmart, Circuit City and Linens 'N Things.

"Getting any of that vacant space retenanted along College is only going to have positive effects," said Josh Birks, the city's economic adviser. "Harbor Freight is the shifting of one place to another, so it's not as positive as some of the other national tenants considering the space, but filling vacant space ... can only do good things."

The Harmony/College intersection is a key component of the recent midtown corridor study that looked at redevelopment opportunities along College Avenue from Prospect Road to Harmony Road.

BY PAT FERRIER • PatFerrier@coloradoan.com • October 19, 2010