Downtown Loveland seeing movement on vacant buildings
PUBLISHED: september 27, 2026 at 7:34 AM MDT by the Loveland Reporter Herald - SEE RH ARTICLE HERE
WRITTEN BY SEAN HAWKINS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE DOWNTOWN DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITYOne of the questions I often receive from the public is about vacant buildings in downtown Loveland. Curiosity from the public may sound like “why can’t we force that property owner to do something with their property?” or “how can we force that property owner to sell their building and get it in the hands of someone who will care for it?”
When I started my job as the executive director of the newly formed Loveland Downtown Development Authority in the summer 2018, I knew encouraging investment into our downtown buildings was going to be imperative for our future growth.
There are numerous reasons a building may be vacant. One is simple finances. The amount of possible revenue from rents a property owner may receive versus the cost to renovate the building, may not make financial sense. Sometimes the owners live out of town and aren’t connected to the local community. Sometimes there are complicated tax issues related to selling a building. Or worst, sometimes the property owner just doesn’t care if the building falls into bad shape, and is unwilling to put any of their own capital into improvements.
Vacant buildings have many negative impacts on our community. The first is financial. A quick look at the Larimer County Assessor’s webpage shows that vacant properties in downtown Loveland can pay half the amount of a property taxes that a neighboring active property may pay. And let’s not forget that vacant properties don’t create any sales taxes either. Vacant buildings have an immediate impact on the annual budgets of the city of Loveland, our school districts, Larimer County and more. These are the budgets that provide education to our children, police and fire services, important improvements to our parks, roads and more.
The second challenge vacant buildings create in our community is on the productivity of neighboring businesses. Small businesses tend to perform better in a downtown district when they can feed off the traffic that their neighborhood can create (how many times have you wanted to have Josh and John’s ice cream after leaving from a meal at Comet Chicken or a beer at Verboten Brewing?). Imagine being a local business like the wonderful Independence Gallery on Fourth Street across from the Rialto Theatreer and having their direct business neighbor to the west (the former Mr. Neats Forwalwear) vacant for the last 20 years. This past week, construction began on that vacant space that will house the Rio Grande Mexican Restaurant come next spring. The “Rio” will draw hundreds of people to downtown every week and will have an immediate financial impact on Independence Gallery and other neighbors including The Collab Boutique and Tap and Tavern.
Vacant buildings also have an influence on how each of us feels about our community. How do you feel when you look at the boarded-up former Heartland Café at Fourth Street and Lincoln Avenue or in other parts of Loveland where you see entire shopping centers without a single active business? It’s hard to have community pride when you see these eyesore properties and think no one cares and nothing is being done about them.
What can we do locally here in Loveland about vacant buildings? In some cases, absolutely nothing unfortunately.
Fortunately, in downtown we have some great tools at our disposal. Our organization is able to offer incentives such as fire and life safety grants, facade improvement grants to help renovate the exterior of a building or we’re able to use tax increment financing to help improve the financial situation of renovating a building. Tax increment financing is where we rebate a portion of the future taxes a property may generate back to the ownership of the property to help finance improvements to the building. The bottom line is both the public and private sectors have to work hand in hand if we want to bring new life to our vacant buildings. It’s a long process where trusting relationships become very important.
We have serious momentum in renovating many of our long-term vacant or underutilized buildings in downtown Loveland. Plans are currently being made to renovate the former 30,000-square-foot Loveland Elks Lodge on Fourth Street and an exciting development is forming at Third Street and Lincoln Avenue in the former Colotex location.
Our organization has already provided grants and TIF funding for many projects in downtown. A few years ago we completed the renovation of the former Banner Medical Buildings at Fifth Street and Cleveland Avenue into 30,000-square-feet of office and retail, which is now called Cleveland Station. The whole block face that houses Loveland Aleworks on West Fourth Street has a new, modern facade, and the former Feed and Grain property has been converted to housing and retail and more things are being considered.
We’re excited for our future in downtown and these old, vacant buildings are a great part of our next chapter.
Sean Hawkins is the executive director of the Loveland Downtown District. The Loveland Downtown District is a partnership of the Loveland Downtown Development Authority and the Historic Loveland Business Improvement District. He has lived in Loveland since August 2018. He can be reached via email at shawkins@lovelandpartnership.org or by text at 970-699-2856.