Village at the Peaks celebrates grand opening despite delays

The Village at the Peaks’ grand opening week, May 27 to June 4, was celebrated with a 20-ton National Parks-themed sand sculpture, concerts by local bands, an America Ninja Warrior-style course and a Patriotic Pet Parade.

After nearly seven years of development, Village at the Peaks is now largely completed with 90 percent of the space leased and 25 retailers open for business. The celebrations aligned with the opening of Sam’s Club on June 30, one of the Village’s largest anticipated sources of revenue.

The Village’s planning involved extensive research into consumer preferences to discern what types of retailers would most positively facilitate the lasting success of the Village.

“My focus here is with an eye toward the future, not the past,” Allen Ginsborg, managing director and principal of Newmark Merrill Mountain States, said. “We designed the center based on a lot of study of Gen Y preference. We have free gigabyte Wi-Fi and, amazingly, we were able to attract what a study by the Urban Land Institute considered to be some of the top [preference] categories for Gen Y, things like Whole Foods, a movie theater, a gym and even a club warehouse.”

Though the opening celebrations are over, a variety of community events will continue throughout the summer and into the fall, including a Kid’s Club, Wednesday night summer concert series and free yoga classes.

“We’re all about experience,” Ginsborg said. “And experience is what differentiates a place you go to buy stuff and then leave, and a place you like to visit because you have a good time.”

The development of Village at the Peaks wasn’t without adversity. The closing of Sports Authority after a bankruptcy filing in March and the delayed opening of Whole Foods, now slated to open at year-end, and which, according to data on the bizwest.com website, is estimated to cost the city of Longmont $1 million in tax revenue, both complicated development.

However, Ginsborg is confident that these strains won’t affect the lasting success of the Village.

As Sports Authority is not a high sales volume merchant, the loss is not expected to have a large impact on the Village. Whole Foods is expected to open in December with strong finances and many regular shoppers.

“Whole Foods is going through some competitive changes in the marketplace due to other companies like Kroger starting to have their own organic brands, but it is adapting to those changes and will be successful at it.”

Some people in the community have voiced dissatisfaction with the types of merchants who have leased with Village at the Peaks and with the lack of apparel shops. While Ginsborg is still looking to lease with the appropriate apparel retailers, he is wary of the financial standing of many national brands.

“We certainly would like to have quality fashion and apparel merchants in the project,” Ginsborg said. “We have reached out to many and are continuing to do so, but the reality is that if you go online and google Macy’s or Kohl’s or Aeropostale, except for a handful of merchants, [apparel retailers] are seriously in the tank. Right now there is a lot of creative destruction going on in the industry, partially due to the internet and partially due to the changing consumer.”

Today, the Village is almost fully leased, with over half of the remaining vacancy already spoken for by letters of intent. Ginsborg is not overly concerned with filling this vacancy immediately, but is rather “focused on trying to attract the right merchants, rather than just filling space.”

Ginsborg, who has spent his career focused on tenant mix and creating a productive shopping center, has been working to bring stores with a variety of functions and localities to the Village.

“I’ve been trying to get a mix of brands that are both local, regional and national, so that everybody feeds off of everybody else,” Ginsborg explained. “Once you create that synergy, these projects are successful.”

Based on the numbers, this synergy is already at work and thriving.In early June, even though neither Sam’s Club nor Whole Foods had opened yet, several merchants at Village at the Peaks nevertheless had “record openings and continue to have [sales] in the top three to five percent of their company,” Ginsborg said. “I think that Sam’s Club and Whole Foods are just going to add to that success.”