Howelsen Place retailers target pre-holiday openings
Work on the portion of Howelsen Place facing Yampa Street is further along than its counterpart building facing Lincoln Avenue.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
The developers of Howelsen Place say they have 10 commercial tenants in place, with five of them intending to open in time for the holidays.
Occupancy issue
Developer Jim Cook recently told the Steamboat Springs City Council he was concerned that the city and building department would not issue the temporary certificate of occupancy that Howelsen Place needs for retail tenants while construction continues on residential units on the building's upper floors.
However, Interim City Manager Wendy DuBord, Building Department Official Carl Dunham and Fire Marshall Jay Muhme agreed Thursday that the steps necessary to issue the certificate appear to be routine and that they do not foresee any major issues.
"Our job is to help the development community do its job while protecting public interests and our life-safety issues," DuBord said.
Muhme said issuing temporary certificates of occupancy is commonplace, particularly in the case of major remodeling projects.
"We do this all the time," he said. "We're doing it right now with the library. The Sheraton is operating right now with floors two through five gutted."
Dunham said his department would require that hallways be clear, emergency exits be completed, and fire alarms and sprinklers be fully functional, among other things.
The parties have scheduled a meeting for this week to work out the details.
- Tom Ross
Steamboat Springs — The residential condominiums at Howelsen Place aren't likely to be completed before March 2009, but developers and their contractor are hustling to help five new businesses open at the downtown Steamboat Springs location before the holiday season.
Pending the issuance of a temporary certificate of occupancy by the Routt County Regional Building Department, Jim Cook and Greencourte Partners say they expect to see the new businesses beginning to open in November.
"They are literally waiting, with checks in hand, to place their merchandise orders," Cook said. "The community needs to see that activity in the downtown."
The names of four of the five businesses have been made public: Zirkel Trading, Urbane, Steamboat Ski & Resort Corp. and Vectra Bank. All five will open in the Lincoln Avenue building, though overall progress is further along on the Yampa Street building at Howelsen Place.
The owners of Zirkel Trading are Steve and Denise Hitchcock. It will be a men's clothing company offering mountain lifestyle lines such as Filson, Barbour, Axis and Mountain Khakis. Zirkel Trading will have some merchandise intended for local professionals as well as for second-home owners and visitors, Steve Hitchcock said.
Filson, founded in Seattle in 1897 to outfit gold miners on their way to the Klondike Strike, carries very traditional Mackinaw wool jackets, coats and vests, for example.
Barbour's lines reflect a European twist on outdoor clothing. Axis is showing finely woven sweaters in its fall collection.
Hitchcock is best-known in Steamboat as the longtime owner of two pizza restaurants, Soda Creek Pizza and Gnarly Charlie's. However, the majority of his career has been spent in executive roles with Marmot and Patagonia.
Zirkel Trading will not sell mountain technical wear, Hitchcock emphasized. He added that he is deliberately avoiding clothing lines, which represent a main emphasis of existing Steamboat businesses.
Urbane will be a very sophisticated retail operation offering fashions to young adults.
Vectra Bank will move from its current space at Eighth Street and Lincoln Avenue, opening up space for a gift shop in the Steamboat Art Museum.
Ski Corp. intends to open a combined logo shop and remote ticketing operation.
Cook said he was not at liberty to name the fifth business planning to open late this fall. Among the five additional businesses he expects to open in the near future, Cook said, "one or more" would be restaurants.
Cook stood before Steamboat Springs City Council last week to announce his new leases, in part, he said, because he wanted to counteract gloomy predictions of 2009 sales tax revenues.
Greencourte Partners' primary business interest is commercial leasing, he said, and in this context, the luxury residential condominiums at Howelsen Place are a means to an end. Accordingly, he said the developers are very optimistic about growing receipts and, consequently, sales tax collections in downtown Steamboat.
"We believe downtown is under-retailed," Cook said. "We want to capture more of the available dollars with quality operators."
