Dear Buck:
Can you please give us an update on what’s happening — or not — at the Feed and Grain? The last I heard was a few years ago when they got major funding to do stabilization and infrastructure work. At that time, they were using the building a bit, but now, of course, everything’s been canceled. I hope to see more activity now that we’re looking forward to the pandemic easing up.
Signed: Hoping
Dear Hoping:
Your question hit the rusty old nail on the head: nothing really is happening at the Feed and Grain, although I’m sure plenty of people wish activity would pick up there again.
You’re correct that Artspace, the Minneapolis-based organization that owns the old mill at 130 W. Third St., put hundreds of thousands of dollars into repairing the roof and stabilizing the 1892 building after the nonprofit bought it in 2014.
Artspace also built the Artspace Lofts, a 30-unit apartment building just west of the Feed and Grain that gives artists a place to live at below-market rents.
But a project announced in 2019 to spend more than $1 million in grant money on a renovation to create an incubator for artists in 4,000 square feet at the north end of the building never came to fruition.
That plan included the possibility of spaces for 12 to 16 artists to work, on leases limited to three years, as well as common exhibition and performance spaces and commercial tenants such as coffee shops and galleries.
Lucas Koski, a director of property development for Artspace and the former asset manager of the Lofts, said that project turned out to be too expensive for the grant money available.
“The project was put on indefinite hold after we received qualified bids for the scope of work,” Koski said in an email.
So the grants that Artspace had secured, worth about $1.2 million from the State Historical Fund and the federal Economic Development Administration, never were spent and went back to the funding agencies.
The sources of the two grants point to Artspace’s mission as it relates to the downtown Loveland structure: historic preservation and economic improvement.
“Artspace wants to ensure that the historic Feed and Grain is maintained as an iconic building … and its use is tied not only to the community’s enjoyment but as well provides space to the benefit of the creative sector,” Koski said in a follow-up phone interview.
“At this time we have not determined the exact path forward, but we’re investigating a few different options,” he said.
Koski said Artspace realized about this time last year that the project wouldn’t fly. He said COVID-19 restrictions that kept the staff from traveling didn’t help.
That setback was a disappointment, personally, for Koski, who only recently had moved from his Lofts responsibility into the property development side of the organization.
“I was super excited to be able to work on the project,” he said, because the first job he ever had was at the grain mill his family had owned for generations in his Minnesota town. “It’s a personal thing for me. I really want the project to work.”
But until another opportunity for redevelopment comes up, the Feed and Grain will sit — unoccupied except for the uninvited raccoons that Artspace is trying to deal with.
“We’re attempting to protect it from exterior penetration — animal, human and weather,” he said.
And though the old building has hosted some temporary art exhibits in the past, Artspace doesn’t plan to continue allowing that practice.
“Until the building has been renovated, it should not have even temporary occupancy,” Koski said.
So, Hoping, Artspace doesn’t have a new project to put the Feed and Grain on the front burner, but the property hasn’t been forgotten, either.
Buck Thompson finds answers to questions regarding life in Loveland. Send your questions to news@reporter-herald.com with Dear Buck in the subject line, or write to Reporter-Herald — Buck Thompson, at P.O. Box Y, Berthoud, CO 80513.
Loveland Reporter-Herald file photo
In this photo from March 2015, scaffolding is installed and work begun on exterior stabilization of the Loveland Feed and Grain building at 130 W. Third St."feed" - Google News
April 12, 2021 at 04:11AM
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Dear Buck: What’s happening with the Loveland Feed and Grain? - Loveland Reporter-Herald
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