Brews, bands and brains fuel state’s 4th-largest city
FORT COLLINS — Colorado’s fourth-largest city is far more than just bikes, bands and brews. There’s also business, beauty and brains.
Fort Collins’ heartbeat can be heard in its live music venues for local and visiting performers, a symphony orchestra and a Music District developed by the locally based Bohemian Foundation. Ironically, Fort Collins was also rated as the most peaceful place to live in the United States, according to a report in January in Travel & Leisure magazine. The article said Fort Collins’ noise level is about the equivalent of rustling leaves.
The beer comes from more than a score of microbreweries and brewpubs; the largest remains New Belgium Brewing Co. The city also is home to the largest brewer in the world, Anheuser-Busch.
Business thrives locally with some of the nation’s largest technology companies employing thousands of workers in the city.
Business thrives locally with some of the nation’s largest technology companies, including Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HP Inc., Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Broadcom and Intel Corp. Advanced Energy Industries Inc., a Fort Collins-birthed company, is now headquartered in Denver. Woodward Co., with aerospace and other technologies, is headquartered in Fort Collins, and technology incubator Innosphere showcases area startups.
A renovated plaza anchors the city’s popular Old Town district, which boasts hotels, restaurants, bars and entertainment venues. Meanwhile, the Midtown Business Improvement District is working to make that area as distinctive as Old Town, and a major overhaul of the aging Foothills Mall is converting it into a mixed-use shopping, residential, office and entertainment area.
The beauty is found in acres of parks, miles of trails and greenbelts, and the Cache la Poudre River that flows out of the mountains and through the heart of the city.
The brains are developed at Colorado State University, with programs in engineering, energy research, business, bioscience and other disciplines. CSU is upgrading and expanding its College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, a program that’s ranked second in the nation by U.S. News & World Report for 2023-24.
CSU works closely with federal laboratories, several of which are located in Fort Collins. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases offers research into dengue fever, Lyme disease, West Nile virus and other ailments.
Meanwhile, the nursing program on Front Range Community College’s Larimer Campus was ranked tops in the state by RegisteredNursing.com.
Job growth in the Fort Collins area has joined a tight inventory in driving up median home prices. After citizen-led petitions turned back two attempts by the City Council to rewrite Fort Collins’ land-use code to encourage more density in an effort to lure more affordable-housing options, the council in May finally approved one with which even critics can live. Its hand was also forced by the state Legislature, which forced the city to abandon its “U+2” residential occupancy restrictions that prevent more than three unrelated people from living in most housing in Fort Collins.
Phase 2 of the land-use code update will address remaining issues in commercial, industrial, environmental and other areas and will also incorporate code changes that are not directly tied to housing.