FoCo in 15 Minutes | Flock Camera Showdown, Shake Shack Opens, 45-Mile Trail Complete & $350M Venue

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Have you been waiting like I have patiently for Shake Shack to open? Actually, I just drove by the other day and they've got the branding, the buildings painted white and it is opening up four days early, May 27th, beginning to serve up some fresh burgers and shakes. Super exciting for the area. Now we talked about it a little bit last week, but the shops along College Avenue were just sold by the McQuinnies to national investors along College Avenue, including Ross, Nordstrom Rack, Kava, all of those shops, all the way up to, I believe, Lone Star Steakhouse, which will pave the way for the future development of the 600,000 square foot indoor mall, which has just been stagnant.

They're going to redevelop that. Clyde Wood had talked about it on our podcast on the Fort Collins Fellows a couple of years back about how there's going to be a residential component for rent, for sale product, as well as decreasing it from 600,000 to 400,000 square feet, a little bit more open air, but very exciting. Last week, the 50-year vision was completed on the Poudre River Trail, connecting Bellevue to Greeley, 45 continuous miles of paved, multi-use trail, which is absolutely fantastic, connecting six communities along the Cache-Lapoudre River. Now what's wild was the last one mile segment cost $2 million and it included a bridge over the Greeley number two canal, but the reality is at this point now, you can take a full day ride 90 miles if you started from Bellevue and Greeley and back to Bellevue, but for us, we were looking at it like, hey, listen, we could jump on the power trail, which is soon going to have an underpass of Harmony, making it that much more safe for our family to get from south to north onto the Poudre Trail and then go from there and kind of just explore until we don't want to explore anymore.

So very excited. It's just pretty fantastic continuing to see the reinvestment into what makes Fort Collins and Northern Colorado so great, which is kind of our outdoor lifestyle. The Larimer County posted its lowest local jobless rate in April of 3.2%. The statewide had a jobless rate of 3.9% and we had the lowest of any county at 3.2%. So the great thing is, is Larimer County continues to have strong jobs. I talked with my wife not too long ago because interest rates have been at 6% for the last four years, literally four years on the dot as of now. June of 2026, we were at 6% and she asked me, she said, well, doesn't it not matter because people are just going to stay in their house?

I said, well, yeah, 3% mortgage is fantastic and yeah, you probably won't sell that unless you have large family dynamics, life circumstances, but people are going to move regardless for one reason or another. But the most important thing is jobs because it doesn't matter if you have a 2.5% interest rate or a 7% interest rate. If you don't have the job to supply the money and income to pay that monthly mortgage that comes, it's pesky little coming every month, well then you're going to be forced out of that 2.5% or 3% mortgage if you got to sell. So that being said, 3.2% for Larimer County, good news.

Now we've talked about it in times past, but I've talked about it more and more with other people about this $350 million entertainment venue to be coming to Northern Colorado, which could be Greeley, Fort Collins, and it could rival places like not necessarily Red Rocks because let's just be honest. Red Rocks is a one and one location for events, music, but you know, Fiddler's Green and Ford Amphitheater, I will say there are some phenomenal facilities and venues across the state of Colorado and this could be the next one. That being said, I also was told that at the Air Force Academy, they're rebuilding their sanctuary or whatever and that's a $300 million project and that is not that big of a building.

So sometimes these numbers get thrown around and you're just like, what is happening? At city council this last week, there was nothing necessarily that was voted on besides its items for discussion. There was nothing for it to be discussed, but 34 public speakers came in and chatted about Flock more and they are getting a ton of pressure, city council members, on kind of just x-naying Flock and finding a new automated license plate reader. Man, I'm going to continue to say it, I do believe that there's probably some bad players with Flock and so I'm not going to support Flock by any means, but I do believe this is a technology that could help Fort Collins Police Department.

Might feel a little big brother-ish, but the reality is my wife and I have joked all the time about doing something stupid in public right now is about as dumb as you can get because the reality is there are cameras everywhere. Whether you like it or not, you're going to walk by somebody's house and you're going to be on their Nest camera. You're going to be walking downtown and you're going to be on 18 different cameras that the Downtown Development Authority has there. There are technology out there that has made cameras and the use of them easier and more attainable for the vast majority and economically feasible.

So the idea of not being recorded isn't going to happen. You're going to be recorded whether you like it or not and why not use it for good for the Fort Collins Police Department and hopefully maintain stricter guidelines and kind of rule out some of the bad characters. So that was discussed at length. 34 people came in and chatted about it. Additional people were coming in and talking about the Saunders neighborhood, talking about the development accountability and this is interesting because I will say one of the reasons why you get a good value proposition when you buy in a new development, especially along like phase one, phase two of it, if it's in a multi-phase development, is because you don't always have the amenities there.

And after the amenities come, that's when people really start to be able to see. Because the majority of people don't have the ability to see what things could look like. Or maybe they don't trust that things could come the way that they're promised. The Mosaic Park, a $6.4 million park, and this development has been done for probably a year or two at this point and it's finally getting their 20 acre park built out. So there have been people that have been living in Mosaic for nearly a decade without this park and now the $6.4 million park that's going to get built, you can bet that there's going to be a little pump and values for these surrounding houses because, well, now it's a little bit more walkable. It's a little bit more enjoyable.

But the Saunders neighborhood, they are going to be developing Saunders West and the original, the OG Saunders residents are not happy because they're saying, hey, we don't have non-potable irrigation. We don't have pickleball courts yet. We don't have community gardens, artist studios, but you guys are wanting to push forward with this development. We're not happy. And city council isn't necessarily taking these steps to intervene at this point, but they are suggesting, okay, like, listen, go get legal help or legal guidance. And if they have to do it, or if they're not doing what they're supposed to do, you know, go from there.

Speaking about development, Southeast Community Center Library is, you know, they're going to be doubling their square footage. And that's a pretty exciting thing, but they had some really awesome kind of stats and data points for the library. But the reality of the one, the biggest thing that I want to see is that there's going to be the groundbreaking on June 10th for the Southeast Community Center. It feels like it's a long time coming, but this $76.5 million facility gifted, or not gifted, given by the City of Fort Collins, plus an additional $25 million from the Poudre Libraries. So just at about $100 million facility is going to begin to be built June 10th.

Pretty awesome. From there, you know, there are a lot of things going on this week and moving into next week. Probably one of the biggest things that I've been talking about for a few weeks is the Odell Small Batch Brewers Weekend, May 29th through 31st. So Friday, Saturday, Sunday, down at Odell Brewing, three-day beer festival, music, food, and rare brews. So go check out that if you've got, you know, looking for something to do. I talked about it earlier on this, but go ride the Poudre River Trail. This is an amenity. They cost $2 million to close out its final section, essentially kind of Timnath-Windsor area, but has been built over the last 50 years.

This is one of those amenities that you just, you can't build overnight. I mean, 50 years is not overnight by any means, but I will say that's an exciting thing to do. Otherwise, there's Spring into Summer Festival down at Lions Sunday, May 31st, Outdoor Music Festival, kicking off Colorado's Summer Concert Series. Shake Shack opening up tomorrow. I believe it's opening up at 10 a.m. So if you like your burgers early, go early. And then the Colorado Eagles. I will say I have watched a fair amount of hockey this year, which is interesting. I'm not a huge hockey guy, but I've been really enjoying myself and it looks like the Colorado Avalanche are going to be out after this weekend.

But the Colorado Eagles has got a game May 28th, 7 p.m. Western Conference Finals at Blue Arena in Loveland. There are always something going on kind of in and around Northern Colorado, and Blue Arena is definitely one of the major venues to do all of those things. This is live in Fort Collins. We come to you live every Tuesday. We actually, excuse me, this is not live in Fort Collins. This is my weekly podcast that we used to go live. I'm just out of habit. We've done this for three years, but we are coming at you. If you guys have any questions, I appreciate you guys listening, not necessarily watching, but listening. Feel free to reach out. I appreciate you guys listening to this and myself for all the years. Take care and have a great day.