Vacant Fort Collins Walmart to Reopen

You don’t see it happen very often if at all, a store closing, staying vacant, and then reopening years later. Well, it’s about to happen in Fort Collins. Five years after giving way to a new Walmart Supercenter in north Loveland, the vacant “little” Walmart in south Fort Collins will undergo an expansion and rebirth.

The store southwest of College Avenue and Harmony Road closed at 7 p.m. Sept. 18, 2007, and the Supercenter 4.6 miles away at 250 W. 65th St. in north Loveland opened the next morning.

Since then, Walmart shoppers in south Fort Collins have had to choose between the north Loveland store and the newer Timnath store at Harmony and Interstate 25.

According to a building permit application with the city of Fort Collins, the $5.5 million makeover of the old store will include an interior remodel, an expanded entryway and 13,000 square feet of new space for groceries, offices, pharmacy and general merchandise. It’s a Supercenter, basically, that doesn’t have the tire and lube express or garden center,” Kurtis McMurray, a job captain with Law Kingdon Architecture said. “But it has the expanded grocery.”

Fort Collins-based Heath Construction, which recently won the contract to remodel and expand the store will begin work in the next couple of weeks, and plan on having the project completed by spring.