Loveland's Avenue South Won't Open Until 2027. The Tax Bill Starts Now.

Walk into a new construction home in Kinston this fall and the sales rep will likely point you toward a rendering. Somewhere across Centerra, past the current construction fencing, sits Avenue South: a future retail core with a Whole Foods, restaurants, a corporate headquarters campus, and a walkable street grid that doesn't exist yet. Then you'll sit down to review the closing cost estimate, and there it is: a metro district mill levy and, depending on the builder, a separate special tax rate on top of your base property tax. That line item is real today. The Whole Foods is not.

That gap between what you're paying for and when you'll get it is the thing worth understanding before you sign anything in Loveland's east-side growth corridor.

The Rebrand and the Timeline Behind It

In January 2026, longtime Centerra developer McWhinney Real Estate Services renamed itself Realberry. A month later, the company announced that Centerra South, the 140-acre district it had been planning for years, would launch under a new name too: Avenue South. Horizontal construction, the grading and utility work that comes before any building goes up, began in December 2025. Vertical construction on the retail core started around May 2026. Residential construction inside Avenue South itself isn't expected to begin until 2027.

That timeline matters more than the name change. If you're touring homes in Centerra right now, the amenities driving the excitement, and the price premium, are still one to two full construction seasons away from opening.

What the Corridor Is Actually Selling You

The pitch is genuinely substantial. At full build-out, Avenue South is planned to include 18 restaurants, 33 retailers, and Loveland's first Whole Foods Market, sitting next to the already-established Marketplace at Centerra. The office component includes a 140,000-square-foot corporate headquarters for Hensel Phelps, the general contractor relocating from nearby Greeley, inside a 150,000-square-foot office total. Residential plans call for roughly 1,250 apartments, condos, and townhomes once the district is finished. Separately, in early 2026 the Loveland City Council considered a business assistance agreement to bring a Costco into Centerra, a sign of how much additional commercial interest the corridor is drawing before a single new home in Avenue South has broken ground.

None of that is speculative marketing copy. It's public reporting on a project that's actively under construction. But "under construction" and "open for business" are different states, and the district's own timeline puts daylight between them.

The Citywide Median Doesn't Know Any of This Yet

Here's where it gets useful for anyone comparing neighborhoods. Over the six months ending in early September 2026, the median sold price across all of Loveland was $491,250, according to Resideline's market tracking, with the middle half of sales closing between $410,000 and $587,000. That's the number most portals will hand you as "the Loveland market."

New construction inside Kinston, an already-active neighborhood within Centerra built by Realberry (and sold through builders including Richmond American and David Weekley Homes), starts at $584,950. That's already above the citywide median and sitting near the top of the six-month middle-half range for the entire city, for a home in a neighborhood adjacent to a retail and office district that won't be finished for another year or more.

You're not paying today's Kinston price for today's Kinston. You're paying it partly for what's supposed to be next door in 2027.

The Line Item That Doesn't Show Up in Price-Per-Square-Foot

Centerra's growth has never been funded through the city's general tax base alone. Colorado's Taxpayer Bill of Rights limits how much cities and counties can borrow for new infrastructure, so developments like Centerra rely on metropolitan districts instead: local taxing entities that issue bonds to pay for roads, water, sewer, parks, and trails, then repay that debt through a mill levy charged only to property owners inside the district. It's a genuinely common financing tool across newer Northern Colorado development, and it's how growth pays for its own infrastructure rather than spreading the cost across existing residents elsewhere in the city.

Centerra alone contains a stack of these: Centerra Metropolitan Districts 1 through 5, the Lakes at Centerra Metropolitan Districts 1 through 3, and Kinston Metropolitan Districts 1 through 10. Kinston's own metro district disclosure document gives a sense of scale: as of its 2019 tax year filing, the total overlapping mill levy on a property inside the district, before adding any district-specific levy, already sat at 125.769 mills. Centerra Metro District No. 2 alone carries a permitted maximum levy of up to 29.4 additional mills on top of that. Mill levies move year to year as bonds are repaid, so those exact figures won't be current in 2026, but they show the order of magnitude buyers should expect to see stacked onto a Centerra property tax bill relative to a home outside a metro district.

Then there's the builder-specific layer. At Kinston Mainstreet Townhomes, a David Weekley Homes product inside Kinston, homeowners pay $103 a month in HOA dues plus a special tax rate of roughly 1.15 percent, a separate assessment layered on top of the base property tax specifically to fund local infrastructure. None of that shows up when you're comparing list prices or median dollars per square foot across neighborhoods.

Here's a simplified side-by-side of what that actually looks like:

Why the Timing Gap Matters More Than the Tax Itself

Metro district financing by itself isn't a red flag. It's the standard way Colorado communities fund new infrastructure, and it's disclosed upfront by design, both Kinston and Centerra publish their own FAQ documents explaining exactly how the districts work. The part that deserves more attention than it usually gets is the sequencing.

A buyer purchasing an established home in an older part of Loveland, away from the growth corridor, is generally paying for infrastructure and amenities that already exist. A buyer purchasing new construction in Kinston today is paying a location premium tied to Avenue South's future retail core and office campus, while also paying the metro district levy that funds the infrastructure supporting that future, starting at closing. The bill and the benefit don't arrive at the same time. Given that vertical construction on the retail core only began in mid-2026 and residential construction inside Avenue South itself isn't slated to start until 2027, that gap is measured in years, not months.

That's not a reason to avoid the corridor. It's a reason to price the wait into your decision rather than discovering it later.

What This Means If You're Comparing Neighborhoods Right Now

Ask for the district's current mill levy, not a historical figure from a disclosure document filed years ago. Both the Centerra and Lakes at Centerra metro districts publish property tax calculators tied to the Larimer County Assessor's records, and Kinston's own FAQ points prospective buyers to the district's full Service Plan, available through the Loveland City Clerk's office, which lays out the district's funding structure in detail. Pull the current numbers before you compare a Kinston listing to a resale home elsewhere in Loveland.

Then run the comparison on total monthly carrying cost, not price per square foot. A home priced above the citywide median with a stacked metro district levy and a separate special tax rate can cost meaningfully more per month than a similarly priced resale outside the district, even before HOA dues. If the Whole Foods and the walkable retail core are the reason you want to be in this corridor, that's a legitimate reason to buy here. Just know you're buying the 2027 version of the neighborhood at a 2026 price, with the bill already running.

A Few Direct Questions

Is a metro district the same thing as an HOA? No. A metro district is a unit of local government created to fund public infrastructure through bonds, repaid via a property tax mill levy. An HOA is a private membership organization that manages community amenities and enforces covenants. Some Centerra neighborhoods, including parts of Kinston, have both, which is why you can see a mill levy and a monthly HOA fee on the same property.

Does the mill levy go down over time? The mill levy in most Centerra and Kinston districts is made up of a debt service portion and an operations portion. As bonds get repaid, the debt service piece can decrease, though each district's Service Plan sets its own maximum levy and timeline. Ask for the district's current amortization schedule rather than assuming a rate will drop on a set date.

Does every neighborhood in Loveland have this? No. Metro district financing is tied to newer, master-planned development like Centerra. Established neighborhoods elsewhere in Loveland, built before this financing structure became standard, typically don't carry this additional layer, which is part of why total carrying costs can vary more between Loveland neighborhoods than the median sale price alone would suggest.

If you're weighing a home in Loveland's growth corridor against something in an established part of town, or trying to figure out what a specific Centerra listing's metro district levy actually adds to your monthly payment, that's exactly the kind of comparison Bison Real Estate Group works through with buyers across the Larimer and Weld county corridor every week. Let's connect and get your home valuation, or just get the real numbers on a specific address before you write an offer.