At the Corner of College and Drake – an Auto Dealership

The former Ghent Motor as it looked on June 23, 2025.

The post WWII years were a time of explosive growth in Fort Collins. The city’s population in 1950 was 14,937. Ten years later it was 25,027, an increase of 40%. And by 1970, it had risen again to 43,337, yet another near doubling. Residents living in Fort Collins from 1950 to 1970 saw the population triple!

There were a few different reasons for this population explosion. For one thing, the GI Bill enabled many veterans to attend college who might never have even considered it an option before. The student body at Colorado A&M, which became Colorado State University in 1957, swelled. And many graduates, and their families, remained in Northern Colorado when they were done with school. There were also several new businesses moving into the area.

Woodword Governor established their first factory in Fort Collins in 1955. Hewlett-Packard (HP) opened a plant in 1960 and LEGO Samsonite’s plant opened just five years later, both in Loveland. In August 1971, Kodak opened their Windsor plant. This is in addition to locally grown businesses such as Forney Industries (founded in 1932 in Forney’s basement in Old Town West) and Aqua Tec (now known as Waterpik, founded in 1962).

Scott McGuire posted this image (with the markups) to Facebook, but I haven’t been able to locate the original version.

Housing was an increasing necessity as the population boomed. New developments were popping up all around town, and they were all being designed in a fashion distinctly different than the neighborhoods developed from before the Second World War.

Although some residents owned automobiles in the early twentieth century, cars were still largely a luxury and a status symbol. Most people got around on foot, by bicycle, or by trolley. After World War II, however, automobile ownership became increasingly common, and many families had at least one car. As a result, neighborhoods no longer needed to be as densely packed or as easily walkable, and corner stores became less essential. Instead, new subdivisions featured curving streets designed for comfortable driving, lined with rows of similarly styled homes–what we might refer to as “suburban sytle development” today.

South College Heights, shown in the 1956 aerial photo above, was one such neighborhood. In the midst of nothing but farmland, a new development of low cost, single family homes helped to house veterans of the war and the increasing numbers of Easterners moving to Fort Collins for jobs with Kodak, Waterpik, Woodward Governor, etc.

If you look to the very upper left of the photo above, you’ll see the Anderson’s farm. It sat on the southwestern corner of Drake Road and College Avenue. The Anderson’s had bought the farm from the Drakes. The first farmer on that land had been William A. Drake, who had one of the largest lambing operations in Northern Colorado. He was also a Colorado Senator for many years. And it was William Drake for whom Drake Road was named. (Learn more about William Drake in the article entitled, “At the Corner of College and Drake – a Lamb Farm.“)

Ads from the Coloradoan on February 15, 1966 and August 17, 1965.

As people lived further and further away from work and shopping, cars became even more important to own, which made auto dealerships increasingly lucrative. The Ghent family (pronounced “gent”) had begun their foray into the auto business with Frank Ghent who began selling cars in 1926. In 1940, he purchased the Ford dealership located at 205 N. College (where Beau Jo’s Pizza is today). 

Ghent sold new and used vehicles, repaired vehicles, and sold vehicle parts. Each part of the business was located on a different lot. With the growth in the market, the family decided in the 1960s that an expansion was in order, especially if they could find a way to host all of their services in one location. 

Ghent Motor purchased five acres on the southwest corner of Drake and College, the former site of Anderson’s farm, and used the land as an additional car lot. (See ad on the right above.) But the goal was to eventually use the site for more than just car storage. The Ghents did their research, traveling the United States to see how other auto dealers were modernizing their facilities. They came back with grand ideas of how to turn their business into a one-stop shop for all things automobile. 

An announcement about the planned new Ghent Motor center was published in the Coloradoan on February 27, 1966.

Not only was the new site built to display, house, and repair automobiles, but the very architecture of the site was designed with the fast-paced world of car drivers in mind. Prior to the automobile, stores (even carriage shops, the predecessor of the auto dealership) were built with signs and displays that were easy for a pedestrian to peruse. And businesses were slotted close together so that pedestrians had shorter distances to walk from shop to shop. But once customers started passing businesses by automobile, the signage needed to be large enough to read at speed. And displays had to be grand enough in size that you could get a sense of what was being sold even if you only were able to glance while passing.

Of course, if you could set your store at an intersection, then as people sat at the light, they’d have nothing better to do than to look your way.

All of this was in the minds of the Ghents as they considered what land to buy and how to set the buildings upon it. Their new showroom not only had a full curtain wall of glass — so that you could easily see the cars inside as you passed by — but the building itself was oriented towards the intersection, so that sitting at the light could mean looking right towards the front of the business.

Ghent Motor Co. ads in the Coloradoan from August 28 and 30, 1966.

At the time, many people thought the company was being foolhardy in moving so far away from town. The five acres that the new dealership was on had to be annexed into the city, and it was surrounded on almost all sides by farm land (though that quickly changed as sprawling suburban-style housing developments sprung up). But, there were some local business folk who fully agreed with the choice to move south. Along with anouncements in the Coloradoan of the dealership’s new location was a full page ad from University Plaza welcoming Ghent Motor to the neighborhood. University Plaza was Fort Collins’ first mall, located about half a mile north of Drake Road.

Being so far outside of town, though, did mean that some improvements had to take place. Drake road was widened, water and sewer lines were installed, and an electrical substation was constructed nearby.

Road widening along Drake Rd. in 1968
(FCMoD, C01544).

The grand showroom and matching used-car salesroom were built in a classic Modernist style. The expansive use of glass created a sense of openness to the outdoors that was common in the movement, while allowing passing motorists an opportunity to see the five display cars housed inside. The use of moss rock on the exterior was also popular in mid-century Colorado, reinforcing the sense that the building was connected to the natural landscape and, in particular, to the nearby Rocky Mountains.

The main showroom was built on a small hill that had been sculpted onto the site in order to set the building above the sea of cars that were on display in the vast parking lot in front of the building. In fact, the parking lot itself was a characteristic indicative not only of the use of the building as a car dealership, but of the time period as well.  Prior to World War II, most stores were built right up against the sidewalk. Space for vehicles was offered on the street or possibly behind the building. By setting the buildings back from the street and surrounding them with ample parking, an arrangement that was groundbreaking at the time but has since become commonplace, Ghent Motor embraced the realities of the automobile age. The site was designed to welcome drivers, making it easy for customers to arrive in their old cars, browse the showroom, and drive away in a new vehicle.

The Ghents had two showrooms on the site. The main building was for new cars, but set back a little on the north side of the lot was a mini-version of the main showroom, the site of the company’s used car sales. 

Behind the main showroom was multiple stalls (32, according to a historic preservation document) for auto repairs. There was a drive-thru window to pick up auto parts. And though 3 acres of the property was covered in buildings and cars on display, there was an additional 2 acres of pavement for customer parking. That’s the equivalent of two Old Town residential blocks set aside just for parking. 

So not only was the site set up for the purpose of catering to an automobile oriented set of businesses, but it was also set up with car use in mind. It had ample parking, a drive-thru window, and a raised, wall-to-wall curtain window on the showroom to provide a sales display that even passing motorists could take in. 

Ghent Motor as it looked prior to opening. (FCMoD, ph_10758).

There is so much about the architecture and layout of the Ghent Motor site that we take for granted today. Of course businesses are built with a sea of parking around them. Of course drive thru windows are convenient. Of course buildings are set back from the road. Most of the development from 1960 through to today looks exactly like this. But… at the time that Ghent Motor was designed and built, these features were considered cutting edge. While other auto dealers were still in cramped quarters downtown, or in only marginally larger facilities north of the Poudre river, Ghent Motor was setting the stage for a whole new look in Fort Collins. 

The Meadowlark subdivision is visible in the foreground of this late 1960s photo that includes Ghent Motor in the background. (FCMoD, C01323).

The Ghents sold their business around 1988 to Kriss Spradley and William (Bill) Barr. Around the turn of the century, the dealership transitioned from Spradley Barr Ford to Spradley Barr Mazda and was later rebranded as 2Mazda before the property was ultimately sold for redevelopment.

The site was scraped in April 2026 to make way for a gas station and possibly a new electrical substation — over 50 years of history deleted from the landscape.

This article is the second in a three part series. To read the first article, check out “At the Corner of College and Drake – a Lamb Farm.” The third article will be published on urbanfortcollins.com within the next few weeks.

 Sources for this article:

Several additions of the the Coloradoan, accessed through newspapers.com.

Fort Collins History Connection: the source of images not from the newspaper.

Additional Tidbit

The carriage steps from the days of the Drake farm remained on the property up until 2026. They sat just to the north of the entrance to the showroom. The steps were rescued by the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery which relocated them to Heritage Courtyard, next to the historic Carnegie Library on Mathews Street downtown.