Brett Wing

By Will Cornelius
The Surveyor

After a career running, managing and opening grocery stores across the country, Brett Wing has decided to run for an opening on the Town of Berthoud’s Board of Trustees. Appointed as a planning commissioner in September 2022, he says his experience and ability to deliver results would be an asset on the town board.

“I think my pitch would be my experience in working in hundreds, literally hundreds of towns, working with communities, doing developments, taking either old, tired stores or making them into state of the art beautiful ones, taking abandoned lots buildings and making them into something viable and quaint. Creating jobs and creating businesses that enhance the community through property taxes, sales taxes, employment, things like that. That’s my track record for many, many decades.” Wing explains.

Born in London, his family moved to Boulder where Wing attended Boulder High School and later the University of Colorado. During that time, he also started what would become his career. “I went to work at the Safeway on 28th and Arapahoe and I was a bagger. Now, fast forward like 45 years, I spent my whole career in the grocery industry,” Wing says.

Between 2016 and 2020 he was the president and chief operating officer of ShopRite, a major northeast grocery retailer based in New Jersey.

Now retired and residing in Berthoud, Wing wants to leverage the tools he has built up over his career to keep Berthoud special. In addition to serving on the planning commission, Wing also serves as the president of his metro district. “I feel like I’m representing the residents because the developers are these big powerful people who kind of like to do their own thing,” he says. “I’m pushing against those guys all the time because someone’s got to really look out for the residents. So I think it’s the same thing for running for the town board.”

For Wing, the town’s most vital role is to manage growth, starting with the mayor and Board of Trustees. “I think our job is to listen to everybody and say—Okay—is there a compromise there? Yes, we need to grow but we need to keep this small-town feel. It’s so important.”

Connected to growth is addressing housing affordability. He says a recent relator mailer received in the mail showed Berthoud with one of the highest median home prices in the Front Range at $600,000. Wing talks about Fort Collins often ranking high on ‘best places to live in America’ lists, “And yet our medium price house is higher. That’s a problem. I think we really need to address that,” he states.

A major fan of the town’s 2021 Comprehensive Plan, Wing says the document is the guiding light for managing growth in Berthoud. “Somebody has spent a fair amount of money to have some really smart people do that work, I think what we need to do is follow this,” he says. With options for zoning and different land uses for different areas, Wing says, “Let’s follow this plan.”

Drawing on his background in private business, attracting local business to Berthoud is another area Wing would emphasize. “I think we are a really rich environment for local businesses.” Citing increasing traffic flows on U.S. 287 and high incomes in Berthoud, he says it is important for the town to have the right mindset and be business friendly. “I just think we need to have the right pro-business attitude. And don’t confuse that with, you know, 14-story high rises, that’s not the program.”

One theme that encapsulates Wing’s approach to governing for Berthoud’s future is understanding the town’s brand and working towards preserving it. He talks about Berthoud’s brand and what attracts people here and keeps people in the town like open spaces and a small-town atmosphere. “I think it’s the same way with a city, what is our brand? What do you want to see? What do you not want to see? That’s incredibly important.”

Wing says the growth of Berthoud is inevitable in many ways and the same is true for every other nearby town within a half-hour drive. “I don’t think we can have a small-town mentality. We can have a small-town brand,” he says. “You can’t have a small-town mentality. You’ve got to think bigger—because we’re going to be bigger.”