As the last days of 2007 slipped away, Denver-based real estate firm McWhinney was closing on the purchase of 1,100 vacant acres at the intersection of Interstate 25 and Colorado 7 in Broomfield. The company outlined its vision for a mixed-use project of immense proportions: corporate headquarters, medical offices, retail, restaurants, hotels and homes would fill the land, purchased for $32.5 million, over the course of two to four decades.
Then the Great Recession hit. Though the Boulder region fared better than many parts of the country, hundreds of jobs were lost over the next two years. In Broomfield, progress on McWhinney’s project ground to a halt.
Today, though, the McWhinneys are back in motion and surging ahead. A charter school has taken root, and Adams 12 plans a STEM campus in the area; Westminster’s Butterfly Pavilion is migrating to the community, and JP Morgan Chase will soon break ground on a 150,000-square-foot, $220 million data center.
The development — long called North Park but now rebranded as Baseline — is one of many construction zones in Broomfield, a city that has been booming longer and stronger than its neighbors to the north, south, east or west by catering to international companies with a no-red-tape approach to building business.
The result is an average wage 58 percent higher than the state as a whole, the fastest job growth in the region and the arrival of a cadre of international companies putting their money on the line to build big and hire hundreds.
“There’s a lot of things cooking right now,” said City Manager Charles Ozaki. “Broomfield has done very well.”
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