apountry has baby fever. We haven’t even officially gotten hitched to Rob Walton yet, and already there are fans clamoring for the team’s next owner to give birth to a new stadium?
Hold your water, apountry.
And letap get two things straight:
No. 1: If Walton, the NFL’s fattest cat in the ownership fraternity as soon as his $4.65 billion purchase is rubber-stamped for approval, wants a new playpen to replace a perfectly functional stadium off Federal Boulevard thatap only 22 seasons old, he can build it himself, with all his Walmart money. The idea of taxpayers footing the bill is oh-so-very 1998, as outdated as your dad’s cargo shorts. We won’t get fooled again.
No. 2: The Broncos are Denver. Denver is the Broncos. Don’t even think about uprooting the Broncos and making them the little team on the prairie out by Denver International Airport. Yes, I understand building a football entertainment complex has become the trendy real estate play. But if Walton truly wants to be a good neighbor, he will infuse a city battered by the pandemic with 21st century ideas to reshape the urban landscape rather than flee Denver.
Whatap your fantasy for a new stadium? In my dream, there’s a Super Bowl being played in Denver at a facility with a permanent, translucent roof with massive walls of windows that can be mechanically opened to let in fresh Rocky Mountain air, plus dimmer switches capable of darkening the glass when our Colorado sunshine grows too intense.
But before getting too carried away, let’s keep it real long enough to talk dollars and common sense. The conservative replacement cost for Empower Field at Mile High starts at $2 billion, as we were told back in 2019 by Ray Baker, chairman of the Metropolitan Football Stadium District.
Nine years remain on the lease for the current stadium, whose $400 million price tag was 75% funded through contributions from taxpayers. The cost of doing business in the NFL has gone up astronomically since 2001. The first order of football business for the Walton ownership team, which includes Rob as well as his daughter and son-in-law, will be to secure a contract extension for quarterback Russell Wilson that could well cost a hefty $250 million.
During the bidding process, the Walton group made a strong impression by demonstrating keen interest in learning the intricacies of what makes a pro football franchise tick. It would be shocking if this new ownership team reached a hasty decision on a new stadium, without thoroughly studying the current site and its ability to generate new revenue through a mixed-use development to the south of Empower Field.
Our friend Stan Kroenke, owner of the Avalanche, Nuggets, Rapids and Mammoth, as well as strong ties to the Walmart fortune, poured six years of his time and more than $5 billion of his own money into building a stadium that his Rams and the Chargers call home. A sports palace is not built in a day. Even if the Walton group decided to fast-track a new facility, turning that dream into reality might well require the remainder of this decade.
There are tough choices to be made. Could a new stadium be built on the current site? Itap possible, but would be a tight fit. Acquiring a bigger footprint for development would bring hard questions regarding land use in a city where the lack of affordable housing is a sticky issue.
This much I know is true: The coolest stadiums in the NFL, from Pittsburgh to Seattle, are a fixture in their hometowns, not interlopers in the suburbs.
While Kansas City has a rowdy tailgate scene in parking lots plopped down in the middle of nowhere, traffic at Chiefs games is a nightmare. The monstrosity football-crazy Texans helped Cowboys owner Jerry Jones build a celebration of his ego that feels like a bad shopping mall on steroids. The 49ers made a $1.3 billion mistake to move out of San Francisco.
Earlier this year, not long after planting a “For Sale” sign in the team’s front yard, Broncos president Joe Ellis said the big decision of what to do with the stadium “will be No. 1 on the next owner’s plate.”
There’s no reason for Walton to hurry a $2 billion-plus decision, which isn’t chump change, no matter how rich you are.
Just my two cents: Abandoning Denver for a new home in the suburbs would give the Broncos a bad case of buyer’s remorse. Don’t even think about it.
