Broomfield’s planned downtown is back on the negotiating table.
Facing a key vote last week that might have killed the project, the developers asked to postpone the meeting to discuss with the city how to get back on the same page.
“Itap an open discussion, is how I’d put it right now,” said Joe Vostrejs of Denver-based City Street Investors, one of the two development firms involved.
The proposed $300 million Broomfield Town Square project would bring a 12-foot-deep swimmable and fishable lake surrounded by waterfront retail and apartment complexes to a field adjacent to City Hall. A long-closed Safeway building would be connected to the site and refashioned into a market hall.
Disagreements over the permitting process led the developers to seek an 18-month extension of the projectap timeline, giving them until March 2028 to submit for certain construction permits. They also requested to extend the tax abatement period on the project to coincide with a later groundbreaking date.
But after a contentious public hearing on the development last month, where Broomfield City Council heavily scrutinized the request, Vostrejs decided to take a pause to allow for more conversations.
And now Broomfield is making some requests of its own. The developers met with city staff last week.
“Council is taking the opportunity to say, ‘If we’re going to have a discussion about those things, we’d like to have discussions about other items,’” Vostrejs said.
The two main asks are that the development include more consequences if project milestones aren’t met, as well as revising the requirements around income-restricted apartments.
“We’re in the process of evaluating, are these things that we can agree to or not? And I don’t have an answer to that yet because we just listened to it, it was the first meeting. We just got their list and now we’re evaluating and trying to figure it out,” Vostrejs said.
The developers were required as part of a 2019 development agreement to include income-restricted housing in the project. There are three ways to satisfy the requirement.
The first, having 20% of the units within the market-rate apartment buildings be income-restricted for those making 60% of the area median income, isn’t economically viable, according to the developers.
“That doesn’t pencil. Nobody’s been able to achieve that,” Tim Fredregill said at last month’s public hearing.
Fredregill, of Outpost Partners, is working with City Street to build the project. He said at the hearing that the group previously proposed building a fully income-restricted apartment building with about 100 units to satisfy the requirement. That initiative — the second option — was rejected by the council in 2025.
The developers ultimately decided to go with the third option, paying a fee-in-lieu of building income-restricted housing.
But everything is back on the table now, Fredregill said about the current negotiations.
“They’re just reopening the whole affordability conversation,” he added.
Fredregill said Broomfield has made more requests than just the income-restricted housing and development milestones.
“Itap probably not appropriate now to air the full list, but there were other asks in that conversation,” he added, saying there were seven or eight items.
“We’re engaging in good faith negotiations to find a path forward here.”
Broomfield declined to get into specifics about the talks.
“Because negotiations and discussions are currently ongoing, it would be premature to comment on specific details or timelines,” Broomfield spokeswoman Julie Story said in an email.
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