For the Denver Broncos to meet the team’s 2031 deadline to move into a new stadium at Burnham Yard, they must begin construction by next spring.
And for that to happen, they need to reach agreements with landowners and finalize the purchase of all the property in the planned stadium’s footprint.
But one of the most critical and complex negotiations, with Denver Water, has hit a potential snag over whether a hotly contested 5-acre parking lot in Sun Valley — which now serves as supplemental parking for season ticket holders at Empower Field, the Broncos’ current home — should be part of the deal.
The plot of land, called Lot M, is in the middle of a key corridor that neighbors want to see changed from an industrial hotspot to a cozier, more pedestrian-friendly community.
Denver Water officials hope to move part of the utility’s operations there as they make room for the new stadium on its campus next to Burnham Yard. They have identified Lot M as a prime location for Denver Water’s central emergency response facility if the Broncos’ plans for Burnham Yard come to fruition.
But residents of the surrounding area have complained for years that the nearby cloverleaf interchange for Colfax Avenue and Federal Boulevard divides the community and creates unsafe conditions for pedestrians and drivers.
In recent weeks, opponents and supporters of the Lot M plans have kicked off a series of back-and-forth letters to the city over whether Denver Water should be able to take over the property.
The complication is symbolic of a larger theme: While the Burnham Yard deal may seem to some like itap all but finalized, there are still dozens of steps before the Broncos can put shovels in the ground.
Everything thatap happened so far has been like the setup of a — an overly complicated system that incorporates things like domino cascades, marbles rolling on a track and rubberband-powered levers to complete a task.
The Broncos, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s office, Denver Water and community groups have all begun placing the figurative dominoes, toy race cars and pulley system that will make up the process to build the stadium.
But no one has tipped the “start trigger” yet by making key final decisions.
While there’s some disagreement among close observers of the project about when exactly that chain reaction must begin to meet the 2031 deadline, the consensus is that major decisions need to be made in roughly the next two months.
“The timing of everything is constantly on my mind,” said Denver City Councilwoman Jamie Torres, whose district includes both Empower Field and Burnham Yard. “The complexity of this is just hitting everybody in the face.”
The Broncos must relocate several components of Denver Water’s sprawling campus, much of which sits on the site of the future stadium; begin negotiating with the surrounding residents for a community benefits agreement; win various approvals from the often-skeptical council; finalize the purchase of the bulk of Burnham Yard from CDOT; and still acquire another critical plot of .
Before construction can start, a crew will also have to clean up the area through environmental remediation. Team officials will likely seek tax-increment financing for the project, too.
While the overall task isn’t impossible, it becomes more difficult with each passing week, sources familiar with the negotiations say. The team announced Burnham Yard as its “preferred site” for the future stadium in September.
Dispute over parking lot
Resolving the fight over Lot M is just one of the challenges ahead.
In a May 11 letter to Johnston, the council and Denver planning director Brad Buchanan, dozens of advocacy and community groups urged the city to reject plans to use the site for Denver Water infrastructure.
The group called the Colfax and Federal interchange a “physical and symbolic barrier” that must be addressed.
“Introducing a new industrial use on Lot M at this critical moment would be a significant step backward. It would preempt ongoing planning, constrain future redevelopment options, and jeopardize a once-in-a-generation opportunity to realize the community’s vision for this area,” according to the letter.
The group cited several city planning documents, including the and the for the area around Empower Field. Those plans suggest that the interchange should be removed or redesigned. The federal government provided a $2.4 million grant to begin developing a plan to do just that.
But after over a year of analyzing possible sites, Denver Water identified Lot M as its best option for relocating its emergency response facility. The building must be centrally located with easy access to Interstate 25, Interstate 70 and the Sixth Avenue Freeway so that emergency services can be deployed quickly, Denver Water CEO Alan Salazar wrote in a May 26 letter to Torres.
Salazar added that Denver Water never wanted to leave its campus of over 100 years, but that its leaders were working to help make the Burnham Yard stadium a reality “to support the economic prosperity of the largest community we serve.”
“At the same time, we must scrupulously protect all Denver Water ratepayers by avoiding any public subsidy for private development consistent with the Denver Charter,” he wrote in the letter.
The Broncos, which have an agreement to cover Denver Water’s relocation costs, agreed to provide most of the acreage necessary to replace the parts of its campus that the utility will move to the Elyria-Swansea neighborhood, on a property near East 40th Avenue and Clayton Street.
That construction, which hasn’t begun yet, is behind schedule after originally being set to start in May. Denver Water’s Administration Building will remain in place on the northern part of its current campus.
In a statement provided to The Denver Post, Broncos spokesman Patrick Smyth said the team is working to ensure a “smooth transition” for Denver Water and the broader community.
“We continue to have productive conversations with Denver Water about its plans to relocate part of its operation to Lot M,” he said.
CDOT says Denver Water plan won’t interfere
In its own letter on Thursday, CDOT weighed in on the Lot M controversy, saying that its officials believe the goals of improving the area could still be met even if Denver Water builds a new emergency response facility on the property.
“We want to make clear that the Lot M property would not interfere with possible changes further to the west at the interchange itself,” says the letter from Jessica Myklebust, the transportation director for the region.
CDOT will also refocus the study funded by the $2.4 million federal grant to consider the area without Empower Field, assuming that the Broncos build their stadium in Burnham Yard and the city tears down the old one.
“While we understand the urgency many feel to address the longstanding frustrations with the cloverleaf interchange, we cannot ignore the strong possibility of changes to the Stadium District in the near future, and we look forward to complementary study processes that avoid the inefficiencies of duplicative taxpayer expense,” the letter says.
The council would likely have to approve any deal to give Denver Water the Lot M property. The Metropolitan Football Stadium District owns the current stadium’s land but the city has the right to acquire it before any other developers.
A recent meeting between city officials and the community groups ended with a shared agreement that no one wants the disagreement over Lot M to result in the Broncos rescinding their plans to build a new stadium at Burnham Yard, said Dan Shah, the executive director of the West Colfax Business Improvement District and the signatory of the community letter.
“Itap hard for me to believe that the entirety of that (Broncos) development — of that relocation to Burnham Yard — is contingent on this particular site being accommodating of the lay-down. Thatap a little bit hard to believe,” he said.
Shah said he hoped officials would find an alternative site for the facility.
“We’re looking forward to exploring other locations and their pros and cons in Denver,” he said. “In the next weeks, I expect those things to happen.”
Staff writer Luca Evans contributed to this story.
