Perhaps it����ap in the business offices on the third floor, with copious natural light, soaring, exposed wood beams and ceiling, a large outdoor patio overlooking the practice fields and even a golf simulator.

Or perhaps it����ap down on the players’ first floor, in the cavernous locker room, a weight room that will make leg day seem like a good idea or a state-of-the-art training and rehabilitation area that is filled with cutting-edge technology and design detail down to the exact size of the drawers.

All-Pro right guard Quinn Meinerz parked underground in the players’ lot for the first time and realized his truck wouldn’t be “150 degrees” after a long training camp day baking in the Front Range sun.

Then he walked into the building and, right through the doors, found paths to the locker room, weight room and cafeteria.

“In the previous building, the weight room, you have to walk,” he said. “It sounds so spoiled, but you have to walk a little bit to go to the weight room. Right now, the weight room is connected to the locker room pretty much, so everything is so close.

“Those little minutes of time do add up throughout the day, so it’ll be nice to just have a really good flow of traffic and everything.”

Somewhere along the way, it����ap natural to wonder: Is there such a thing as too nice?

Broncos owner and CEO Greg Penner has thought about that question and has at least one antidote.

“Well, I think you’ve met our head coach,” he said with a smile during a recent news conference in the atrium of the Broncos’ new building, which opened for business in July.

Sean Payton didn’t laugh when relayed the comment, but he made it clear that the new digs had been part of his opening message to the 2026 Broncos when they reported for training camp this summer.

His message: It����ap very possible to have a team that stinks residing in a building that shines.

“There have been a ton of new facilities with teams that have had success and a ton of new facilities with teams that haven’t,” Payton said. “I don’t think there’s any story or correlation. It����ap about the guys in the room, what we do on the field. If we’re not successful, it����ap going to be because we didn’t do a good enough job coaching, we didn’t execute well enough. It����ap not going to be because of the new digs. If we are successful, it����ap going to be because we did the stuff needed. It����ap not going to be because of the new digs.”

Building the best to be the best

That����ap mostly true. A new building can’t give Payton and offensive coordinator Davis Webb better ideas for third-and-short. It won’t make a game-saving tackle or force a fumble at a critical moment.

What the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group is betting on, though, is that over time the building will make a difference in football and business.

The bells and whistles are part of that equation, to be sure. Having the best in training and rehab tools won’t prevent all injuries, but if it prevents one or two per year, that����ap real, on-the-field value. If having nearly all business employees relocated from the stadium to the new HQ leads to better ideas, that����ap good for the bottom line, too.

“It����ap a testament to ownership, to Greg and Carrie, the investment they’ve made into football, football first, but also our business to bring nearly 100 business staff into the building to create culture, to design a building with football in mind,” president Damani Leech said. “The spaces are really well thought of. Very intentional layout. The player path of travel was really, really important.

“I love coming to work every day, and I think everybody else does too.”

But there’s another element, slightly less tangible, that might not be apparent on a quick tour of the building but undoubtedly can be felt by players and employees who show up to work there every day.

You’ve got the best of the best. No stone is left unturned.

Leech put it flat-out in early August: “There’s really nothing that we didn’t get. Nothing.”

The result: There is really no excuse for not performing.

“Any time we’re going to — whether it����ap this facility, a new stadium — we’re trying to raise the expectations,” Penner said. “And our expectation is that we want to win championships.

“We’re going to do everything it takes and provide the resources that are necessary to do it.”

What two mixed-use districts in Atlanta reveal about Broncos’ Burnham Yard plans

Now four years into owning the team, Penner and Carrie Walton-Penner increasingly see their vision coming to fruition. They’ve solidified the top of their football operation with coach Sean Payton and general manager George Paton, extending each of their contracts this spring with deals of equal length. They’ve got a quarterback in place in Bo Nix. They’ve been to an AFC Championship Game. They’ve designed and built a new home base for the franchise and are in the process of attempting to do the same with a stadium and mixed-use district at Burnham Yard. They’ve overhauled the club’s foundation and community efforts.

The Penners had high expectations from the start in August 2022, to be sure. They showed they weren’t afraid of change when they fired Nathaniel Hackett after 15 games and took on a record $85 million in dead salary cap a year later by releasing Russell Wilson.

With each passing year and each additional project, though, the room for excuses dwindles further.

That doesn’t mean the Broncos must win Super Bowls every year or else. Penner said recently he’s wary of “binary answers” when it comes to what defines success in a particular season.

Still, at this point, the expectations set from the corner offices in the club’s new building are high. And they’re not coming down any time soon.

“I’m excited,” Penner said. “I feel like each season we come in and we’re more prepared and a better roster and a more complete coaching staff and all the pieces are there since the first season. That����ap how I feel about it now. We can’t wait to get out there. We have all the pieces, and we have the right culture.

“Again, we’re providing the right resources. You always need a little bit of luck. And you just have to go out and perform.”

The importance of this spot isn’t so much the smash burgers or the black and white shakes themselves, but rather why it exists at all.

The quick-stop restaurant, an Irish pub, and a giant, 70,000-square-foot — a theater specializing in immersive experiences — are early anchors in the Centennial Yards mixed-use development. Eventually, the 52-acre wedge is slated to be packed with entertainment, hotels and condos.

There’s already one hotel and a condo building open and another hotel and what is expected to be a roughly 5,000-seat venue are under construction just on the other side of a temporary wall.

The ties to Denver here are fairly obvious.

A mixed-use district next to a football stadium and built over — literally in this case — train tracks in what used to essentially be inaccessible industrial land? That sounds like Burnham Yard’s music.

The Broncos, as it turns out, think the same.

Before a preseason game against the Falcons next door at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Broncos president Damani Leech and other team executives toured , sources told The Post. The tour has been on the club’s radar for some time. Owner and CEO Greg Penner mentioned Centennial Yards to The Post as an interesting project nearly a year ago when his franchise named Burnham Yard as its preferred site for a stadium and adjoining district.

It is one of two major mixed-use districts in the Atlanta area the Broncos have visited while planning their own, with , which surrounds the Braves’ baseball stadium in Cobb County, as the more talked-about.

“It used to be called The Gulch,” RCLCO managing director Erin Talkington said of Centennial Yards before the development really ramped up. “It����ap been used as parking lots, but it����ap several stories below the grade of parking and building entrances and people have been trying to develop it for years

“It����ap just been prohibitively expensive.”

Now, though, it’s an ambitious project in the midst of downtown.

Lessons to learn from Atlanta

No two projects are the same, of course, and Penner told The Post last fall that the Broncos “haven’t seen something that����ap exactly what we want to do because we’ll create something that����ap unique to this market and both what����ap interesting to our fans but also what����ap interesting to the community on a year-round basis.”

There are things to learn from these spots in Atlanta, however — especially since the Broncos recently released a new round of renderings about their own plans for Burnham Yard and this summer have put a somewhat finer point on the time horizon for various stages of development around a stadium they hope to have open by the 2031 NFL season.

At Centennial Yards, it����ap impossible to miss that the place is a work in progress, but it����ap also possible to walk through the existing part without feeling as though it����ap a construction site. That will be important for the Broncos as they move through Phase 1 of construction and toward the stadium’s opening — assuming the myriad processes with community groups and the city of Denver are completed over the coming months.

“We want it to be a place that is connected to the existing neighborhood, a place where people feel connected, where they feel like they can live,” Leech said at a recent small area plan meeting at the . “A place that remembers and celebrates the history — the great history of this site that goes back hundreds of years. A place where people feel like they can move and gather … and spend time comfortably in the site.

“And then, finally, a place where residents, businesses and guests all feel like they can grow and prosper for the next several generations. That is what’s guided a lot of what you’re going to see.”

The renderings the team has released will change in future iterations, but they won’t be fully realized by 2031. Construction around the district in Phases 2 and 3 will take “many years,” Leech said, meaning it will be a decade or more before the plans are fully realized.

Much of the Phase 1 buildout around the stadium shown in recent renderings and planning documents features work in what the Broncos are calling “Village Center,” which is on the eastern flank of the district between the stadium site and the La Alma and Lincoln Park neighborhoods. In previous filings, the Broncos have proposed zoning in that stretch that will make it the entertainment hub of the district.

Creating connectivity

One interesting factor to watch will be how much residential build-out is completed by the time the stadium opens. The Broncos, of course, play just 10 games a year in the stadium, and even with concerts and other events a stadium will draw, there aren’t a ton of event days over the course of a year.

Even in a place like The Battery, where the Braves play 81 home games a year, the district’s designers prioritized having residential units ready early in the buildout.

“You want your (residential) there pretty much first, right, to get people there,” Lauren Standish, a principal at that worked on the design of the district, said earlier this year while estimating that 80% of the foot traffic on non-game days in the area comes from people who live right there. “And then that spills off. They’ve got a Whole Foods there now, they’ve got bowling and other corporate offices that have come up.

“That whole ring around the stadium is just going crazy, too.”

Burnham Yard, of course, has the La Alma and Lincoln Park neighborhoods to the east, Baker and Santa Fe to the north, and is closer to downtown, so its foot traffic patterns will differ from those of either of the districts in Atlanta.

What is clear, though, is that these places provide a glimpse at what a long-term project at Burnham Yard will look like in the medium term and much further down the road toward completion.

“As much of the development is built around that daily activation, the sense of place and creating this new node of social activity with direct linkage to the stadium, that became the glue for that mixed-use development,” Todd Powers, another principal at HGOR, said. “How do all the buildings relate to each other? What is the open space connectivity and how do people move through to the stadium?

“Also creating day-to-day programming for vitality — porches and patios and daily events, outdoor activities.”

Broncos president Damani Leech said Monday that SRM Concrete is the new “official concrete supplier of the Denver Broncos.”

The Tennessee-based company is the largest concrete company in the country, operating more than 560 concrete plants, quarries, and cement terminals across 24 states.

It was 10 little acres, though, that put SRM on the Broncos’ radar in a different way. The company purchased a plant four years ago that happened to be right next to Burnham Yard, a site the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group not long after began to focus on as a potential site for a new stadium and mixed-use district.

The sides negotiated over the land for months before closing a sale from SRM to the Broncos last week for $55 million.

Now the Broncos and SRM are not just real estate transactors but also corporate partners.

“With a growing presence in this region and an established reputation for quality and dependability, SRM Concrete is an ideal partner during such a transformational time for our organization,” Leech said in a statement announcing the deal. “We look forward to a successful relationship with SRM Concrete as we continue building for the future.”

SRM Concrete CEO Jeff Hollingshead, in a statement, said his company understands, “the importance of strength, reliability, and performance –values that align closely with the Broncos organization. We look forward to supporting the team, its fans, and the communities they serve.”

SRM Concrete submitted plans earlier this summer for a new plant in north Denver.

The sides did not say anything Monday about actual concrete production, but if the Broncos in the coming months get the green light to build a stadium and district at Burnham Yard, they are going to need a lot of it.

Now they have an official supplier with a footprint literally on site.

The sea of orange splashed across the seats, home or away, speaks to the bond between rabid supporters and the team.

But mention the possibility of PSLs becoming part of the proposed privately-funded, retractable-roof stadium at Burnham Yard and eyes narrow, and expletives fly.

It is another example of The Man sticking it to the average fan.

Having to pay a one-time fee for the right to pay for season tickets? As a financial mechanism, it is a crowbar slammed across the shins.

Emotionally, I feel for the fan who gets priced out. But economically, I am on the Broncos’ side.

Even though president Damani Leech admitted that using PSLs was likely, co-owners Greg Penner and Carrie Walton Penner have not made a final decision.

“Really, it����ap the furthest thing from our minds right now. It����ap still a preferred site, but it����ap not finalized that we’re going to be in that location. Obviously, that����ap where we really want to be. So really, we haven’t even gotten to PSLs yet,” Greg Penner said Tuesday. “Our season ticket holders are vital to our organization and we’re going to keep them informed every step of the way once we get there.”

Because PSLs — personal seat licenses — have left some loyal sports fans SOL around the country, they have taken on a boogeyman quality.

At the risk of spamming my own email, I counter with simple math and fairness.

I would rather people who use the facility take on the burden of additional costs than taxpayers.

Not long after former Hall of Fame owner Pat Bowlen suggested the Broncos could move to Los Angeles nearly three decades ago, voters approved a sales tax that funded 75% of the cost of the current stadium, capped at $270 million.

How many of those taxpayers have attended a Broncos game?

The team has 22,000 season ticket accounts with a 99.5% renewal rate and 100,000 people on a waiting list. Based on supply and demand, owning a season ticket is a privilege. There will be those who die waiting for the opportunity to purchase.

Could new well-heeled folks change the fabric of the crowd from blue-collar screamers to cheese nibblers and wine sippers? Sure.

However, that transformation, if we are being honest, began with the construction of the current stadium. It has never been as loud as old Mile High.

Would it stink for a lifelong season ticket holder to get priced out? Yes.

Is that worse than never getting a chance to buy season tickets? Or paying taxes for a place you will never step foot in? Nope.

“You are not going to hear a lot of complaints from economists who view this through the public policy lens. They will have no problem with taxes on tickets for the users,” said Geoffrey Propheter, an associate professor of public affairs at CU-Denver. “But yes, it can be a shock to some, particularly if you have the perspective that they are part of the community. How can you do it to them?”

Because the Broncos ownership group is the richest in the NFL, there are those who view PSLs as unnecessary, if not a full-on betrayal.

But last time I checked, owning a team and building a stadium is a business.

Could this ownership group, given its personal net worth, privately fund the stadium and not use PSLs? In theory, yes. But in practical terms, PSLs have become equity and a way to recoup or raise capital for projects of this magnitude.

I would rather the owners tack on the equivalent of a resort fee to season ticket holders than ask for public money.

The last stadium built without taxpayer dollars or PSLs was in 2002 in New England. In the last 20 years, only the construction of Lucas Oil Stadium and State Farm Stadium did not use PSLs when first built, though the majority of the costs were subsidized by the public.

For those who say the Broncos should be different, should be like the Patriots, consider that Gillette cost $325 million. Per The Los Angeles Times, the SoFi Stadium price tag was $5.5 billion in 2020.

Given the rising construction costs, it is highly unlikely the Burnham Yard palace will come in under $3 billion, and that is only if it stays on track for a 2031 opening.

Let’s say the Penners use PSLs.

Haven’t they earned the benefit of the doubt that they will do it in a reasonable way?

In the four years since they purchased the team for $4.65 billion, they have made a larger impact than Patrick Surtain II or Bo Nix. They hired Sean Payton, kept George Paton, signed core players to nearly a half billion in contract extensions, poured in $100 million to the current stadium, financed a $175 million state-of-the-art team headquarters and are on pace to give $10 million to the community this year.

They brought one of the league’s flagship franchises back to life. The playoff drought ended. The streak without an AFC West title and postseason win is in the past.

Greg Penner said he expects Super Bowl titles. As in plural.

And the owners have committed to this goal by investing in everything from injury research to improving recovery to nutrition to give the Broncos the best chance to win.

The owners have prioritized the fans’ feedback since taking over, running surveys to improve the gameday experience and gauge reactions to things like PSLs.

It will be painful for some season ticket holders. But it will not be a blindside hit.

Looking at how the owners have gone about their business, save for their support of Jonathon Cooper, there is reason to believe the PSL program will have elasticity.

If someone purchases season tickets for several years, perhaps the Broncos could return part of the money the fan paid for the PSL. The PSL program could also offer a program to upgrade seats and provide steep discounts on concessions and merchandise and priority access to other events at the stadium.

If the team remains a contender, more likely with this ownership group, it also creates a path for the season ticket holder to sell a PSL for profit.

PSLs on the secondary market can cost as little as $75 dollars for the Browns to as much as $450,000 for the 49ers, according to pslsource.com.

There are going to be those who get squeezed out. I am not naive to this. I don’t like it.

But I would rather have a few thousand upset season-ticket holders than a few hundred thousand furious taxpayers.

Penner, speaking with reporters during a Broncos training camp practice, said he agreed with an analogy made in a Denver Post story this summer that the myriad processes, tentacles and complexities of trying to build a stadium and surrounding mixed-use district at the now-defunct former rail yard are akin to building a Rube Goldberg machine.

“I think that����ap a good analogy and I think everybody involved in the process has the intent to do the right thing and is trying to do the right thing,” Penner said. “But it����ap a lot of moving pieces and it����ap complex. Our focus is squarely on the 2031 opening and trying to get that done, but it����ap not going to be easy.”

The Broncos have cleared one hurdle this week, closing a deal with SRM Concrete for nearly 10 acres worth of parcels on the northern portion of the proposed district. The club paid $55 million for the parcels, according to real estate records obtained by The Post, meaning it paid more for the wedge of land than it cost to buy the 57-acre rail yard itself ($45.8 million). Penner essentially echoed what team president Damani Leech said earlier this month: If the club has control over a process — such as stadium and district design — it is advancing efficiently. But in areas that require negotiation and collaboration with community groups and government entities, the going is much slower.

Penner, though, said the club expected this when it began zeroing in on Burnham Yard as its preferred site.

“I don’t know that it����ap been more frustrating than I thought,” Penner said Tuesday. “We went into this knowing that, if you’re going to do a project of this scale — and we knew when we started focusing on this site specifically that it was going to be more challenging. But we also really want to stay in Denver if we can and deliver a stadium in this market that is a vital part of the downtown.

“But if you’re doing a project in an area like that, it����ap just harder. So I think we went in with our eyes wide open about the challenges and we’ll keep working through it.”

The club has said in community meetings and planning documents that its target start date for construction is in the spring of 2027. That will require many steps and processes to be completed in the next approximately six to eight months. The team needs a completed community benefits agreement with the Burnham Yard Community Association, an approved small-area plan, a district master plan, environmental remediation at the yard itself, a determination from the Denver Urban Renewal Authority on whether the site qualifies for tax increment financing and more.

“It����ap still a preferred site, but it����ap not finalized we’re going to be in that location,” Penner said. “Obviously that����ap where we really want to be.”

The Broncos have said that construction of a stadium and the first phase of the district are projected to take 3.5 to 4 years. Hence Penner’s continued use of the word “aggressive” when it comes to having shovels in the ground next year to put a stadium on track to comfortably open for the 2031 season.

So far, the Broncos say they don’t have a firm deadline for when they absolutely must have a go/no-go, though to open in 2031 they’d almost have to have a high degree of confidence by early 2027.

“Obviously at some point you hit a deadline, but we haven’t set a specific date that we have to have it all lined up,” Penner said. “At some point there will be a judgment call, I’m sure, where not everything is done. But we’re not at that point yet. You don’t want to start these massive projects without most, if not all, of your ducks lined up because you’re going to end up spending a lot more money.

“So we’re going to do it right, and when we start, we’re going to do it expeditiously.”

The Broncos have closed a deal with SRM Concrete to purchase six parcels owned by the company that span nearly 10 acres in the northern part of the club’s planned stadium and surrounding mixed-use district at Burnham Yard.

“This agreement with SRM Concrete represents another meaningful step our organization has taken to advance plans for a future stadium and surrounding neighborhood at Burnham Yard,” Broncos president Damani Leech said in a statement provided to The Post. “We’re grateful to CEO Jeff Hollingshead and the entire SRM Concrete team for their partnership, collaboration and shared commitment throughout this process.”

See Broncos’ updated Burnham Yard renderings for proposed mixed-use district

The six parcels, according to city real estate records, have a combined assessed value of more than $15.6 million. Financial terms were not immediately available on the Broncos’ acquisition.

“We are pleased to finalize this agreement with the Denver Broncos and play a small part in helping move the Burnham Yard vision forward,” Hollingshead said in a statement. “This project represents an exciting opportunity for Denver, and we're proud to contribute to something that we believe can have a meaningful impact on the community for generations to come.”

The club and the concrete company have been negotiating for months over a potential sale, but SRM was one of the longest-running holdouts in the area immediately surrounding Burnham Yard. Now the two sides have come to an agreement.

In the spring, Hollingshead told The Post that he was sure the sides “can come to an agreement that works for both of us.”

“We’re not going to be the reason why the stadium’s not getting built,” Hollingshead added then.

In the end, SRM Concrete fit in somewhere down the list of potential issues around Burnham Yard, checking in after matters like the ongoing community benefits agreement negotiation, the complex and time-consuming efforts to relocate Denver Water from its site just west of SRM Concrete and more.

The six SRM Concrete parcels are 1100 N. Raritan, 1173 N. Quivas, 1195 N. Quivas, 1151 N. Quivas, 1590 W. 12th Ave. and 1570 W. 12th Ave.

The parcels combine to form a wedge that sits between the Denver Water headquarters and the now-defunct railyard. Regarding the Broncos’ proposals for a retractable-roof stadium and mixed-use district, the SRM Concrete parcels occupy a significant portion of the northern part of the proposed stadium site and also part of a planned, residential-heavy area that recent renderings refer to as the “North End.”

With the SRM Concrete deal closed and a purchase agreement for Burnham Yard itself finalized for $45.8 million -- that deal is slated to close later this year — most of the real estate transactions planned by the club in the proposed stadium area are now completed or essentially completed.

SRM Concrete, based in Tennessee, owns more than 560 concrete plants across 24 states. The company had just purchased the Burnham Yard-adjacent plant in 2022.

The renderings, the team says, show the latest in what is expected to be many iterations of plans for more than 100 acres of total land that surround a stadium plot on the now-defunct rail yard and surrounding real estate acquisitions. The renderings do not include any images of a proposed stadium itself and team president Damani Leech said Saturday those will likely not come for a while yet as myriad approval processes and negotiations move slowly forward amid — in some instances — simmering frustrations from team officials and community coalitions.

What the just-released renderings do show, though, is the manner in which the Broncos, who have hired Denver-based Tryba to do the design work and master planning for their multi-use district, currently see the areas around a potential stadium site coming together over the course of the next five years and then well beyond.

The team says the updated renderings also take into account “extensive” input from community groups and information gathered over the past nearly year since the club announced Burnham Yard as its preferred stadium and district site.

“These updated plans will continue to evolve as Burnham Yard becomes a place where neighbors, fans and visitors can gather, connect and belong year-round,” the team said in sharing the renderings via social media.

The plans unveiled are designed by Tryba and build off of the work that Sasaki, which partnered with the Broncos until early this year to do the initial planning work, submitted to the city as an initial infrastructure master plan this spring and presented at a community meeting in February.

“We’ve been working with Manica, a global, world-renowned architecture firm for a number of months now and continue to progress on designs of the stadium,” Leech said Saturday. “I think the things that we’ve seen have been pretty beautiful. (Broncos owners Greg and Carrie Penner) are very, very involved and have a great relationship with David (Manica) and his team and things are going well there.

“Our (district) master plan continues to iterate and evolve. Sasaki got us to a really great point. We’ve brought on Tryba Architects, which is a local Denver-based firm that����ap done a lot of great work here in Denver, to help us continue to evolve that master plan.”

Among the changes to the district plan the Broncos have made in their updated plans include:

* Eliminating a crossing at 11th Avenue and slowing vehicles, which the team says will improve pedestrian and bike safety, along with closing additional crossings on event days

* An increased emphasis on larger parks and green spaces — around 11-12 acres of public open space — that can be used year-round

* Removing the freight rail tracks and crossings, which the team says will reduce conflict and transition those into a new tree-lined trail

* Connecting the neighborhood by extending historic streets through Burnham Yard, including adjusting 8th Avenue into a slower main street feel

The new renderings also add some names and context to what different parts of the district are expected to feature. The initial IMP showed an emphasis on residential building on the north end of the district and an entertainment zone running north to south along the eastern flank of the district, bordering the La Alma-Lincoln Park neighborhoods. In the updated renderings, that area is named “Village Center.” Directly south of that stretch is an area the new renderings refer to as “Turntable Green,” designed and built around an old railroad turntable that the Broncos have said from the start they wanted to feature as a landmark in the area. That is also near the old diesel locomotive shop, another staple of the district that could end up as some kind of market or large, open food hall.

The renderings also include an area around what is expected to be a substantially expanded light rail stop at 10th Avenue and Osage Street.

The southwest corner of the district, directly south of the proposed stadium site, is called “South End” in the new renderings and, in the original infrastructure master plan calls for zoning that is primarily mixed commercial and industrial.

The Broncos said Tuesday they expect the plans will continue to change and evolve as more input is gathered from the community and also stakeholders including city and state officials, RTD and others as the processes of getting green lights to start building continue to move forward.

Historic Denver president and CEO John Deffenbaugh said in a statement provided to The Post that his group is, “is encouraged by the continued commitment to preserve the historic Locomotive Shop and incorporate the turntable pit into the future development. But history goes beyond the tangible.”

The nonprofit studied stadium-anchored districts in North America and Europe earlier this year and, according to Deffenbaugh, “the most enduring projects weave historic places into new development, strengthen the neighborhoods around them, and ensure that the benefits of redevelopment extend well beyond the stadium itself. …

“History does not end at the property line. As Burnham Yard continues to evolve, that connection should remain visible in the place it becomes.”

“Do they necessarily need the money? I don’t think so,” Marilyn Venard of Littleton, a Broncos season-ticket holder for seven decades, told me Monday when I brought up the concept of personal seat licenses, or PSLs. “If they want to keep happy fans, they wouldn’t charge it.”

Marilyn is one of those orange-and-blue lifers, the spine and soul of ����apountry. She’s had seats in the north end zone at old Mile High, and now Empower Field at Mile High, since 1965. She’s watched a chain of quarterbacks that runs from Jacky Lee and Mickey Slaughter to Bo Nix.

Venard didn’t hesitate to renew her season tickets for 2026 for $3,000, including parking. boasting an estimated net worth of $146 billion, it does raise eyebrows. And blood pressures.

“Let’s put it this way: I think paying for the privilege of paying them money is something I find a little offensive,” Steve Altman told me by phone Monday. He’s held season tickets at Mile High and Empower since 1987.

“And frankly, I think with this particular ownership group, with the money they have, doesn’t really need it. To me, it just seems a gouge on the fans’ side of that.”

In basic terms, PSLs are a one-time fee to pay for the right to then purchase season tickets. In Buffalo, for example, buying a PSL to the new Highmark Stadium grants you those “rights” for a 30-year span. Those licenses can be eventually be sold if the buyer surrenders their season tickets.

Prices vary by stadium and seat location, but the average minimum price point among 18 NFL teams that offered them last September was $2.744, according to PSLSource.com, a third-party marketplace. Per-seat PSL charges last fall on the site ranged from $50 to $50,000.

“Oh, gracious,”  Venard said. “Well, it’s a lot of money. I don’t think I would pay it.

“I understand that football organizations are charging that now, but my goodness.”

“Would that stop you renewing?” I asked.

“It would certainly take some thought,” she replied.

PSLs are a way for owners to defray big costs, such as stadium construction. They’re as much a part of the NFL lexicon now as Bill Belichick, and twice as soulless.

It’s the sort of scheme would set upon the denizens of Springfield, a gratuity to billionaires from the working class, a mandatory tip collected by corporate overlords. In entertainment terms, it’s a 100-drink minimum to watch the latest slice of low comedy served up by the Las Vegas Raiduhs.

With the Walton-Penner Group planning to build a new stadium privately at Burnham Yard, it’s been presumed for years that PSLs were coming to ����apountry, just as standard NFL practice. This past Saturday at training camp, team president Damani Leech said the quiet part out loud.

“It seems like it����ap a pretty likely thing to happen,” Leech told reporters when asked about PSLs, “but we haven’t made any formal decisions on that.”

All we’d humbly ask of Carrie Walton Penner and Greg Penner as they crunch the numbers is to keep Marilyn in mind. To keep Steve in mind.

And the hundreds of thousands of Broncomaniacs who sat through Paxton Lynch, Kendall Hinton and Lord knows how many snowstorms. The faithful who pack hills and metal bleachers on a scorching August day, because by God, they’d walk through Hell in a gasoline suit to see this franchise back in the Super Bowl again.

“I would (ask), ‘What do they really need the money for?'” Altman said. “I mean, are they interested in the Broncos purely as a business matter, or are they doing this because they want the pleasure of owning an NFL team? You’re talking about some of the richest people in the world.”

Given that the Broncos boast a ticket wait-list of more than 100,000, the market’s betting that if you won’t pay a cover charge, somebody else will. While the introduction of PSLs isn’t designed to purge the voter rolls, so to speak, it can have that effect — especially with older and less well-heeled Broncos faithful.

Altman understands why his season tickets in the 300 level cost $2,800 to renew. But he worries about losing ����apountry’s most loyal, about trading the folks who celebrate a touchdown with a beer and shot with, shall we say, more of your wine-and-cheese crowd.

“‘Would they really need (the PSL money)?'” Altman wondered. “The revenue they’ll get from the seats themselves, that’s pretty much all theirs.”

It’s a fair question. The Walton-Penner Group are the richest owners in the NFL, and it’s not close.

In fact, you’d have to add up the NFL’s second-ranked through seventh-ranked owners’ net worths as of February ($126.6 million) to match or exceed the Walton-Penner Group’s clout. To put that number in more context, Rams owner Stan Kroenke, whose portfolio includes the Nuggets, Avalanche, Rapids and Mammoth, checked in at No. 4 on the NFL’s owners list tis past winter, with a reported net worth of $21.3 billion.

To them, the Broncos are a line item on a budget. To Marilyn? They’re family.

Losing her seats would meaning losing contact with old friends, losing a sense of of community. Venard went to Super Bowls with her neighbors in Section 323. To conference title games. Tailgates.

“And you do become a family,” Venard said. “At the beginning of the season, everybody hugs everybody, welcoming them back.”

Time and tide wait for no man, but she’d miss those hugs dearly. You can’t spell “unscrupulous” without “PSL.” You can’t spell “powerless,” either.

PSLs are one-time licenses that give the buyer the right to purchase season tickets for specific seats. They are commonplace in the NFL and have been part of nearly every stadium project undertaken in the past decade.

“It seems like it����ap a pretty likely thing to happen, but we haven’t made any formal decisions on that,” Leech said.

Buyers who purchase PSLs typically get early access to tickets for other events held at the stadium. They are sellable if buyers decide to give up their season tickets, too.

Teams sell PSLs to raise capital to help cover construction costs.

It is not yet clear, if the club does sell them, exactly how they will work, if they will be for every seat in the new stadium or what they will cost.

Super Bowl in play, but a long way out

Leech reiterated the Broncos’ interest in hosting a Super Bowl sometime after a new stadium would be completed, but said club officials don’t think about it “every day.”

The Broncos’ goal is to play in a new stadium at Burnham Yard for the 2031 season and to have the initial phase of an entertainment district completed by then, too. Subsequent district phases, though, could take years to decades to fully complete.

“I don’t think we’re thinking that we need to wait until the end of the full development occurs,” Leech said on potentially hosting a Super Bowl. “I think that����ap not realistic and probably somebody who’s just impatient wouldn’t want to wait that long either. I think it����ap fine to consider doing a Super Bowl earlier on after the stadium opens than later.”

Demolition of old facility will happen after training camp

The Broncos will wait until training camp concludes later this month before beginning demolition of their old team headquarters building.

Once the old building is gone, the team plans to repurpose the east side of their property into a fan viewing area for future training camps. Exactly what form it takes, whether there is a simple grass berm like before, more terraced landscaping or some form of bleachers is still under consideration.

“All of that will happen after camp during the course of this season,” Leech said.

Leech, speaking with reporters at the club’s sparkling new headquarters, said the Broncos are “eager” to speak directly with community groups involved in the Community Benefits Agreement process, the small-area plan and more.

“We can’t do this alone. There are certain things we don’t control,” Leech said. “I think, as a good example, the community benefits process is something that we can’t control. We’ve had a lot of great initial conversations with community representatives. More recently it����ap been more on a staff level. We’re eager to engage with those community members directly to understand what they’re looking for, what needs and interests they have in the development.

“Things like that, we have to progress. We said many months ago this is an ambitious timeline. For that to happen, we need everybody to be involved. We can’t do it alone in order to get to 2031.”

The 16-organization CBA coalition, called Burnham Yard Community Action, officially formed in May. Among the group’s advisors is former Councilwoman Robin Kniech, who is serving as a consultant and spokesperson.

“There’s a neighborhood of people who have jobs every day — this is not what they do every day — and they’ve hired consultants to help guide them through that process,” Leech said. “Most of our interface has been with those consultants. We’d much rather just engage with the staff directly and on a much quicker pace, is what I would say, to better understand what are the things that are important to them in this development? What are the kinds of things they’d like to see come to fruition and move things along?”

In response to Leech’s remarks, the BYCA sent the following statement to The Post Saturday.

“Burnham Yard Community Action, the coalition of organizations working on the Community Benefits Agreement, has twice sent detailed questions to the ownership group and is still awaiting substantive answers. We proposed a meeting more than four weeks ago and only heard yesterday that ownership wants to move forward.

“BYCA is actively developing priorities for the CBA, work that depends on development information the ownership group has not yet provided. We continue to look forward to working with the Broncos ownership group to achieve our shared goals for this project.”

A punch list that’s long and complicated

The CBA is just one of several processes the Broncos are working to present to the City Council for approval.

A source with knowledge of the situation told The Post that the small area plan between the Broncos and the city is on track to potentially be in front of city council by January. That vote is critical for several reasons, including that Denver Urban Renewal Authority has said that work on an urban renewal plan for the site, which will determine whether tax-increment financing is approved for the project, will not take place until after a small-area plan has been approved.

Then there’s the matter of relocating about 20 acres of Denver Water’s operations to other parts of the city. That includes a plan to relocate about 5 acres of emergency response infrastructure to a hotly contested parking lot at the current Empower Stadium site.

“It����ap a complicated process,” Leech said of relocating the utility. “I have a standing weekly meeting with (Denver Water CEO) Alan Salazar and his executive team. We have great conversations and meetings with them. It����ap not easy, it����ap pretty complicated.”

There are also smaller matters, like the still-to-be-finalized purchase of SRM Concrete, a multi-acre parcel in the northern part of the Broncos’ proposed stadium development. SRM CEO Jeff Hollingshead told The Post this spring, though, that the company wouldn’t be the reason a stadium project stalls and the sides are expected to get a deal done.

Kansas City-based architeture firm will design stadium

While all those myriad processes plow forward at varying speeds, the Broncos are headlong into several parts of the project that they do have control over. They made the public announcement Saturday that, earlier this year, team officials selected Kansas City-based Manica Architecture to design the stadium at Burnham Yard and Denver-based Tryba Architects to lead the master plan and design for the stadium-anchored entertainment district surrounding the stadium.

“Understanding what this team means to its great fans in Denver and across ����apountry, MANICA is honored to be chosen as the lead design architect of the Broncos’ new retractable-roof stadium,” Manica owner and president David Manica said in a statement provided to The Post. “We are committed to delivering a world-class fan experience at the center of the enhancements the Broncos will be adding to the local neighborhoods.”

Manica designed Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, the new Nissan Stadium in Nashville, the Golden State Warriors’ Chase Center in San Francisco and is working with the Kansas City Chiefs on their new stadium design, among others.

Tryba lead design principal David Tryba said in a statement that his firm is, “thrilled” to be working with the Broncos, has a “deep appreciation” for the Santa Fe, La Alma and Lincoln Park neighborhoods and, “look forward to helping the Broncos transform this industrial rail yard into a vibrant, year-round destination where neighbors and fans feel at home for generations to come.”

Tryba has been involved in several major urban development projects on the Front Range, including Boulder’s Google offices, the new Western Stock Show headquarters and more.

Leech said the team is close to releasing renderings of the entertainment district but much further away from releasing stadium renderings.

The Broncos, Leech said, have subcommittees working on all manner of planning on the stadium front.

“I find myself often at the center of that, trying to make sure and traffic cop communication across those different groups,” he said. “I think it����ap going well. The challenge always is having enough information at a certain time to answer people’s questions and being ready to make decisions. That����ap one thing Greg and Carrie (Penner) are really deliberate about: What decisions have to be made right now vs. decisions we would just like to make?”

There are a lot of decisions, processes and approvals between now and when the Broncos are hoping to begin construction in spring or summer next year.

Leech said the team won’t need much time between a final green light from the City Council and putting shovels in the ground, but the path from here to there is still a long one.

“This is a pretty large and complex process and there’s days when I’m driving home and I’m really excited about the progress that we’re making,” Leech said. “And, I’ll be honest, there’s days when I have concern and frustration because you can’t control it all.”