After all that work, the Lakewood City Council finished the job in December, passing final changes to the city’s land-use blueprint designed to pave the way for the construction of more diverse and dense housing, like triplexes and quadplexes, anywhere in Colorado’s fifth-largest city.

“It was very condensed, very intense in terms of the time we put into it,” Lakewood Mayor Wendi Strom said.

Fast-forward to the April 7 special election brought to a ballot by residents unhappy with the changes.��When the��initial results popped up on the city’s website at 8 p.m. — showing — Strom was dumbfounded.

“In that first 10 seconds when you get those results, it was a pretty good kick in the gut,” she said.

How Lakewood might proceed from here is anything but clear. The special election result was just the latest twist in a yearslong battle over how to make housing more affordable for Coloradans, especially those in low-income and working-class families who have largely been priced out of the market.

The election also highlighted a battle that has played out in other Colorado communities in recent years. In , Steamboat Springs and Littleton, among other places, attempts by elected leaders to spur housing price relief through zoning changes or affordable housing initiatives have run headlong into residents’ desire to keep their communities as they are.

Lakewood’s mayor is still committed to changing the city’s zoning code, but she acknowledged that she and her colleagues may need to take a different approach.

“The code is so complex — it’s hard to expect a voter to understand it to that degree,” Strom said.

Karen Gordey headed up the Lakewood Citizens Alliance, one of several issue committees that formed last year to collect signatures for a citizen ballot initiative to repeal the city’s zoning updates. The 15-year Lakewood resident said the city tried to do too much all at once, while failing to appreciate how important the look and feel of a neighborhood is to those who live there.

“The hope is that this election sent a strong message to the council — to listen to the citizens and not make radical zoning changes,” Gordey said. “This went way too far.”

State Rep. Rebekah Stewart, a former Lakewood councilwoman, worked on earlier iterations of the code changes that voters spurned. She said the city’s leaders crafted ambitious ordinances that provided the tools and incentives to alleviate Lakewood’s housing shortage.

The state had an estimated shortfall of 106,000 homes and apartments in 2023, the most recent year available, and needed to build at least 34,100 housing units per year, not counting vacation homes, over the next 10 years to keep up with slower population growth, according to .

Despite a��recent slowdown in metro Denver home prices that have surged upward for a decade or more, the median sale price of a single-family home came in at $630,000 in February — up 2.4% from January’s $615,000.

Price relief won’t come, Stewart said, if everything simply stays as it is.

“This has been years and years of work and community stakeholding that was undone in a single night,” she said of the Lakewood council’s redrafting process during the last half of 2025. “We have a problem, and the election didn’t solve that.”

Complying with state housing law

Voters’ decision earlier this month may also have raised another problem: Lakewood’s compliance with state laws passed in 2024 and last year that aim to increase and diversify housing stock across the state.

The bills, passed by legislative Democrats, broadly require cities — especially those on the Front Range — to implement various zoning changes and undertake detailed planning to ease and incentivize housing development. The measures push accessory dwelling units, the packing of more residential units around transit stops and a reduction in the square footage that must be devoted to parking.

“I do believe Lakewood is now out of compliance with state laws, which is really unfortunate,” Stewart said.

But Strom isn’t convinced that her city is crosswise with state law. The mayor is confident the city can tweak its code less comprehensively to ensure it is complying with the state’s housing mandates.

“There may be instances where we can do little one-offs (to come into compliance),” Strom said.

A shows 18 cities out of compliance with one or more of the housing laws passed over the last two years. Lakewood is not one of them, but the list is current as of April 1, which preceded Lakewood’s special election.

Cities and counties that don’t comply with the laws run the risk of losing out on tens of millions of dollars in state grant funding, Gov. Jared Polis’ office has said.

Several metro Denver cities sued the state last year over the laws, claiming that the mandates encroach on their home-rule authority to manage land-use policies as they see fit. Several of those plaintiff communities, including Aurora, Westminster, Lafayette and Centennial, appear on the state’s list as being out of compliance with the state statutes.

The Lafayette City Council is in the homestretch of , an effort that began last year. A survey conducted by the city showed mixed support for the proposed changes, with about 48% of respondents backing “missing middle” housing in a limited way, particularly if it’s paired with strong design standards to maintain neighborhood character, according to .

Missing middle refers to housing of slightly higher density, including duplexes, triplexes and attached townhomes, that might fit near single-family homes without being as imposing as large apartment buildings.

The Denver Post requested an interview with the governor, or an adviser on housing policy, to ascertain what effect the special election results could have on Lakewood’s standing. Polis’ office provided a statement instead.

“The governor is committed to working with Lakewood and other local governments to reduce or eliminate government imposed barriers and red tape that block or increase the cost of housing and we are assessing the impacts of this election,” said Eric Maruyama, a spokesman for the governor.

Max Nardo, a housing and smart growth senior associate with the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, said it wasn’t clear what price communities might pay if they don’t comply with state housing laws. Colorado, he said, didn’t really start addressing housing and zoning issues at the state level until about three years ago. And many of the measures passed by the legislature, he said, are still being rolled out.

The problem is bigger than mere compliance with state laws, Nardo said. Lakewood had gone beyond what the state required, he said.

“Lakewood was doing more — its reforms included smaller homes on smaller lots throughout the city,” Nardo said. “It followed a two-year process and had favorable polling in the community. What more can you ask for?”

His organization put out a news release two days after Lakewood’s special election, calling it a “low-turnout” election that didn’t accurately reflect the will of the city of 156,000 people. The release noted that just over 22,000 voters overturned the zoning changes, “roughly 20% of all registered voters in the city.”

“Research consistently shows that the residents most likely to participate in local zoning debates and special elections tend to be older, wealthier homeowners who bought into their communities years ago at much lower prices, and have more time and capacity to engage in public processes than renters, essential workers, or young families,” the organization said in its release.

Housing policy is necessarily a statewide issue because the housing market is not confined to any one community, Nardo said.

“This outcome underscores that this is a collective action,” he said. “A city cannot solve it by acting alone.”

‘Checks and balances’

Kevin Bommer, the executive director of the Colorado Municipal League, called the notion of local governments in Colorado needing to defer to state lawmakers on the subject of housing policy “hogwash.”

Cities and towns are best equipped to know what is needed inside their borders, he said, not part-time legislators who convene for less than five months a year in Denver. The housing laws that the General Assembly passed over the last couple of years created pressure and artificially accelerated a process that takes time and public input, Bommer said.

“If folks at the state Capitol hadn’t pushed this forward with mandates, the municipalities could take the time to work with their citizens and come up with a long-term vision,” he said.

It didn’t surprise him that residents would revolt when they didn’t feel their elected representatives were taking the right approach to overhauling zoning codes in a way that could potentially impact their neighborhoods.

“This clearly shows that residents are the ultimate form of local control. And ultimately, they said the vision that was laid out (by the City Council) was one that they aren’t on board with,” Bommer said. “The last time I checked, that was called participatory democracy — it isn’t always pretty.”

Godrey, who led the charge to repeal Lakewood’s zoning rewrite, said the city could find other ways to address the housing shortage without opening up the city’s many single-family neighborhoods to “blanket upzoning.” Converting vacant office space to residential uses is one approach, she said.

“This election was about having checks and balances — and you got to hear the voice of the people,” she said.

Peter LiFari, the executive director of Maiker Housing Partners, says it’s the powerful emotional element that comes with homeownership that makes the issue difficult to solve locally. Maiker is the housing authority in Adams County.

“Homeowners are highly motivated to protect their most precious asset,” he said. “There are some things that we can’t easily make a decision about at the local level because they’re so visceral.”

Despite the council’s loss at the ballot box this month, LiFari said Lakewood’s attempt to address its housing challenges was far from over. Crafting and refining housing policy takes years, if not decades, he said.

But without that thoughtful work, he said, Colorado is never going to fix its affordable housing crisis.

“I would tell Lakewood to go at it again — it takes a couple of bites at the apple for people to get comfortable with this,” LiFari said.

Strom, the mayor, said the issue may go quiet for a little while as she and her colleagues lick their wounds from what was a bruising electoral battle. But the need to adjust the city’s zoning code to account for Lakewood’s evolving housing situation is not going to disappear.

“This is not over — we have things in the code that need to be updated,” she said.

Water scarcity, due to exceptionally low mountain snow and soil-drying heat, looms foremost.

“If we don’t get moisture, I’m not going to plant,” said chile grower Praxie Vigil, who runs along the Bessemer Ditch, a 43-mile irrigation canal that once nourished crops across 20,000 acres east of Pueblo. He was planning to decide this weekend.

“It����ap not looking good for any of us. Usually, I just plant and hope for the best. But this year, I’m not going to. This is bad. I can barely water 20 acres,” said Vigil, who works a side job as a pipe-welder to make ends meet.

The dry conditions, compounded by federal policies and turbulence far beyond the Rocky Mountain West, are forcing Colorado farmers to scale back production this year, change the crops they prioritize and question their long-term survival. Grocery shoppers likely will see less locally grown food in produce sections.

First, the Trump administration’s tariffs and war on Iran drove up prices for fertilizer, packaging and other materials. The Mideast conflict also broke supply chains — sprinkler heads and filters needed for those peaches, made in Israel, aren’t available.

Then, Trump’s bombing that began Feb. 28 led to fuel costs spiking to $5 per gallon of diesel.

Meanwhile, the federal government’s crackdown on immigration and state limits on how many hours seasonal foreign workers with H2A visas can work have intensified agricultural labor uncertainty.

“I haven’t had anybody physically taken away. But there’s definitely fear among the workers,” Brian Crites said at , working his family’s 1890s homestead at Avondale, where he’ll leave 750 of his 1,000 acres unplanted due to high costs and lack of water. Even though workers from Mexico on his farm hold green cards, they see information online, Crites said. “I try to keep the morale up. I tell them they’re pretty safe here.”

Other challenges include retailers mislabeling produce as Colorado-grown when it’s not, which degrades the state brand. Lawmakers and Gov. Jared Polis just prohibiting the deceptive trade practice of fake local labeling.

“Agriculture is a big powerhouse of our economy. It is our No. 1 export sector. We do everything we can to support ranchers and farmers in our state,” Polis said in an interview last week. “What the government cannot do is make it rain or snow.”

‘Hit from every direction’

As summer approaches, “everybody’s looking at what their options are,” said peach grower Bruce Talbott, operator of on Colorado’s Western Slope.

His orchards depend largely on the federally run Green Mountain Reservoir, which measured 36% full last week, with streams feeding the reservoir also running low because paltry mountain snowpack had already melted away.

“We want to haul down as little water as possible and stretch what we do have as far as we can. How that����ap going to play out is unknown. …We’ve never actually shut off the canals. Right now, we’re running them low,” Talbott said.

“If there’s no more capturable water, then we’ve got enough until Aug. 1.” he said. “That����ap enough that about half the peaches would get harvested. The last half would not. The peaches would be small. And it would be awfully hard on trees. Our chances of having healthy trees headed into next year would be very compromised. We’d probably lose a lot of orchards.”

Hail this month damaged cherries, pears and apricots in the area, and crops that bloomed early in February due to warm winter temperatures need water longer and still are vulnerable to frost through May, director Jessica Burford said.

“We’re getting hit from every direction,” she said. “It’s going to be a very expensive year. Farmers are worried about our peaches being large enough to meet grocery store standards.”

Yet few were quitting.

“We are farmers. We are here to produce food. If we don’t do it, we won’t get paychecks. We would starve, our fields would go to crap, and weeds would take over. So we might as well give it a shot,” said Dalton Milberger, owner of , east of Pueblo. “Chile is our lifeline.”

As Milberger was preparing to plant chile seeds last week, his machine broke down.

A statewide crisis

Farmers statewide are wrestling with similar difficult decisions on whether to plant crops, Commissioner Kate Greenberg said.

The unprecedented warm weather has led to “an incredible lack of soil moisture,” and that, combined with the other “conflating factors,” means that — unless summer brings regular monsoon rain — some farms may die, Greenberg said.

“It’s hard to pinpoint if and when we lose farmers and what exactly the tipping point is,” she said. “Folks are now pivoting from their plans. Maybe it means cutting back on acres, maybe not growing so much. Maybe the conversation is that this is the year when we turn in our gloves and call it good. We’ve got a lot of those conversations going on right now. The combined pressures on farming and ranching families are not alleviating. It’s possible they could force out family agriculture.”

Taking a year off generally isn’t an option, “because there are payments to be made,” said Mike Bartolo, who helped develop resilient green chile seeds over 32 years of work as a research scientist for the and serves on the board of the .

Bartolo was born and raised in the Arkansas River Valley, where water rights sell-offs to Front Range cities in the 1970s decimated farm fields and towns. Aurora and Colorado Springs officials, seeing the Colorado River Basin’s water shrinking, again are pressing for control over stressed farmers’ water rights, Bartolo said.

Planting crops now — “one of the most troubling times in agriculture I’ve witnessed in my lifetime” — means taking “a tremendous amount of risk, on top of existing risks,” he said.

“Unless there’s some miraculous turnaround, we face an era of uncertainty. We don’t know what to do. You’re kind of backed into a corner. What do you do? This is your livelihood. How do you sustain yourself? In Colorado’s rural communities, we are looking at survival.”

‘Hoping to get through this year’

State leaders say they’re committed to supporting farming and rural communities. But climate change impacts “will get worse,” Polis said, anticipating “a world of scarcity of water” where “in addition to the reduced supply, there’s also increased demand” due to population growth.

Federal immigration and foreign policies aren’t helping, he said. “If you start a war with Iran, you know that prices are going to go up a lot.”

Climate warming sets off cascading changes, such as increased pests, for which a state in Palisade breeds insect natural enemies that can be deployed to manage those pests.

But worms, mites and beetles still gnaw at the crops in Olathe, where farming has become “crisis management,” said owner David Harold, who decided last week he’ll be “cutting way back” on sweet corn.

Instead of planting corn on 1,600 acres, he’ll plant on just 100 to 300 acres. That will make it harder to find the Olathe sweet corn in supermarkets, and Harold said he’ll shift to direct sales to people who pre-order online.

Tuxedo is also “losing some workers to other areas” where migrants can work more hours, despite giving them “all the extra hours and overtime I can afford,” he said.

“We are very off balance. Fertilizer prices. Diesel prices. Transportation. I cannot get equipment in and out of here like I need to. The whole thing has been coming apart. We don’t have a clear path right now,” Harold said.

“I’m not going to put the money into these crops and then hope the bugs don’t get me, hope there’s enough water, hope there’s enough truck drivers, hope the consumer can afford it. It’s been a rollercoaster. What are we going to do? Can we take the risk? We’re struggling. Big changes are here right now. I am hoping to get through this year.”

Crop-switching and reduced planting

Along the Arkansas River east of Pueblo, farmers last week were meeting with irrigators and leaning toward a strategy of prioritizing high-value crops, such as the green chiles, while reducing corn and alfalfa.

But “it’s touch and go,” said fifth-generation farmer Rocky Musso, operator of , eight miles east of Pueblo. Musso had his fields plowed and was headed to meet with a neighbor “before we make a decision” to find out who might be able to spare unused shares of water.

“We don’t want to plant too conservatively. We will cut down to about 60% to 75% of our chile planting,” he said. “We were always taught to farm every season. You get discouraged. But it does us no good to get discouraged.”

At , established in 1890, water levels in the Bessemer Ditch were roughly 70 cubic feet per second. That’s less than half the typical spring flows during planting season, due to the low snowpack in the mountains west of Leadville above the headwaters of the Arkansas River.

The family operators produce a variety of foods, including pinto beans, onions, squash, tomatoes and pumpkins — in addition to Pueblo green chiles.

While they’re facing “the worst year in recorded history,” they made some smart moves, such as anticipating the impact of tariffs and stocking up early on fertilizers before prices went up, Jayme DiSanti said.

“We’re still going to plant. We’re going to cut back on other things and focus on vegetables,” DiSanti said. “We are not going to cut back on green chiles. That’s our thing. We’re going to be short on water. But chiles like it hot and dry. So people can probably expect hotter chile.”

Storefronts along Walden’s Main Street have emptied, including the 10th Frame, a bowling alley that closed its doors when it failed to find a buyer after more than a year of trying, said Samantha Martin, the county’s administrator and a long-time resident.

“We have talked about it multiple times, and there is no perfect answer,” Martin said of strategies to stem the declines. “Right now we don’t have an action plan.”

Since 2020, Jackson County has lost a larger share of its population, 12.2%, than any county in the state, leaving it with 1,211 people as of June 30, 2025, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Young people continue to depart for better jobs in larger cities. A loyal remnant is aging in place, even when moving to a lower altitude might benefit their health, Martin said. But they can defy time for only so long.

When homes come on the market, some heirs convert the properties to family vacation homes in Colorado’s “moose viewing capital.” If they do get listed, investors looking for short-term rentals snap them up, leaving limited options for anyone looking to relocate.

Long accustomed to drawing people without even trying, Colorado last year experienced its slowest population gains since the late 1980s. Winners and losers are coming into sharper focus as the battle intensifies to retain and attract people.

Defying predictions that the state’s population gains would be back on track by now following the pandemic, a majority of Colorado counties have lost their demographic momentum.

Much of Colorado’s growth is now concentrated in a belt of counties stretching from Weld down to Elbert and El Paso counties, temporarily bypassing Arapahoe, which had the state’s biggest population loss in raw numbers.

Of Colorado’s 64 counties, more than half, 33, lost population last year, including four of the state’s largest: Arapahoe, Denver, Boulder and Pueblo counties.

Resort areas, with some of the highest home prices in the country, are starting to shrink, joining the aging agricultural counties on the Eastern Plains that have suffered a steady drip of population losses for years.

More than a third of Colorado counties have fewer residents than they did in 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That group includes Jefferson County, the state’s fourth most populous county.

After Jackson, Sedgwick, Otero, Hinsdale and Pitkin counties have the largest five-year percentage declines in population.

Colorado added 225,688 people in the first half of this decade, including 24,059 last year. A majority of the state’s gains this decade have come from immigration, which contributed 130,218 people. But that source, already down under the Trump administration, may dry up this year.

“Certainly in 2026, we can expect very weak or negative net international immigration to Colorado,” said State Demographer Kate Watkins.

The White House in every major metro area in a news release after the county and metro area Census numbers came out. Metro Denver earned a mention for having one of the biggest declines after Laredo, Texas, where immigration flows dropped 95%.

“In Denver and its suburbs, the net immigration rate fell by almost three-quarters. In the Chicago area, it was slashed by nearly two-thirds,” the release said.

Immigration had been masking big declines in people moving from other states. Domestic net migration was why Colorado averaged population gains of 100,000 people a year in the 1990s, and more than 72,000 a year in the ’00s and ’10s.

Since 2020, it has only contributed 17,729 people total.Until housing costs become more competitive, it is hard to see how it rebounds.

That leaves natural change, or births minus deaths, as the main driver of population growth going forward. In Colorado, that currently contributes a little over 20,000 people a year.

But as more baby boomers die, expect that to shrink too. Nationally, natural decline, or more deaths than births, is expected to set in by 2030. Colorado isn’t expected to hit that grim milestone until 2047.

“We are a young state relative to the nation as a whole,” Watkins said.

Population declines elsewhere will result in fewer adults available to move to Colorado in the years ahead.

Growth is now concentrated mostly in Weld, Douglas, Adams, El Paso, and Larimer counties, which gained a combined 26,678 people last year, more than the statewide population gain.

A lower birth rate, higher living costs that deter domestic migration, and slower immigration are all contributing to more modest population gains. And that slowing has set off a battle to capture whatever population growth is available.

Where the population is shrinking

Arapahoe County led the state with a net gain of 4,621 immigrants last year, but it also saw the most residents move out to other parts of Colorado or other states, 9,859. That contributed to a net loss of 1,940 residents in the 2025 count.

Since 2020, Arapahoe has lost nearly 32,000 residents domestically, which was offset by a gain of nearly 35,000 immigrants.

When immigrants leave Colorado for other states, they count as outbound domestic migrants, Watkins said. That could explain, in part, why counties like Arapahoe and Denver are seeing such large domestic outflows.

So why didn’t more immigrants, as well as other residents, stay put?

“Like every county in Colorado, we’re experiencing a crisis of affordability in the housing market,” said Jill McGranahan, a spokeswoman for Arapahoe County.

To what degree high housing costs pushed immigrants to move to more affordable places is hard to parse out. Some immigrants never intended to land in Colorado in the first place.

In 2023, Denver spent more than $35 million to handle an unexpected surge of immigrants, mostly from Venezuela, including purchasing 14,800 tickets to send them to other cities.

Denver had the state’s second-largest population loss last year at 978, reflecting net domestic outflows of 8,023, less a natural increase of 4,197, and continued immigration of 2,871.

Denver and Arapahoe counties rank high for births, and they should remain gateways for young adults relocating from other states.

Denver has a big surplus of new apartments that is pushing down rents. And home construction is set to take off in Arapahoe County, especially south of the airport.

A harder demographic hurdle to overcome will be a shrinking gap between births and deaths, which Jefferson, Boulder, Pueblo and Mesa counties are staring down.

When there aren’t enough homes available for young families at prices they can afford, they either delay moving forward with children or move elsewhere. Not only is inbound migration limited, but so are future births.

“We wanted to help people age in place and stay in their homes, but what that means is these homes don’t turn over?” asks Phyllis Resnick, executive director of the Colorado Futures Center.

If homes don’t turn over or not enough are built, families wanting to have children are forced to move elsewhere. They might end up in Weld County. Or Idaho or South Carolina.

“Our birth rate and our death rate are getting closer and closer together,” acknowledged Chris O’Keefe, the planning and zoning director for Jefferson County. “People enjoy it here and they age here. People don’t leave their houses.”

Over the past five years, the county has recorded 28,791 births and 26,745 deaths, according to the Census Bureau.

Home to nearly 10% of the state’s population, Jefferson County has contributed only 2.3% of the state’s natural increase since 2020. Denver, by contrast, accounts for 12.3% of the state’s population, but has contributed 22.3% of the natural increase.

Fewer children means fewer enrollments. Jefferson County Public Schools, the state’s second-largest school district, has seen a wave of closures, especially on its eastern side, which has older neighborhoods.

Developments such as Candelas and Leyden Rock further west, by contrast, have brought in young families. But it isn’t enough to offset losses in Lakewood and Wheat Ridge.

Vivian Elementary, where Mollie Crampton had her two young sons enrolled, was among the schools shuttered in 2022.

Declining enrollments are linked to the county’s stagnating population, which in turn, Crampton argues, is linked to the county’s high home prices.

“I think a really big part of it is affordable housing,” she said. “Prices just don’t go down.”

Lakewood enacted rezoning ordinances to permit higher density in an effort to increase supply and lower home prices and rents.

But long-time residents of the state’s fifth largest city, skeptical that the zoning changes would work and worried about crowding and congestion, rallied to call a special election to repeal the measures.

Crampton said she voted early in Tuesday’s election — against repealing the recently enacted rezoning ordinance.

“If it passes, I think a lot of people will leave because they can (only) afford to buy a home in another state, or another county,” Crampton said. “There’s never going to be more inventory.”

According to early results posted by elections officials Tuesday night, voters in Lakewood overwhelmingly approved four measures that restore the zoning code the city had before elected leaders changed it last year to prod more home building.

Pueblo and Mesa counties have had the largest natural decreases this decade — with Pueblo down 2,787 and Mesa down 1,738.

Mesa County has offset that with relatively strong domestic migration this decade, allowing its population to grow by 7,135 people vs. 1,110 for Pueblo.

Fremont County has also managed to pull a rabbit out of a hat, increasing its population by 1,102 this decade, despite a natural decrease of 1,629 people.

Both are retirement havens that have attracted residents from the Front Range with lower living costs, and in the case of Grand Junction, a more temperate climate. Colorado’s aging population is working in their favor.

By contrast, resort areas, where housing costs are so high that even doctors and corporate managers struggle to find affordable accommodations, are seeing residents leave.

Pitkin County, home to Aspen, has seen its population shrink by 4.3% this decade, while San Miguel, home to Telluride, is down by 3.7%, and Eagle County, home to Vail and Beaver Creek, has lost 2.5% of its population.

On the whole, the forecast calls for continued growth, although at a slower pace than in prior decades, Watkins said. Colorado reached 5 million people in 2010 and hit 6 million last year. It should cross 7 million by 2045.

New homes, new faces

Weld County Commissioner Scott James, 63, grew up in LaSalle and has had a front row seat in the county’s transformation from farm and oil fields into Colorado’s fastest growing county.

With 46,992 people added over the past five years, including 7,146 last year, Weld County surpassed Boulder County in population before the pandemic, and last year it surpassed Larimer County.

In 1998, James moved to Johnstown, which had 3,200 people at the time, and he paid $136,400 for a home in what he said represented an “iconic Americana slice of life.”

The town now counts around 21,000 people, who live largely on former farms and ranches, said James, who witnessed the transformation when he was mayor.

“These guys would sit in the back of the room and almost hang their heads — but what choice did they have? The farmer has a chance to cash in on all his hard work,” he said.

One thing that Weld County shares in common with the state’s other growing counties is an openness to home construction. And those new homes open the door to babies.

Weld County has welcomed more than 25,000 babies in the past five years, while Adams County has added 33,349 and Douglas County has added more than 20,000.

“People who want a bigger home and more land, it’s available to them,” said Jeff Keener, president and CEO of the South Metro Denver Chamber, which is based in Lone Tree.

Douglas County hosts the state’s largest master planned community, Sterling Ranch, which has ranked in the top 50 nationally for the past six years and has sold more than 3,000 homes since construction started in 2017.

Parker and Castle Rock have also been actively adding homes at lower price points.

“The home-rule cities have done a really good job of planning for that,” Keener said. “They have worked really hard to put in a wide variation of housing prices.”

With greater housing availability, the fastest-growing counties are also winning when it comes to net domestic migration. Weld County added 31,411 people that way since 2020, while Douglas County added 27,490 and Larimer County added 12,518.

Domestic gains in Weld and Douglas surpass the 17,729 added statewide, which reflects their ability to lure residents from other parts of the state.

James said he sees nothing but opportunity for Weld County, provided people can think differently and stay open to new ideas.

“We are excited about geothermal, we are excited about renewables — and by God, bring on nuclear,” he said. “The fact that Weld County is a county of almost 400,000 people tells me we’re doing it right.”

Update made noon Wednesday: The general location of Jackson County has been updated.

It’s one of the most ambitious efforts in U.S. cities to reduce space for vehicle traffic and replace it with wider sidewalks, bike lanes and dedicated bus lanes. Proponents cast the makeover as the best solution to multiple problems as traffic deaths increase and developers build high-density housing.

City transportation officials began the work a decade ago with pilot projects. They made traffic calming an official policy around 2020 and, three years later, adopted a plan. Scores of projects have been done, and the $280 million reconstruction of East Colfax Avenue with Bus Rapid Transit is scheduled for completion next year. The bulk of the projects are still in planning and design but should mostly be done by 2032.

While proponents say changes have made streets safer, critics suspect projects that reduce space for cars will only make traffic congestion worse — even after the construction disruptions end.

“They don’t want you to drive,” optician Rachelle Fresquez said as she ate lunch in the cool tranquility of her car, idling a block off West 29th Avenue, where 13 speed bumps, and white plastic posts and green-painted bicycle lanes have slowed a once-speedy route. She’s lived in Denver all her life and commutes across it to work. “It’s a mess.”

The road work creates conditions where “drivers are sitting longer in traffic, which is worse for emissions. And as you put more bicycles and pedestrians on the same roads with cars, more accidents are happening,” said Colorado Automobile Dealers Association president Matthew Groves.

Asked about the criticism, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston acknowledged the difficulty of transforming a city long oriented around cars.

“When you try to make some streets narrower, it will make traffic slower on that street,” Johnston said. “It stands to reason you can put fewer cars through a two-lane street than you can through a four-lane street.”

Among other , Seattle and San Francisco have also invested heavily in transit, pedestrian, and bike infrastructure.�� From New York to Los Angeles, are reengineering roads to create streets designed for more than cars. Denver officials studied efforts in San Francisco before launching pilot projects here a decade ago and, in 2020, under Mayor Michael Hancock, adopted as policy.

“The hope is you get some behavioral changes, that you will get some folks choosing to take a bus,” Johnston said.��“We want to make it a city where you don’t have to rely on a car.”

Fewer car lanes, wider sidewalks, faster buses

The projects that the Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, or DOTI, is planning include overhauls of The plans show vehicle lane reductions, sidewalk widening, and signal adjustments to give buses priority on West 38th Avenue, West Mississippi Avenue, Evans Avenue, and Speer Boulevard.

Larger-scale projects like the East Colfax work will install bus-only lanes and high-frequency Bus Rapid Transit along Federal and Colorado boulevards. Hundreds more smaller projects in neighborhoods across the city would alter vehicle routes.

The funding for the overall effort comes from DOTI’s $890 million annual budget, with support from the Colorado Department of Transportation and federal grants, and voter-approved $441 million in bond debt.

Fighting congestion

Denver leaders’ rationale is that without major change, , already increasing faster than in other cities, will get worse. The fear among critics is the same — that remodeling roads will worsen congestion.

“So what’s the right solution?” asked Jill Locantore, director of the Denver Streets Partnership, one of several advocacy groups pressing city leaders to carry out planned projects quickly.

“Overwhelming inertia” has prevented Denver from moving people more efficiently, Locantore said. “The status quo is our biggest problem. …. When street space is rebalanced, many people will choose other ways of getting around, travel at different times of day, combine multiple trips into one, or simply take fewer discretionary trips.”

But in areas such as Washington Park, the density of schools, shops, and high-rise apartments guarantees heavy vehicle traffic, and reducing lanes is a recipe for “traffic jams, more than we already have,” said Christophe Goudy, co-owner of along Alameda, who commutes for up to an hour from his home near Parker.

“Making it safer? That’s another thing. Before we opened, we had a car crash through the window. Shrinking the road isn’t going to make it safer. If we had a police car parked there by the school, that would decrease the speed.”

While Denver business owners generally like the idea of increased options for moving around the city using bicycles and buses, any road changes must preserve the ability of residents — including “a vast amount of our customers” — to drive their vehicles and park, said J.J. Ament, president of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce.

“We need the city to focus on the mobility choices that people will actually use, not just what they say they want. In too many cases, DOTI has made changes proposed by a small minority of vocal interest groups that don’t represent the bulk of how people use our transit system,” Ament said.

“We need to align urban planning with human experience.”

But narrowing Santa Fe Drive from three lanes to two through a popular arts district south of downtown proved “absolutely transformative” and “we can’t wait” for sidewalk widening and protected bike lanes, said Nolan Hahn, president of the La Alma Lincoln Park Neighborhood Association, who rides e-bikes instead of driving. “The way we’ve built our cities — until now — is coercive.”

Denver streamlined

Denver residents from the 1890s to the 1920s relied on an extensive . Since the 1940s, Denver leaders have built and maintained roads to facilitate car-first mobility, according to the plan that city officials commissioned and adopted as a blueprint for change.

The city spans 100 square miles (excluding the 53-square-mile Denver International Airport), and 22 square miles of the area are road lanes, compared with 12 square miles of parking, five square miles of sidewalks, one square mile of bicycle-only lanes, and less than one square mile of bus-only lanes, the plan says.

The makeover eventually will give buses priority along 600 miles of lanes overall — 10 times the transit-priority miles today, city spokeswoman Nancy Kuhn said.

DOTI officials decide timetables, targeting high-accident areas and historically neglected neighborhoods, according to the plan. A 2024 DOTI based on the extent to which they promote walking, biking and using buses and trains — and limits projects to expand capacity for cars.

When Denver reduced vehicle lanes and installed bus-only lanes in 2017 along Broadway and Lincoln Street south of downtown, the average travel time on RTD buses between downtown and Englewood decreased by three minutes, said Jaime Lewis, a former RTD director who also has served on Denver’s transportation advisory board. City officials didn’t say what the impact has been on travel times for people driving cars.

But Groves, the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association president, estimated his work commute from south Denver up Broadway has increased by six minutes.

“Why are we spending all this money? Drivers on Broadway cut through side streets where people live, and they’re frustrated, so they’re going too fast,” Groves said. He had heard “great promises” from city officials about liberating new options for moving around and seen the passionate advocacy by young urban activists. “They are choking off our streets.”

The overall amount of driving in metro Denver has reached a record-high level, exceeding 85 million miles a day, according to transportation analysts at the Denver Regional Council of Governments. They project a 43% increase in by 2050. However, DRCOG’s noted that the amount of driving per person – about 25.7 miles a day in 2019 – has decreased to 24.8 miles a day.

Meanwhile, Denver traffic fatalities hit a record high of 93 in 2025, up 16% over the 80 in 2024, and nearly double the 49 in 2017, police data shows. The deaths in 2025 included 35 pedestrians.

DOTI director Amy Ford said investments in the road projects are already showing results, such as increased bicycle ridership in areas where protected bike lanes were installed.

“Our goal is to reduce single-occupant vehicle trips, to encourage transportation mode shifts, and to ensure that people still can move around our city,” she said.

The alternative of increasing road capacity won’t work because housing and commercial development along roads prevents widening, Ford added. “There is simply no more room. It would be cost-prohibitive to do that.”

Friction

As projects advance into public input meetings, residents and business owners often object, challenging final plans. City officials didn’t cite any project where opposition forced cancellation. However, a six-month tussle over a proposed lane drew in scores of neighborhood activists, leading to a compromise to be tested this year as a pilot project.

“Everybody got their knickers in a twist,” longtime resident Biddie Labrot said, walking her dog recently just north of Alameda. She’s skeptical that the compromise switching from a full lane reduction to a partial lane reduction with “turn pockets” will improve conditions because “when you change the pattern, you cause problems,” Labrot said. “We’re going to have a lot of head-ons.” When traffic on Alameda and Downing gets too crazy, cutting onto slower side streets “is your option,” she said. “I started doing that because it was prettier and my blood pressure didn’t go up.”

Sharing roads with new users creates challenges.

“It makes me uncomfortable,” Laurie Heiken said after navigating the curves and protected bicycling lanes along East Yale Avenue. “Bike riders should stay on the bike paths we have.”

Behind the counter in Taqueria Mi Pueblo at the corner of Federal and West 29th, co-owner Jesus Tarin noted that, before a bike lane was installed, “we had parking on the street. It was good for our customers,” he said. “I don’t like the bicyclists riding on the street.”

The friction reflects a hard truth that metro Denver residents widely prefer driving to moving around by walking, bicycling or riding buses and trains, said economist Randal O’Toole, director of the at the Independence Institute, a libertarian think tank in Denver.

“Cars get you from where you are to where you want to go in the shortest time possible, and it is actually pretty cheap. Transit does not get you from where you are to where you want to go,” O’Toole said.

Just as two decades of densification by building apartments has failed to make Denver housing more affordable (O’Toole argues that replacing single-family homes reduced the supply of housing people prefer), shrinking vehicle traffic space to promote bicycling and transit also will fail, O’Toole said. “It just doesn’t work. It is happening nationwide. It hasn’t worked anywhere else. It is not going to work in Denver.”

Traffic calming in and �� has proved popular in neighborhoods. San Francisco officials have been struggling to work through backlogs of proposals to install more speed bumps, raised crosswalks, and concrete islands to improve safety. However, the overall impact on citywide vehicle traffic congestion remains a challenge. Both San Francisco and Seattle struggle with severe congestion that ranks among the worst in the nation.

Johnston said balance will be the key to success in Denver, maintaining smooth flows for the cars “in our blood” while giving new options so that people in Denver “can have a great time and make great time.”

When conflicts arise, “both sides have strong convictions,” and tradeoffs must be made. “No one stakeholder can get everything they want,” Johnston said.

The road remodeling will be done in a way that lets residents choose whether to switch from cars to buses — “not because they feel they are forced to do it,” he said.

“Every incremental trip people don’t have to use the car for does reduce traffic congestion,” Johnston said. “We are trying to build transit hubs around the city that will have density. … We want to�� have a street system that supports them.”

Drivers look ahead

In west Denver, Alejandra Castañeda said she strongly supports traffic-calming and wishes she could rely more on buses to avoid the hassles of driving. Work demands and moving around with her daughter forced her to purchase, reluctantly, a used orange electric Fiat, she said. Reducing road space for cars “isn’t about slowing us down, inconveniencing us. It’s about encouraging safe speeds. Too many people have been killed. We just need the city to help drivers, including me, do the safe thing.”

While Stacey Walker’s roommate hates the West 29th Avenue speed bumps and diverts to 26th, Walker accepts the reconstructed route as “a good reminder,” he said. “You can’t blow through here at 45 miles per hour anymore.”

American Automobile Association lobbyist Skyler McKinley still hails the car as “the single greatest invention for economic mobility of all time.” He relies on driving to manage a tavern he purchased 156 miles from Denver. “The car is a foundational technology in American life and will remain so,” McKinley said recently, standing on the corner of 14th Avenue and Franklin Street, on his way to the state Capitol.

He observed that nearly every vehicle whizzing past him carried one person.

“We know that adding lanes for vehicles won’t reduce traffic congestion because of induced demand (the concept that expanding urban road capacity encourages more driving). The question is whether removing space for cars increases traffic and congestion. In the near term? Yes, no question about it. But other modes of transportation may move more people more efficiently,” McKinley said.

“By removing lanes, you increase options. If the goal of the transportation system is to move people, is the car the most efficient tool within a city? The jury is out on whether Denver’s choice will be the right choice in the long run. We won’t know until they do it.”

Under the terms of the deal, holders of National Storage (NSA) common shares and operating partnership units will receive 0.14 equivalent shares or partnership units in Public Storage, resulting in an equity payout of $3.1 billion.

Some of the better cash-flowing properties at NSA will be transferred into a joint venture with an estimated value of $3.3 billion. And Public Storage will take on $4.1 billion in debt and preferred shares held by NSA.

Shares of NSA rose 30% on Monday after the deal was announced, going from a close price of $30.94 on Friday to around $40 a share. That is near the price of $41.68 a share implied in what Public Storage has offered.

NSA’s portfolio includes more than 1,000 properties, 69 million square feet of rentable space and 550,000 units in 37 states and Puerto Rico. Public Storage operates 3,533 self-storage facilities with approximately 258 million net rentable square feet across 40 states.

“This outcome reflects the incredible transformation we have undertaken over the past few years to refocus our portfolio, enhance operations and drive growth,” said David Cramer, CEO of National Storage Affiliates, in a news release. “Public Storage is the ideal strategic fit for our company given their best-in-class brand, operating platform and future growth profile.”

Arlen Nordhagen, who co-founded SecurCare Self Storage in 1988, was the driving force behind NSA, which he took public in 2015 as a Real Estate Investment Trust. His innovation was to create a “federation” of regional storage companies using a single operating platform.

The structure, called the Participating Regional Operator model, allowed local owners in the highly fragmented industry to swap ownership in their properties for equity in NSA, while maintaining their local branding.

That structure is going away. But the deal creates a joint venture with 313 of the stronger properties worth an estimated value of $3.3 billion. Current NSA owners will control 80% of the joint venture, with Public Storage holding the remainder.

The “carve out,” backed with $2.2 billion in debt secured by the properties, will give owners a tax-favorable off-ramp, while handing over the heavy lift of managing the properties to Public Storage.

Additionally, Public Storage will repay NSA’s bank debt, senior unsecured notes, mortgage debt and preferred shares, worth an estimated $4.1 billion.

Goldman Sachs Bank and Wells Fargo Bank will provide $4 billion in bridge loan financing to make that happen. That short-term debt is expected to convert into secured mortgages.

The deal will combine the country’s largest and fourth-largest providers of self-storage units. But even combined, the two companies will have about a 10th of the highly fragmented storage market.

That could assuage Federal Trade Commission concerns about excessive concentration. But Colorado could be higher up on the list where federal regulators require divestitures.

NSA reports having just under 1,500 employees overall, with an undisclosed number at its Greenwood Village headquarters and at its regional operator, SecurCare Self Storage.

Public Storage has direct operating margins of 78% at its location, which is higher than NSA’s margins of 69%. The 1,000-plus NSA properties are expected to be moved over to Public Storage’s “PS Next” platform.

Public Storage also has a much stronger balance sheet, meaning it can borrow money at a lower cost.

Public Storage lists $110 million to $130 million in expected “annual synergies,” some of which will come from making NSA operations more efficient and through “general and administrative” savings.

That last item would suggest the company might eliminate redundant corporate roles in Colorado that could be handled in Frisco, Texas. The two companies didn’t mention layoffs in the news release. NSA didn’t respond to an email request about workforce reductions because of its sale.

The combined companies are expected to have a market value of $57 billion. The deal is expected to be completed in the third quarter.

StorageCafe, a storage unit search engine, estimates that and that the nation has 2.1 billion square feet of rentable storage space.

Despite slower population growth and a cultural emphasis on “minimalist” lifestyles, developers added 55.1 million square feet of storage space last year and are on track to add another 51.1 million this year, according to StorageCafe.

The average cost of a a month, down 1.6% from the average last year and close to the current U.S. average in January of $119 a month, according to StorageCafe.

Instead, she said, RTD is “the agency of what can be.”

But possibilities for the future are failing to satisfy the immediate, intensifying demands from transit advocates, lawmakers, and metro residents for higher-frequency buses and trains, with better safety and convenience, that reliably move people where they want to go faster than driving. And RTD leaders are scrambling to show progress toward their vision of a “transit-first” future.

Ridership is down nearly 40% since 2019. State lawmakers who oversee the RTD are fed up.�� “RTD has failed my community, and they continue to fail my community,” Sen. Kyle Mullica (D-Thornton) said in a legislative accountability hearing. “That is unacceptable.”

RTD approves record high $1.5 billion budget but faces deficit; service cuts possible

The lawmakers have begun crafting an overhaul of the RTD board based on recommendations from a panel they created to replace 10 of 15 publicly elected directors with appointees who would bring greater expertise. Meanwhile, Colorado intercity rail leaders, with backing from Gov. Jared Polis, are targeting RTD funds to help launch Front Range Passenger Rail.

'Transit-first' future

Under fire amid rising concerns about bad transit hurting "transit-oriented" apartments around bus and train hubs, Johnson and the agency's directors argue that making buses and trains faster and more frequent cannot be done by RTD alone and will require greater buy-in from the 40 municipalities across RTD's 2,345-square-mile service area, which spans eight counties.

"We need to optimize the service," Johnson said in a Denver Post interview, describing her vision of a reliable transit system -- with smarter new routes -- where "you don't have to look at your watch" because buses and trains always arrive within 15 minutes.

"Do we have dedicated lanes for all buses? Do we have transit signal priority within every municipality where we operate? When I get on a light rail vehicle now, why am I sitting at a traffic signal when cars are going by? If we really wanted to have a laser-like focus on the future of transit utilization -- and increasing that -- shouldn’t municipalities adopt a transit-first policy? The City and County of Denver does not have a transit-first policy," Johnson said.

“We will have to decide what our priorities are."

Cities' role

Denver officials say they're doing what they can. They contend they've already made Denver transit-friendly by establishing about 30 miles of bus-only lanes on downtown streets, the Broadway/Lincoln corridor, and Eighth Avenue. They'll add 5.5 miles of "Bus Rapid Transit" on East Colfax Avenue and 9.2 miles along Federal Boulevard by 2030, city spokeswoman Nancy Kuhn said. A Colorado Boulevard overhaul, still in the early planning stage, could add 7.3 miles of bus lanes, bringing the total to around 52 miles by 2031, Kuhn said. Before 2040, city officials plan to study the potential for bus lanes along Alameda, Speer-Leetsdale, 38th Avenue, and Park Avenue.
Denver has a "transit-priority" goal of creating up to 300 miles of bus lanes, she said.

However, the advocacy group questioned the city's commitment, estimating that fewer than 10% of Denver's streets are designed so buses and trains can move faster than cars. "Aside from the massive, bond-funded projects that got started well before Mayor Mike Johnston got to office, like Colfax BRT, there have been no transit speed and reliability improvements made," partnership director Jill Locantore said.

"Denver is not currently a transit-first city. The vast majority of our street space is devoted to the movement of personal vehicles, not transit," Locantore said. "All levels of government have an important role to play. ..... RTD needs more funding to be able to run those buses and trains frequently all day, every day. But it's the cities and the state that control the street space."

RTD under fire

"We need to be very engaged with county commissioners and city governments," O'Keefe said. "There are numerous pressures on our system, which was built to serve downtown. Of course, it is not serving people's modern lives. And that's our job."

Starting this month, RTD officials say they'll launch a to guide a potential overhaul of bus routes based on land use, mobility, and population data. Smarter routes, directors say, will help sustain the agency's rising costs and deal with an emerging budget crisis. Over the past few months, directors reviewing the agency's finances concluded they might have to reduce service starting in 2027.

"We know we have to solve this," and "we don't think the state legislature is going to be able to do it," RTD director Chris Nicholson said Monday after a weekend board retreat, where directors' posture was "resolve more than commiseration" with fewer arguments than at a previous retreat.

Lawmakers' proposed overhaul would lead to "a board the governor will control," Nicholson said. The current directors agree on a vision for better public transit, he said. "The question is: How do you pay for it? And there are varying degrees of enthusiasm around significantly raising taxes and the willingness to take the risk of asking voters to do that."

Leadership, funding

RTD directors also plan to consider agency leadership. Johnson's contract ends in May 2027, in the middle of a period state leaders see as pivotal for addressing the vehicle congestion around metro Denver.

Widely seen as a public transit whiz more attuned to operational nuances than politics, Johnson stands out among agency leaders around the nation because she serves as both chief executive and general manager. Unlike all but two other U.S. transit agencies, RTD is run by a publicly elected board.

She and the directors control a record-high $1.5 billion annual budget but face deficits from $100 million to $400 million a year due to insufficient sales tax revenues and heavy maintenance costs.

“We've made some great strides. Also, I recognize there’s always a need for the right leader at the right time. I was the right leader at the right time when I came in at the height of COVID," Johnson said. "I pride myself on being a transit practitioner. I understand the nuances of delivering transit services."

She has refused to set a ridership target, insisting "customer experience" matters more.

"Whether the leader is Debra Johnson or not, you will need somebody who is well-versed in transit, a practitioner. You don’t necessarily need a politician," she said.

Johnson was hired as the first outside professional in 30 years to run RTD and made difficult decisions, such as eliminating mandatory overtime for bus and train drivers, part of efforts to boost recruitment and retention, and addressing deferred maintenance along light rail tracks. In 2024, inspections revealed widespread deterioration, which forced RTD managers to impose emergency safety slow zones. Light rail trains crawled at 10 miles per hour for six months as contractors made repairs.

RTD directors will “take a hard look” at whether to re-extend Johnson's contract if she's interested, said O’Keefe, a business management consultant. “She’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever worked with in any industry. She has brought serious discipline to the organization.”

RTD's next chief executive must work closely and possibly lead a ballot measure appeal to voters for funds to expand public transit, O’Keefe added. “We will need an enthusiastic CEO.”

Rising demands

Among state lawmakers, Rep. Meg Froelich, a Democrat representing Englewood who chairs the , said unreliable public transit no longer will be acceptable. “It is disappointing if the narrative out of RTD is scarcity of resources and an inability to deliver high-quality services because of that scarcity,” Froelich said.

“Front Range Passenger Rail absolutely has to happen. It����ap going to be incredibly beneficial to our transportation system. People want this. We want to be connected to Fort Collins, to Colorado Springs. It's all mapped out. And it is hanging on RTD,” she said.

Public transit in metro Denver requires "a higher level of nimbleness and responsiveness to changing circumstances," Froelich said. The RTD chief must “see a way to connect the service to the new realities. We're going to have a new Broncos stadium and a new women's soccer stadium. Nimbleness and innovation are required. It's exciting."

Intercity trains

Gov. Polis is driving state efforts to tap RTD's revenues to fund intercity rail. For years, Polis has highlighted RTD's failure to launch the voter-approved FasTracks project, including a train linking Denver with Boulder, for which RTD since 2004 has been collecting tax revenues. polls show RTD's failure has hurt Colorado voters' trust that intercity passenger rail can be done. Polis administration officials set up a joint service agreement to launch the Boulder-Denver train as part of an intercity rail "starter service" along Colorado's northern Front Range by 2029 -- but only if RTD commits to funding.

Johnson serves on the state's three-member team negotiating with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, which owns Front Range tracks and right-of-way, for a crucial track-sharing deal. She supports "ample mobility options" as essential for metro Denver to thrive, she said. "You cannot be heavily reliant on single-occupant vehicles, because that's where the roads get clogged."

For the millions of metro Denver residents frustrated with that traffic, viable transit alternatives are still a matter of waiting, said James Flattum, co-founder of the Greater Denver Transit advocacy group. RTD directors' recent consideration of cutting services to balance the agency's budget, possibly reducing bus and train frequencies, would accelerate the declines in ridership, Flattum said.

"Cuts to service are unacceptable. We want more transit in the future," he said. "Will RTD management rise to the occasion and make some big changes with the system, with the pieces they control? RTD needs to make it work better for riders within the next couple of years. We need to restore trust."

Thirty-five years ago, Colorado was among a handful of oil and gas states experiencing a severe recession because of low energy prices, and from 1986 to 1990, more people left the state to pursue better opportunities elsewhere than moved in.

The state economy is chugging along this time around — not great, but not horrible. Yet, it appears high housing costs and slower job growth may be exerting a strong outward push. Last year, the state saw a weakening in its strongest contributor to population growth since the pandemic — immigration.

Nationally, President Donald Trump’s push to curb immigration a year ago lowered the country’s population growth rate from 1% in 2024 to 0.5% in 2025. Colorado’s decrease was even larger, going from a 1.29% growth rate to a 0.4%, a two-thirds decline.

Trump’s immigration crackdown led to drop in US growth rate last year as population hit 342 million

The U.S. Census Bureau measures changes in population from July 1 to June 30 every year in what is called a "vintage." The strictest immigration policies were in place for only half that period, but they were enough to help push net immigration from 2.8 million people in the prior period to 1.3 million.

If that trend continues, the annual gain from net immigration in the next count, mid-2026, could drop to only 321,000 people, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

Colorado's gain included 20,608 from natural increases, or births minus deaths. Net migration contributed 3,256 residents, with net immigration of 15,356 offsetting a net decline of 12,100 from domestic migration.

The country had an estimated population of nearly 342 million compared to 340 million in the 2024 count. The state's population rose from 5,988,502 to 6,012,561. Colorado remains the 20th most populous state, behind Maryland and ahead of Wisconsin.

The downward shift was more pronounced in other states. California went from a gain of 232,000 residents in 2024 to a loss of 9,500 people in 2025, due primarily to reduced immigration. Hawaii, New Mexico, Vermont and West Virginia also lost population.

New York added only 1,008 people after a drop in immigration from 207,000 to 95,600. Florida saw its domestic migration drop by nearly two-thirds and immigration dropped by more than half, but it still had one of the largest overall gains, along with Texas and North Carolina.

South Carolina, Idaho and North Carolina had the highest year-over-year population growth rates, ranging from 1.3% to 1.5%.

"Many of these states are going to show even smaller growth when we get to next year," Brookings demographer William Frey predicted Tuesday.

In 1990, the state added 18,840 residents. But the population is now 80% larger, so the comparison isn't an even one. Although the pandemic slowed growth, the last time the rate of population growth was so low was in 1989. Only half done, this decade is shaping up to be the slowest the state has seen for growth since the 1980s.

Since 2020, Colorado has seen a net 17,729 people arrive from other U.S. states. By contrast, net immigration, people arriving from other countries, surged by 130,218. Net migration, which historically is 80% domestic and 20% international, has flipped the other way and then some.

Little on the horizon suggests that slower population growth will reverse itself, especially with fewer immigrants and now more outflows than inflows domestically. Demographic winter, long predicted, could be arriving earlier than expected.

On the plus side demographically, births rose 4.6% to 65,380 from the 2023-2024 period, and are now at the highest pace since 2017. Deaths remained fairly flat, rising by 59 or 0.1% from the prior period. That said, the holiday that death can take is limited, given the state's aging population.

The State Demography Office had forecast a population gain of 33,154 and net migration of 13,568 for 2025. It was off by nearly 10,000, due almost entirely to weaker net migration. Last year, it had cut population forecasts through 2029 by 120,000 residents, and it may need to make more revisions, especially if immigration dries up even more.

What caused domestic migration to turn negative, given the absence of a recession? When someone arrives in a state from another country, they are counted as an international migrant. But if they move to another state, they are counted as a domestic migrant, according to the State Demography Office.

A lot of the international arrivals to Colorado between 2022 and 2025 came on humanitarian grounds and were likely headed elsewhere. And the Census Bureau, which makes no distinction between legal and illegal immigration, has gotten better at counting those arriving as refugees or under a protected status than in the past.

"At least some portion of the domestic out-migration from Colorado is made up of recently arrived international migrants," the State Demography Office said in a release discussing the Census numbers.

That means a drop in immigration could translate into better numbers on domestic migration in the next estimate.

But an annual survey from United Van Lines, whose customers tend to be older and higher-income households, reported that Colorado last year had become a "strong outbound" state, one of only five, for the first time since 1990. For much of the 2010s, Colorado was a "strong inbound" state, before becoming more balanced after the pandemic.

That would suggest that it isn't only the newest residents who departed, but also more established and wealthier households who were picking up and leaving.

Slower growth should allow the state to catch up on its housing shortfall, and if population gains are weak enough, reduced demand could even push rents and home prices lower. Apartment rents in Denver are already back to 2022 levels.

Governments could catch up on much-needed infrastructure, but their budgets may also take a hit given that population growth, along with inflation, determines how much additional spending they are allowed each year.

Broomfield economist Gary Horvathsaid slower population gains and slower job gains tend to correlate with each other. Normally, a lack of job opportunities results in slower population growth. But he suggests the situation might be reversed.

"With the exception of health care, in 2025, there was weak job growth in many sectors. If a person is needed to fill a job, and we don't have that person, the labor market will struggle -- not from a lack of demand, but from a lack of supply," he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Democrats, who hold large majorities in the state House and Senate, will also maneuver disputes within their caucus and pending ethics complaints. Term-limited Gov. Jared Polis, who is on the sidelines of the race to succeed him, will seek to put a stamp on his final year of signing (or vetoing) bills.

All of that — and electoral politics — will serve as the backdrop as in Denver, setting the stage for what may be “the most unique session” in recent memory, as Senate Minority Leader Cleave Simpson, an Alamosa Republican, put it.

Live updates: Against Trump threats, Colorado House speaker urges colleagues: ‘Let’s do what’s right’

Besides Polis, three of the four top legislative Democrats are in their final year. Meanwhile, a slew of lawmakers will juggle the day-to-day work of lawmaking while they jockey for election to statewide office or to seats in Washington, D.C.

Here's a look at several top issues facing the 100 lawmakers as they gavel in for four months of work at the state Capitol.

Gov. Polis' last ride

Heading into his eighth and final regular session as governor, Polis gave Senate Democrats some advice earlier this week.

“You can work with me on things that you think I might sign that other future governors might not. It����ap kind of a good opportunity,” he quipped. “At the same time, you can also do nothing, if it����ap something I don’t support -- you can also wait until the new governor (takes office) and maybe they will (support it)."

A president or a governor’s final, lame duck year is typically the nadir of their political power, and lawmakers have already started bucking Polis more often.

But his comment was emblematic of his relationship with the legislature, which fellow Democrats have controlled for the entirety of his two terms in office. He has been open with veto threats -- at times issuing them before the session even started -- and has sought to shape and negotiate legislation before it reaches his desk.

Legislators have privately joked about keeping prospective bill ideas in their desks, waiting for Polis’ successor to enter office before dusting them off.

Polis’ approach to President Donald Trump, a Republican, has further strained his relationship with legislative Democrats. The governor praised Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's pick for health secretary, shortly after the presidential election, and he has taken a less-pointed public stance against the nation’s chief executive than some of his Democratic contemporaries.

Other state officials, including lawmakers, remain worried that Polis will grant an early prison release to former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, a Trump ally. And Polis’ efforts to sidestep a state law that he signed -- aimed at preventing data-sharing with federal immigration authorities -- sparked a lawsuit and further criticism.

As President Trump targets Colorado, its Democrats — and some Republicans — struggle to play defense

On Monday, after Polis offered his advice, Senate Democrats peppered him with questions about Peters, about his efforts to work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and about his celebration of Trump’s recent military intervention in Venezuela.

How the relationship between Polis and lawmakers develops will color the entire session. Theirs is a necessarily symbiotic pairing: Lawmakers need the governor to sign their bills, and the governor needs lawmakers to carry and pass his agenda.

Polis told Senate Democrats on Monday that he would focus on housing -- where he has recently found more common ground with lawmakers -- and would support a returning bill that would allow nonprofit groups and schools to build housing on their land.

“He wants to go out strong. He wants to go out continuing the legacy for the good work that he’s done for the last seven years,” Senate President James Coleman said.

Issues that split Polis from the legislature will also return. A Democratic-priority bill aimed at easing labor union negotiations is back after Polis vetoed the same bill in June. His staff members told lawmakers Monday that another bill, which would establish a state-level office of workplace safety, would also be “a challenge" for Polis.

Bills proposing to regulate social media and artificial intelligence are also set for returns, even as Polis has sought to steer the longstanding AI debate toward less-regulated waters. A package of immigration bills is also in the works.

“I think you’ll see the governor having a lot less weight in the building, and just (see) more willingness than ever before to buck the governor and go against the governor,” said Sen. Matt Ball, a Denver Democrat. “But by the same token, the governor still has the veto pen, and so that’ll still be there.”

‘Severe’ budget environment

For the third straight legislative session -- plus August����ap special session -- lawmakers will need to decide where to cut the budget to make room for ballooning Medicaid costs.

Officials forecast this year's cuts won't be as heavy, dollar-wise, as the past rounds -- settling at $700 million to $800 million rather than the $1 billion-plus savings lawmakers needed to find then.

But those cuts are all cumulative, and legislative leaders warn that the relatively easy decisions on where to trim have already been made.

“There’s a lot of difficult conversations ahead,” House Speaker Julie McCluskie said.

McCluskie has recently given voice to a quietly building position among Democratic leaders: The Taxpayer's Bill of Rights needs to be reformed. She defended the state constitutional amendment����ap mandate that voters be asked to approve tax increases, but she said the spending cap set by TABOR, based on inflation and population growth, needs to change to accommodate an “older and grayer" -- and more Medicaid-dependent -- Colorado.

Any change to TABOR would need a vote from the people.

Republican leaders, however, argue for more spending cuts and better prioritization of spending. Simpson, the Republican Senate leader, said his caucus would fight any changes to the state tax code that break with rolling conformity to federal tax policy, as when state leaders preemptively passed a law last year that opted Colorado out of a federal change exempting overtime pay from taxes.

His caucus sees that as an end-run around TABOR’s requirement to take tax increases to voters.

"The big question is going to be: How are we going to address the budget shortfall? Are we going to look at actually cutting spending, or are we going to look at raising revenue?" said House Minority Leader Jarvis Caldwell, that chamber's top Republican. "Obviously, I'm in the cutting-spending category there."

Democrats, too, have warned that the budget situation demands cuts.

"We’re going to unfund some of my bills that I passed," Sen. Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat and member of the Joint Budget Committee, told Senate colleagues Monday. "We’re going to unfund some of the bills you all passed. That is going to happen."

Medicaid cuts 'are going to suck'

More than one in five Coloradans rely on Medicaid, the low-income health insurance program, and it makes up more than a third of the state’s $18 billion general fund budget. With legislative leaders hoping to keep K-12 education funding untouched, they’ll have to look to Medicaid cuts to bridge the budget gap.

To keep up with Medicaid demand, the state would need to add about $600 million to its budget, according to projections from the governor's office. Polis instead has proposed a $300 million increase -- an amount that still dwarfs the total budgets of several state agencies.

In effect, it means that some part of Medicaid -- the number of people served, the benefits they receive or the amount paid to health care providers who serve Medicaid patients -- will need to be cut, even if the budget itself increases.

After Amabile said Medicaid and behavioral health programs would be cut, other Democrats wondered about dipping further into the state’s reserves to backfill the shortfall and avoid cutting social services.

“These cuts are going to suck,” Sen. Kyle Mullica, of Thornton, said.

Sen. Jeff Bridges, also on the Joint Budget Committee, warned against dipping more into the state’s piggy bank, a backstop during recessions. Polis has already proposed taking some money from the reserves, and any additional withdrawals will put the state in a difficult position should the economy tumble.

“If we hit a real recession, then what we have in the reserves … won't even last a year,” he warned. “Like, we are just totally (expletive), and the people of Colorado are (expletive).”

An 'uphill battle' with Trump administration?

The start of the legislative session coincides with a recent barrage of executive actions by the Trump administration targeting federal funding for the state.

Most recently, the Republican president has sought to freeze assistance for low-income families over unspecified allegations of fraud in Colorado. A federal judge paused that action last week, but worries of further funding freezes and other federal actions seen as contrary to state priorities hang over Democratic leaders.

In the days leading up to the session's start, Democratic lawmakers repeatedly said they would focus on combating administrative actions. At least three immigration bills -- including one that would allow people to sue ICE agents for violations of constitutional rights -- are expected to be introduced.

“There is a collective mood with the people that I talk to in my communities, in the areas that I represent, of just this darkness,” said McCluskie, a Dillon Democrat. “This weight. We wake up every day with some new destabilizing decision, some new hate-driven policy effort from the administration.

"That, coupled with the level of political violence that we’ve seen, it is a moment for us to rise above.”

If the Trump administration’s freezes on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program hold, the state won’t be able to make up the difference, Coleman said. Instead, lawmakers will need to minimize the effects and be strategic about what they can do, Coleman said.

“We have to figure out a way to not damage certain services that we have here at the state,” he said. “We’re going to have to make cuts, but be strategic about what cuts we have to make.”

Conflict among Democrats

For much of the fall, the legislature’s 66-member Democratic caucus has been roiled by the fallout from a retreat organized by a small caucus of 18 lawmakers who generally are more moderate.

In October, the “Opportunity Caucus” gathered in Vail, raised an undisclosed amount of money from organizations that paid an undisclosed fee to attend, and were supported, in part, by a prominent dark-money group that had helped elect several of them in 2024.

The retreat sparked criticism from other Democrats and spurred the filing of more than a dozen ethics complaints against Opportunity Caucus members. The caucus has pushed back, accusing its critics of Trump-esque attacks and arguing in legal filings that its members didn’t violate state law.

“Any caucus's intent is to raise money for the purposes of your caucus,” Sen. Lindsey Daugherty, an Arvada Democrat and the caucus’s chair, said last week. “And for the purpose of our caucus, that is down to our mission of affordability and accessibility and trying to figure out what the real issues are facing Colorado, which we just don’t think is happening right now.”

Tensions have simmered for months as Democrats navigate the range of ideologies in their broad majorities -- 43-22 in the House and 23-12 in the Senate.

When House Democratic leadership brought in a third party to moderate a discussion about the division in November, Opportunity Caucus members refused to speak on the advice of their lawyers. Senate Democrats brought in an outside facilitator to hold their own internal discussion Monday. But Opportunity Caucus members again largely didn’t participate, lawmakers said, and legislators from both sides said afterward that the divide hadn’t been bridged.

Some lobbyists have said privately that some Democratic lawmakers have refused to work on bills together because of their internal affiliations. Primary fights against some caucus members are already beginning to spin up.

Outwardly, lawmakers on either side of the divide have said they hope Democrats will unite around priority bills. Rep. Sean Camacho, a Denver Democrat and Opportunity Caucus member, said that while tensions were normal in politics, he expected lawmakers would enter the Capitol as professionals and would be "laser-focused" on their agenda.

Ball, who isn't a member of that caucus, said it was unclear how the issue would play out.

"It could swing from people spite-voting against fellow Democrats, because they either are or aren’t members of the Opportunity Caucus," he said, "to basically not changing anything and people vote the same way they typically vote on different bills. I have no clue. It feels really unsettled."

Repeat, outbound, not inbound.

The UniGroup Cos., parent of United Van Lines and Mayflower, has measured the ratio of inbound moves to outbound moves for states since 1977. And for the vast majority of those years, Colorado has had a higher share of moves in than moves out. From 2013-17, not counting 2016, it was a “high inbound” state, with 55% or more of its moves inbound.

“2025 is the first year that Colorado has been listed as a high outbound state since 1990,” said Eily Cummings, vice president of corporate communications at United Van Lines.

In 1990, the state was dealing with the aftermath of an oil and real estate boom that got out of hand and resulted in massive job losses. Today, the jobs remain, but housing costs have greatly outstripped incomes, chewing away at affordability for new and old residents alike, in both urban and rural areas.

Colorado is now running with a different crowd demographically. New Jersey leads the country with nearly 70% of its moves outbound. New York, with its larger and older population and high living expenses, had the second-highest outbound ratio at 57.8%. Retirees are a big part of the outbound moves in both states.

California matched New York’s outbound rate. Historically, it has been a more balanced state, but it has shifted to the high outbound camp as workers follow corporate relocations. Tesla, SpaceX, McKesson, Chevron, Charles Schwab, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard Enterprises and Toyota North America are among the bigger names that have relocated from California to Texas.

A little bit ahead of Colorado was North Dakota, which has both one of the smallest populations in the country and one of the most extreme climates. It is hard to blame people for leaving a state where the record temperatures have ranged from a high of 121 degrees to a low of 60 degrees below zero, both in the same year, and where the economy is prone to boom and bust cycles.

“This report provides some interesting information, and the data may suggest there are challenges in some areas. I think outmigration is a big issue that has economic development implications. Those issues will likely be part of the 2026 elections,” said Broomfield economist Gary Horvath after reviewing the report.

Compared to 2019, Horvath notes that a higher share of people aged 55-plus and households with incomes above $150,000 are moving out. As for the state’s job opportunities and lifestyle, they have lost some of their drawing power. Whether that is temporary or a trend will determine the state’s future.

So, where are the former Colorado residents headed to? Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, Virginia and nearby states like Kansas are where most of the moving trucks leaving Colorado stop to unload, Cummings said.

Looking at moves nationally, Oregon is the top state for its ratio of inbound moves at 64.5%. Jobs, especially in tech and health care, are drawing workers. But secondary cities like Eugene, not Portland, are the ones that are benefiting.

West Virginia, South Carolina, Delaware, Minnesota and Idaho, North Carolina, Arkansas, Alabama and Nevada are the other “popular” states in terms of inbound moves, at least by United Van Lines counts. For Colorado, Alabama’s presence is noteworthy, given that the Trump administration plans to shift U.S. Space Command headquarters from Colorado Springs to Huntsville.

One of the arguments for keeping the headquarters in place is that people want to live here, not in Alabama. But the United Van Line numbers are telling a different story.

Family has become the top reason for moving nationally, nudging out jobs, which were the main motivator before the pandemic, Cummings said. About 3 in 10 of Colorado movers, in either direction, cite family as the primary reason for relocating.

The largest age groups moving in both directions are 65-plus, followed by 55- to 64-year-olds. Combined, they accounted for six in 10 outbound moves and about 54% of inbound moves.

It is important to note the survey’s limitations. Although United Van Lines examined more than 100,000 moves, its customers tend to be established homeowners with families who can afford a full-service mover. A recent college graduate or young professional would be more inclined to rent a U-Haul trailer or borrow grandpa’s pickup truck and move themselves.

Colorado’s migration picture looks more balanced in a released Tuesday. The state moved into the 23rd spot for inbound moves by do-it-yourself movers last year after ranking 40th in 2024. Last decade and during the pandemic, the state was a regular visitor on the top 10 list for inbound moves.

Outbound moves surpassed inbound moves in 2024, but last year Metro Denver .

Texas, Florida and North Carolina were the three most popular inbound states, per the U-Haul study, while California, Illinois and New Jersey were the three states with the highest share of outbound moves.

Former state demographer Elizabeth Garner, in explaining the state’s shrinking domestic migration counts, said that Colorado continues to attract young adults on the move, but is seeing an increase in older households moving out.

A majority of movers captured in the United Van Lines had household incomes above $150,000 — about six in 10 of those moving in and 55% of those moving out. Some of those moves might reflect highly-paid remote workers who relocated during the pandemic being called back to the home office. But it could also be a signal that even $150,000 a year isn’t enough to afford Colorado.

About 5% of those leaving Colorado cited living costs as the primary reason for the move. That may not seem like a lot, but it is one of the highest shares cited in any state, given that people don’t like to admit they can’t afford the place they once called home.

“A lot of people don’t choose cost of living. That is telling. The only states that are higher on that are California, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Montana,” Cummings said.

Within Colorado, Fort Collins is the only “strong inbound” metro area left. Boulder and Grand Junction are balanced. Denver and Colorado Springs are at 57% outbound, higher than the state average, while Greeley matches the state average at 55%.

And then there is Pueblo, where three people moved out for every person moving in. Its 75% outbound ratio was third third-highest in the country of any city. If there is a bright side to that dire number, it is that things have improved from 2024, when 81% of the moves were outbound.

About the only thing supporting population growth in Colorado the past couple of years has been international migration, but that is slowing sharply. If the United Van Line numbers are right, the state can’t expect domestic migration, already weak, to fill in the gap.

Cummings notes that there is a discernible shift nationally of younger adults leaving large metro areas for smaller- to medium-sized metro areas that are more affordable. If families, not jobs, remain the biggest driver of moves, and if the state’s young adults have to move elsewhere to afford a home, then outbound flows could continue.

Colorado’s population is younger than that of other outbound states, but aging, and the lure of being closer to grandchildren or living in a milder climate, could fuel more departures in the years ahead.

And in that regard, Colorado risks heading down the path of New Jersey, which has been a high outbound state for the past 15 years. Like Colorado, it is considered a “launch” state able to attract young professionals. But it has become a state where its oldest residents are symbolically raising the unofficial New Jersey state bird in the rear view mirror as they head out on the turnpike.

The health-care construction clustered in parts of metro Denver that have seen above-average population growth since 2020, and which state demographers project will continue to grow over the next decade.

And hospitals are building with the expectation those areas will continue to grow — three of the new towers going up have floors with no immediate use planned, including one where unfinished space accounts for nearly half of the project.

Hospital systems and reported 13 projects in various stages of construction this year. They only detailed costs for eight, which totaled $824 million. Since the projects without cost information include a hospital tower and extensive work on three outpatient clinics, the actual total likely approaches $1 billion.

Colorado doesn’t have any way of quantifying whether areas need more hospital beds, and health systems generally described their recent projects as bringing specific types of care closer to communities, rather than relieving a crunch on their existing facilities.

That falls in line with how hospitals generally focus on expanding, consultant Allan Baumgarten said: They offer outpatient and emergency services in growing, well-off communities to start building patient loyalty.

“You want to create lots of front doors to your system,” he said.

Douglas County in particular saw a health care building boom: started work on an expansion of its Parker hospital and a new freestanding emergency room in Castle Rock, while built an addition to its Highlands Ranch hospital, Kaiser Permanente expanded its Parker offices and began preliminary work on a campus in Meridian, an unincorporated area near Lone Tree.

Other major projects in the metro area this year included a new tower at Mountain Ridge hospital in Thornton, a cardiology center at AdventHealth Littleton, an urgent care center with primary care offices that UCHealth is opening in Green Valley Ranch and a campus AdventHealth is building in the Aurora Highlands planned community, which its spokeswoman said will eventually grow into a new hospital.

UCHealth’s existing primary care clinic in Green Valley Ranch was already full, and Highlands Ranch Hospital hit its 10-year growth projections within four years, said Merle Taylor, president of the system’s community hospitals in the Denver area, including Highlands Ranch, Broomfield and Longs Peak. The system aims for its Aurora and Highlands Ranch hospitals to run about 85% full, but sometimes they fill every bed during flu season, he said.

“We want to make sure we’re meeting (residents’) needs and their demands in our communities,” he said.

Expansions reflect population growth

The locations where health systems built this year at least partly reflect population trends.

Douglas County had the second-largest increase in population since 2020, adding almost 34,000 residents, according to the . Adams County came in third, with a population increase of about 23,000. Weld County had the largest increase.

The state demographer’s office projected Douglas and Adams counties will remain in the top three for the next decade, with each adding about 69,000 residents by 2035. The office noted in November that Colorado faces challenges as fewer immigrants come and more are deported or choose to leave the country, while migration from other states slows because of high housing costs.

The southern end of the metro area is growing significantly, creating an increase in demand for care, but AdventHealth is looking at opportunities on multiple sides of Denver, spokeswoman Rachel Robinson said.

The emergency room and urgent care center south of downtown Castle Rock won’t replace the hospital on the north side of town, Robinson said. The hospital will handle complex cases, while people who need immediate care for routine injuries and illnesses can save about 15 minutes of driving time, she said.

“It’s simply bringing care closer to where people live,” she said in an email.

Kaiser Permanente estimated the number of patients using the Parker clinic as their primary medical home has increased by about 3,000 since 2020. The system bought a piece of land in Parker back in 2009 to eventually build its own site instead of leasing an office, said Michael Ramseier, president of Kaiser Permanente Colorado. The new Parker offices opened over the summer.

“Obviously, Colorado’s grown significantly, and we want to make sure we’re capturing that proportional growth,” he said.

The system is also replacing outdated buildings in Lakewood and Westminster, while expanding the populations they can serve, Ramseier said. A new clinic and urgent care center is going up next to the existing building in Lakewood, which wasn’t the easiest place to navigate after three expansions over multiple decades, he said. The new Lakewood offices will open in January, but the Westminster project, which will add an urgent care facility and ambulatory surgery center, won’t wrap up until 2028.

“We’ve got a huge population there (in Lakewood), it’s one of our biggest, but it was a 50-year-old property that needed upgrades,” he said.

Health systems built with an eye toward continued growth this year. AdventHealth’s new Parker tower has three floors without an immediate use planned, and UCHealth’s Highlands Ranch tower has two. They likely won’t stay empty for long, though, Taylor said.

“Some time over the next three years, we’re going to need those,” he said.

In HCA HealthOne Mountain Ridge’s expansion, about 17,000 of the 36,000 square feet are “shelled” space that it could build out in the future. Shelled space has outside walls and windows to enclose it, but doesn’t have interior walls or full utilities.

When constructing something like a new tower, which would expand up instead of out, building space you might not immediately need is cheaper than going back and adding floors later, said Ryan Thorton, president and CEO at HCA HealthONE Mountain Ridge.

The estimated demand in the hospital’s service area grew about 12.5% over the last four years, and the hospital needed more beds for general medical and surgical patients, he said.

“With continued growth in service needed in northern Denver, we anticipate the 24 additional beds in 2026 will ensure we have adequate capacity to treat the growing population, but are prepared to expand as necessary,” Thorton said in an email.

Adding services, increasing income

The new construction fits with an overall pattern of health systems around Denver increasing their incomes by adding services to their existing campuses, buying independent hospitals, or building new facilities, said Baumgarten, the consultant.

Growth in freestanding emergency rooms has slowed down after a building boom about a decade ago, but interest in ambulatory surgery centers, urgent care and outpatient offices is picking up, he said. Those facilities tend to be cheaper to run than inpatient hospitals, and patients increasingly choose them, or are nudged by their insurance to do so.

Hospitals tend to choose high-visibility locations near major highways in areas where most people have either job-based insurance or Medicare, Baumgarten said.

In many ways, the construction in Douglas County fits that pattern. UCHealth Highlands Ranch Hospital is close to C-470 and AdventHealth Parker sits near E-470, while the new AdventHealth freestanding emergency room will be just off Interstate 25.

According to the , Douglas County was the wealthiest in the state as of 2023, with a median household income of about $146,000 — meaning half of households earn more and half earn less. Of the nine counties with median incomes over $100,000, Douglas County was the only one to grow by more than 4,000 people since the 2020 census.

“You want to capture as much of that affluent and well-insured population as possible, and you want to be early to get there,” because people tend to develop loyalty to doctors and hospitals, Baumgarten said.

Colorado doesn’t require hospitals to prove that an area needs additional medical facilities, and local zoning boards typically welcome hospitals as a source of high-paying jobs and a way to make their communities more attractive to potential residents, Baumgarten said. Bond market investors could put the brakes on a project if they won’t buy because they’re convinced it won’t generate sufficient returns to repay them, he said.

Baumgarten said he’s skeptical of new construction that isn’t in medically underserved areas, because patients and their insurance have to cover a hospital’s fixed costs, including any bonds that went to build it.

“I’m of the belief that all of this construction has to be paid for,” he said.

Hospitals have to be prepared for growth in their communities so people aren’t left waiting for care while they try to catch up, said Dan Mager, spokesman for the Colorado Hospital Association. Typically, they do a deep analysis of future care needs before investing, he said.

“Standing up new resources for a community is an expensive endeavor with ongoing costs — so it requires thoughtful consideration — and indicates there is a need right now or an expected need in the near future,” Mager said in a statement.

How hositpals decide when to expand

Defining whether an area is underserved can be tricky.

The federal government has designations for areas with shortages of , but not for hospital services. The , which compiles annual reports on hospital finances, doesn’t have a way of measuring demand for hospital services in communities, other than collecting information about what community members identified as important in regular needs assessments hospitals must perform, spokesman Marc Williams said.

In general, policymakers like to see about three general hospital beds for every 1,000 people in an area, but communities with older and sicker residents may need more, said Dr. Richard Leuchter, an assistant professor at .

But when hospitals are deciding whether to expand, they rely on more complex formulas to determine how many beds they need to keep their emergency departments from backing up, he said.

Laypeople can’t easily reproduce those calculations without insider data, and some easier-to-find metrics, such as occupancy rates, don’t tell the full story, Leuchter said. For example, a hospital that performs a large number of outpatient surgeries might show up as 50% full, when the truth is that every bed is full during the day and almost all are empty overnight, he said.

Weldy Feazell, director of economic development for the town of Parker, said she hasn’t heard about residents struggling to get hospital care, though it was probably time for a facility upgrade, since the AdventHealth hospital went up about two decades ago. She has heard some complaints about difficulty finding a primary care doctor, which the Kaiser Permanente expansion will help address, she said.

Parker has added about 7,800 residents since 2020, putting it sixth for growth behind Aurora, Denver, unincorporated Douglas County, Castle Rock and Erie.

As the community has grown, health systems have seen an opportunity to let people get specialized care, such as cancer treatment, without driving to Denver, Feazell said. After all, most people don’t love spending time on Interstate 25, especially if they’re feeling a bit off after a procedure, she said.

“They’re just trying to find ways to bring it closer to home for people,” she said.

Health system construction projects in metro Denver in 2025

AdventHealth

• : Adding a nearly 24,000-square-foot facility with a new freestanding emergency room and urgent care facility with primary care offices on site, at a cost of $28 million. Opening in fall 2026.
• : Adding a 186,000-square-foot tower with four operating rooms, 30 general patient beds, 30 beds for cardiac and stroke patients and two heart procedure rooms, at a cost of $300 million. Opening in February 2027.
• : Added a 143,000-square-foot facility providing heart and stroke care, with spaces for surgeries, less-invasive procedures and cardiac intensive care, at a cost of $150 million. Opened in August.
• : Building a new campus, starting with an 88,000-square-foot building that includes a freestanding emergency room, an imaging center and 27 exam rooms, at a cost of $81 million. Opening in September 2026.

CommonSpirit Health

• : 42 acres of land. The system hasn’t released specifics about its plans for the site. Work began in the third quarter of the year.
• : Added a 133,000-square-foot tower with 30 beds primarily for surgical patients, a cancer center, a 25-bed intensive care unit, 30 beds primarily for cardiac patients and two operating rooms, 18 postpartum beds and 30 general beds. Units opened gradually between August 2024 and December 2025. CommonSpirit didn’t state the cost for the expansion.

Denver Health

• : Constructing a new 82,500-square-foot building to replace the existing center, with primary care, dentistry, obstetrics, physical therapy and imaging, at a cost of $100 million. Opening in 2027.
• : Renovating a 14,700-square-foot leased space with 16 exam rooms for older adults to get primary and specialty care, a pharmacy and a lab, at a cost of $9.5 million. Opening in 2026.

HCA HealthOne

• : Added a 36,000-square-foot tower, with 24 new beds, at a cost of $36.5 million. Opened in August.

Kaiser Permanente

• : Built a new clinic that is about 7,000 square feet larger than the previous one, with eight new exam rooms and the ability to do more video visits. Opened in July. Kaiser Permanente declined to share the cost of its new construction.
• : Built a 116,500-square-foot replacement for the existing offices, with primary care, physical therapy, a pharmacy and an urgent care center. Opening in January 2026. Kaiser Permanente declined to share the cost of its new construction.

UCHealth

• : Added a 12,000-square-foot facility with primary care offices, an urgent care center, physical therapy and imaging. The building already existed, but UCHealth paid to convert it to a health care space, at a cost the system didn’t release. Opened in spring 2025.
• : Adding a 119,000-square-foot tower and 75,000-square-foot medical office building, with 14 emergency room beds, new operating rooms and labs for cardiac procedures and expansions of the cancer center and neonatal intensive care unit, at a cost of $119 million. Partially opening in February.

Intermountain Health

• The health network didn’t provide detailed information, but said it expanded its cancer center at Saint Joseph Hospital and leased a space for a new clinic near Empower Field at Mile High.