Last week, Sterling Acquisition LLC entered into an agreement with Colorado corporation Rio Grande Co. to buy 500 N. Osage St., just south of the Burnham Yard site.

Lea Ann Fowler, a real estate attorney at Hogan Lovells, signed the agreement on behalf of Sterling Acquisition, records show. Fowler previously worked with Broncos general counsel Tim Aragon at the same firm, where he was the managing partner of its Denver office before leaving in 2022 to work for the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group.

In addition, Colorado-based law firm Mulliken Weiner Berg and Jolivet P.C. also appeared on the agreement. Representatives from Rio Grande and Mulliken Law did not respond to requests for comment at the time of publication.

So far, entities that appeared to be tied to the Denver Broncos have purchased nearly 20 parcels of land over the past few years, often through random LLCs, including a recent transaction at 2214 W. 8th Ave.

The property sold for $400,000 to Stringfellow LLC, according to city property records filed in February. Property records show the total appraised value of the site is $303,300.

Stringfellow appears to be connected to the law firms Robinson Waters & O’Dorisio and the Denver office of Spencer Fane. O’Dorisio, Spencer and Fowler have all represented the team in several acquisitions within the stadium’s development plan.

The parcel is next to 781 N. Vallejo St., which was acquired by SNCC LLC for $2.2 million in January. SNCC is another LLC tied to Robinson Waters & O’Dorisio.

Like other related deals, the purchases involved an LLC formed in late 2023.

Meanwhile, the Colorado Department of Transportation and Denver Water have made moves

Colorado transportation officials say they’ve negotiated a  to sell the 58-acre Burnham Yard property south of downtown to the Denver Broncos for $45.8 million.

The deal, scheduled to be finalized on May 15, would give CDOT the funds needed to pay off a bank loan that state officials used five years ago to buy the property for $50 million. That’s a loss of $4.2 million.

“We are thrilled with the sale agreement with the Denver Broncos, where the Broncos have agreed to pay off our loan in its entirety,” Inzeo said.

“The sale price fully repays the debt that the Colorado Transportation Investment Office (CDOT’s business enterprise arm) took on to purchase Burnham Yard in 2021, and the state will no longer have to bear any maintenance costs for the property. This arrangement minimizes risk to the state and unlocks billions of dollars in private investment in this long-blighted, underutilized property.”

Union Pacific closed Burnham Yard in 2016. CDOT bought it for $50 million because state officials anticipated using 17 acres to relocate train tracks and make room for widening Interstate 25 through central Denver, while also ensuring access for Front Range Passenger Rail and expansion of RTD light rail. CDOT and the state’s economic development office each kicked in $7.5 million for that sale. The bank loan covered the rest.

Over the next four years, state officials decided all they needed was right-of-way access stretching along tracks south of Metropolitan State University of Denver sports fields. They purchased that access last year from Union Pacific.

When the sale is completed, CDOT will remove three rail crossings at 13th Avenue, Rio Court, and Shoshone Street, Inzeo said. That will improve safety, he said.

Nearby, Denver Water plans to build a new operations campus in the Elyria-Swansea neighborhood, which will replace the 25 acres that the utility has agreed to provide to the Broncos from its campus at 1600 W. 12th Ave., near Burnham Yard.

Records filed this month show Denver Water paid $13.5 million for an industrial property, west of a former AT&T facility at 2577 E. 40th Ave., from Claudrey LLC.

Additionally, in December, Denver Water submitted a concept plan to the city’s Department of Community Planning and Development for a new building on Lot M at Empower Field at Mile High. The 5.49-acre development proposes construction of “one two-story office and storage facility, associated parking, and exterior storage for fleet vehicles and materials.”

Broncos officials have �徱�����ܲ��������������Բ� with residents of La Alma Lincoln Park near the property for a project spanning 150 acres on the east side of the South Platte River, including a stadium, at least 15 acres of “park-like” open space, and an entertainment district with parking.

“Burnham Yard remains the preferred site” for the project, Broncos spokesman Patrick Smyth said in a statement. “We’re continuing to work closely with community members and partners to advance the process in a thoughtful and collaborative way.”

The Broncos hope a new stadium is ready to open in 2031, along with commercial and housing development on Burnham Yard, a train depot dating to 1871. The land is east of Interstate 25, between West Sixth and West Eighth avenues, stretching about a mile from 13th Avenue to Fourth Avenue. A couple of dozen buildings remain on the site, zoned for industrial use.

What would the environmental impacts be? Would one of the oldest, most historic neighborhoods in the city be paved over in favor of parking lots? How might a stadium impact the artists and small businesses in the Santa Fe Arts District? Would families be displaced? Could the community negotiate with the Broncos to also construct affordable housing, social services or food locations?

A neighborhood rich in history and conditioned to fight for their right to safeguard it is again gearing up to defend the La Alma Lincoln Park community from progress that forsakes preservation. This time, their guard is up as Burnham Yard, the state-owned former railroad yard in the area, is under consideration to accommodate a new stadium for the Denver Broncos to replace Empower Field at Mile High as the expiration of the team’s lease approaches in early 2031.

The fate of the parcel of the land remains unclear, but residents want to ensure their voices are at the table to guide its development. So far, they’re left with a lot of unanswered questions.

The La Alma Lincoln Park Neighborhood Association board members wanted answers as much as the residents posing inquiries.

“They bought this land in secret, and we just want to learn more,” said Nolan Hahn, president of the

Hahn was referencing the Broncos-affiliated limited liability corporations that have snapped up properties surrounding Burnham Yard.

Broncos spokesperson Patrick Smyth said while they have not received outreach from specific neighborhoods, the organization is engaged with representatives on a city level as they figure out the future of their stadium.

“We’ve had several positive and productive conversations with representatives from Denver, Lone Tree and Aurora as we explore the potential options for the future of our stadium,” Smyth said in a statement. “When there is a determination, we look forward to proactively and transparently engaging with all key community constituents.”

Connie Buckley has lived in the area for 30 years. The 82-year-old said she’s used to her neighborhood being overruled.

“Who knows what the heck they’re doing?” Buckley said of the stadium. “It’s got to be bad if they’re keeping it a secret. For God’s sake, people have basic rights and needs, and they need to be cared for and attended to and listened to and respected and this secret crap — that����ap so wrong. Maybe they just thought they could hoodwink everybody in the neighborhood. They wouldn’t treat the people in Wash Park like this.”

History repeats

La Alma Lincoln Park is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Denver. It has one of the greatest concentrations of homes built before 1890 and historical significance as the heart of the city’s Chicano movement, said John Deffenbaugh, CEO of Historic Denver.

The Auraria neighborhood next-door is technically Denver’s oldest. The working-class, largely Latino community was razed by the city in the 1970s to build the Auraria campus. Hundreds of Colorado families were displaced.

The La Alma Lincoln Park neighborhood extends from Colfax Avenue below the to Sixth Avenue to Speer Boulevard, bordered by the South Platte River.

Neighbors described the community as tight-knit — the kind of place where block parties still happen and people know each other’s names — with a combination of generational families and newcomers and mixed incomes.

Historic Denver worked with La Alma for years to receive a historic cultural district designation in 2021, honoring its storied past.

The community has a legacy of activism that continues to this day, said , curator of Latino history and culture at History Colorado.

Martínez de Luna was born in the projects of La Alma Lincoln Park. Her father, notable artist , was a muralist pioneer active in Colorado’s Crusade for Justice, an organization established in the 1960s that advocated for Chicano civil rights.

She started the Chicano/a/x Murals of Colorado Project to preserve the state’s historic murals like her father’s, housed in La Alma.

“This news about the potential stadium — it����ap like don’t you ever give up?” Martínez de Luna said. “Don’t you ever give us a break? I can’t believe they’re thinking about doing that especially because they already have a stadium. We’re always talking about wastefulness. Why do we always have to erase things and build something else?”

Burnham Yard, the 58-acre property of interest to the Broncos, was a railway yard before Colorado became a state, Deffenbaugh said.

“This is all incredibly important history,” Deffenbaugh said. “The neighborhood is very engaged and mobilized and worked with Historic Denver…to create that historic cultural district because they care deeply about their community…and that����ap reflected in the work they’ve done.”

‘Victimized by progress’

Jason Torrez, interim executive director at La Alma community nonprofit , said the neighborhood being bigfooted was “par for the course.”

The parish — which isn’t religiously affiliated but offers food pantries, senior resources, immigration services and education programs — frequently serves people who once called La Alma Lincoln Park home but have been pushed out as housing costs grew unattainable, Torrez said.

“You hear a lot of people come through the food pantry line and say their family grew up here and now they live in Aurora or Westminster,” Torrez said. “So many Latino families have been displaced over generations.”

Torrez worried a stadium would uproot more families with people pressured to sell their homes and potential housing price increases.

“What people don’t understand is that there are two sides to the story and sometimes those that are victimized by progress don’t get to share those stories,” Torrez said.

Neighborhood association president Hahn acknowledged that the prospects of a stadium came with concerns and excitement.

“There are things that could come out of this that are good and the potential for harms, as well,” Hahn said. “We are trying to make sure we’re in those conversations so we can get as much of the good stuff and as little of the bad.”

Good stuff that could be added, Hahn said, might be more reliable, accessible transit options. Bad stuff would be huge parking lots, he said.

“Our best case scenario is that the Broncos come work with the community around them…making sure that their vision aligns with the needs of the neighborhood and that they understand the potential costs and harms that come with it and try to mitigate it as much as possible,” Hahn said.

Hahn said the neighborhood association has asked City Councilwoman Jamie Torres to broker a meeting with the Broncos for about a year as rumors of the stadium circulated. Councilwoman Torres told The Denver Post she hadn’t asked the Broncos to speak to the neighborhood because the team wasn’t set on their site yet. She didn’t want to “jump the gun,” she said.

Regardless of whether it’s a stadium, Torres said something will be developed on Burnham Yard no matter what.

“I’m trying to brace, along with my constituents, how to best position themselves to understand what that is — to identify things that need to be built collaboratively or considered,” Torres said. “I don’t ever want residents to feel like they’ve been left behind and had no participation opportunities in the conversation. I don’t want what we’ve seen in other parts of the city where a neighborhood identity is disappeared and something else is put in its place. La Alma Lincoln Park has a really beautiful history. This should be added to and not separated from.”

Re: “A Denver Post special report: The stadium game,” Jan. 5 news story

Enough already! Not trying to single out the Broncos, but The People should not pay another nickel in public funds for stadiums, period. Those days should be long gone and it����ap time to get past any notion of that kind of financial support. Enough has cost us plenty.

Alan DeLollis, Denver

Remember the last time a multi-millionaire Broncos owner extorted stadium money from Denver families who could not afford a ticket to the game? It����ap happening again. The new stadium is now not new enough to maximize profits for the billionaire Broncos owners, so they are threatening to move … again. I say let ’em move. Buh bye. Don’t let the stadium door hit you on the way out.

Those old Broncos jerseys will triple in value the day the team is relocated to wherever they end up. Then maybe some Denver families can sell the shirts to buy some groceries for their kids.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo, Denver

License plate serves our once native wolves

Re: “The best Colorado license plate design,” Jan. 5 features commentary

Jonathan Shikes thinks the best license plates in Colorado are the historical ones. His personal favorite is the green license plate with an outline of the Rockies and white sky.

One historical license plate not mentioned that needs to be recognized is the black and white one that shows the snow-covered Colorado Rockies with a native wolf centered between the plate numbers and reads, “Born To Be Wild.”

This plate is historical not only because the Rocky Mountains formed approximately 75 million years ago, but also because native wolves roamed these very mountains for hundreds of thousands of years until the 20th century, when wolves were ruthlessly eliminated from the landscape.

The mountain and the wolf have a special relationship, stated writer and naturalist Aldo Leopold. “Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf.”

This mountain/wolf license plate is important because it is a unique symbol that Colorado acknowledges the wrongs of the past and now wants to make amends with the return of the wolf to the landscape. Colorado is welcoming the wolf home to its native habitat, the Rocky Mountains.

If you would like to show your support for wolves on the Colorado landscape, display one of these license plates by making an appointment with the DMV. There will be an extra charge, the same as with all special plates. A percentage of the funds will go directly to Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

Go to  for more details.

Kathy Webster, Littleton

Honoring President Carter’s neverending service to the country

Re: “Jimmy Carter deserved our thanks and respect, not our sneers a president����ap legacy,” Jan. 5 commentary

Thank you for the commentary from Nicholas Kristof characterizing President Jimmy Carter. Most of us know about the long gas lines, inflation and a failed attempt to rescue Americans from Iran happening on Carter’s watch. That bad news, I suspect, caused many to forget how he brokered a major peace deal between Egypt and Israel.

However, long before his death, I think many of us might’ve considered him the best ex-President. Most of them are rarely seen after leaving the White House. Carter was the exception. I don’t know how many homes he personally helped build through Habitat for Humanity. I suspect those with a roof over their heads love telling visitors a president helped to build it. I did not know, however, that he tirelessly worked to improve the health and welfare of Africans and worked to eradicate the Guinea worm. As we enter a second Trump term, ask yourself this question: What will Donald do for others when he’s finished in Washington, D.C.?

Howard Amonick, Aurora

Colorado’s essential services are starved by TABOR

Re: “Not a budget crisis, just a slight tightening of growing belt,” Jan. 5 editorial

The Denver Post editorial on our state budget did readers a disservice. If you are going to describe the challenges to our state budget and only give a few sentences to TABOR you are missing the primary driver.

Furthermore, the editorial is full of contradictions. It reads like, “Oh yes we believe it’s important that we have kindergarten and preschool, and yes we know that there are thousands of people in our state who rely on Medicaid and medical and behavioral health providers who are having a challenging time continuing to keep their door open. But we have to find efficiencies! We have to make cuts and tighten our belt!”

No. What we have to do is allow our growing state population and thriving economy to translate into a state government that takes care of the underserved, as well as infrastructure and all the other things government is meant to do.

The little bit of money people get back from TABOR might help pay for the much-chagrined cost of eggs, but it doesn’t help ensure that we have the public transportation systems, roads, investment in clean energy, social services, public safety, education systems, and public and primary health care services we deserve.

Mindy Klowden, Denver

Too many Coloradans are waiting too long for Medicaid, unemployment insurance, tax returns, veterans care, professional licenses, drivers licenses, safer roads, and other critical state services.

That����ap why, as the union of the state employees who deliver services to Coloradans, we want to set the record straight.

You assert that the government is “growing by leaps and bounds,” and advocate for 10% cuts across state agencies, “hoping” those won’t lead to job losses, “just job reassignments and empty positions remaining unfilled.”

The fact is our government is shrinking, not growing. Since 2014, Colorado’s population has grown by more than 600,000 to almost 6 million, but the number of classified state employee positions has fallen from 31,000 to just over 28,000.

As for unfilled positions, we already have an almost 30% vacancy rate across state agencies. State employees are being asked to do the jobs of two or more people, not take breaks or sick leave, and to work double and even triple shifts.

Nobody should have to wait on the phone or in line for hours or days to access the services they need and pay for through their taxes.

So let����ap get the facts straight, and stop the talk about cuts to state agencies. Instead, let����ap focus on securing the funding essential to effectively and efficiently delivering the services Coloradans need and deserve.

Hilary Glasgow, Colorado WINS Executive Director

Editor’s note: Colorado Workers for Innovative and New Solutions (WINS) is a union representing state employees 

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

All we ask in exchange for this substantial public financial assistance is complete transparency (and of course the continuation of the popular lottery system for affordable tickets to Broncos games).

The elected officials in this state and city must be honest about the value of any proposed land deals, tax breaks, taxing authority or no-bid contracts awarded to some of the wealthiest people in America to help their real estate venture.

The Denver Post launched a four-part special report this month: The $tadium Game. The reporting was stellar as our team looked at the past, the present, and the future of Denver’s sports venues. The city has had some highs in terms of iconic destinations, Coors Field, and some performance lows in the same neighborhood, the Rockies.

The Broncos are not just another sports franchise. The team’s story from the fledgling Bears to the Super Bowl-winning Broncos is an integral part of our history. Losing the team’s downtown Denver presence at a time when urban communities are struggling to rebound from the work-from-home transformation would be dire. Post-COVID, bars, restaurants, and retail stores have struggled in Denver.

In an ideal world, the Broncos would stay where they are. Taxpayers built Empower Field at Mile High using a regional sales tax. The stadium is now debt-free and our investment is ripe to pay off over the next six years of the Broncos’ lease. The historic Mile High location is brilliant: serviced by light rail, close to downtown, and Empower Field recently received $100 million in upgrades thanks to the new owners.

Whether it����ap Stan Kroenke slow-playing development of vacant fields he leases from Commerce City for $1 a year surrounding his Major League Soccer field, or Stan Kroenke revving up to redevelop the parking lots around his National Hockey League and National Basketball Association arena in Denver, we can’t argue with the dollars and cents calculations driving these mega-ventures.

Billionaires owning not only the team and the venue but also the entire neighborhood is simply the path forward for professional sports in America. The place where that type of venture would be the most profitable (i.e. lowest cost and highest profit) is often on cheaper, easier-to-develop land in one of the many lovely suburbs that ring Denver.

That is why The Denver Post editorial board supports using financial incentives to ensure the Broncos’ new stadium — if one must be built — remains in Denver.

Should the Broncos ownership — the Walton-Penner Group — be interested in state-owned land, like the 58 acres at Burnham Yard just west of the Lincoln Park neighborhood, the public needs to know the appraised value of that land upfront.

The Colorado Department of Transportation purchased the land in 2021 for $51 million, which gives us a ballpark value, but property values have grown quite a bit since then.

The same is true for other lands owned nearby like the Denver Water parcel. Denver Water is a government entity that serves its ratepayers, and if the Walton-Penner Group is interested in some of the utilities’ land, accurate appraisals are essential.

When the Raiders were moved from Oakland to Las Vegas, at least there was a record of every single lawmaker who supported and opposed the deal to give the Raiders $750 million in bonds to be paid back with interest using a hotel-room tax.

On top of helping the Broncos’ owners acquire land downtown with favorable terms, the city is likely to give the Broncos owners’ nearly unlimited taxing authority using a quasi-governmental metropolitan district. The Waltons and Penners — led by heirs to the Walmart fortune Greg Penner and Carrie Walton, who also happen to be related to Kroenke — could use a combination of property taxes, hotel taxes, sales taxes and ticket taxes to pay for the debt of the stadium and other infrastructure projects on the land.

While we are generally opposed to metropolitan districts because of how abused they have been by developers, this structure could make sense for a stadium district, if there was enough oversight to prevent abuse.

The beauty of a taxing district is that the people who use the new stadium and the nearby bars, restaurants, and hotels and live in the new condos would pay for it over time. The City of Denver should not approve a metro district on any land being considered for a new stadium unless the developer agrees that the district����ap taxes and spending would have adequate oversight.

This new model for a metro district could have taxpayer dollars overseen by officials elected in a city-wide election rather than a faux election where the landowners just elect their employees to the board to do their bidding. Developers can then spend taxpayer dollars with no oversight.

In Nevada the stadium authority is chaired by appointed public officials to provide just such oversight of the $1.3 billion that will be paid back. And when revenue fell short of making the minimum payments on those bonds last year, the people in Clark County were able to track how much of their other tax dollars were used to backfill the debt payment.

Because the Broncos bring so much to this city — culture, excitement, and economic stimulus — Denver must be willing to invest. We want the Walton-Penner Group to make heaps of money. We want another championship parade in Denver. And we want to know exactly what our tax dollars are buying.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

Billions of dollars in both public and private money have been spent to build professional sports stadiums across North America. Below is the cost of each stadium or arena currently being used by teams in the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB, including older venues that have undergone extensive renovation in recent years. Hover over bars for details; use dropdown menu to filter by league. Chart is part of the $tadium Game project.

Four stadiums/arenas were built in the Denver metro area in a 14-year period straddling the turn of the century — an era that saw a nationwide stadium boom funded in part by taxpayer dollars. Roughly 30 years later, after a handful of venues across the country have been deemed obsolete, the Broncos find themselves approaching an inflection point with Empower Field’s lease set to expire in 2030.

What kind of impact could the team’s decision have on the community? Is another cycle of stadium building justified? And how has the paradigm of professional sports ownership and stadium construction evolved since Empower — then Invesco Field — first opened in 2001?

Read The Post����ap $tadium Game series here:

Part 1: Amid another nationwide stadium boom, will Broncos build new home to land what Rockies have and what Nuggets, Avs are getting?

Our series opens with a look at the money side of sports stadiums. From a business perspective, the Rockies have something the Broncos, Nuggets and Avalanche all envy — a destination stadium with an adjoining neighborhood that acts as another money stream.

Additional reading: If Broncos move from Empower Field, the impact on Sun Valley and surrounding neighborhoods could be positive

Sun Valley, the neighborhood in which Empower Field sits, has been the Broncos’ home since 1960. But if a Broncos move happens, neighborhood leaders’ goal is to more seamlessly connect Sun Valley with the changes across the highway in River Mile (the planned redevelopment of Elitch Gardens) and the 55-acre Ball Arena redevelopment.

Part 2: Is Coors Field the model for publicly financed stadium success? How the Monforts struck gold in LoDo.

The second installment dives into Coors Field, the home of the Rockies and a publicly funded stadium that became a gold mine for one of the state’s most famous families. The 30-year-old ballpark at 20th and Blake and its historic neighborhood combined to create a lucrative setting that any sports owner would covet.

Additional reading: Coors Field renovations, repairs and upgrades

Coors Field opened in 1995 and is the third-oldest ballpark in the National League behind Chicago’s Wrigley Field (1914) and Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium (1962). Here is a look at renovations and improvements over the ballpark’s first 30 years.

Part 3: Ball Arena was always a window into downtown Denver land development for Stan Kroenke

Twenty-four years after Pepsi Center (now Ball Arena) was built, Denver City Council approved a massive development plan on top of those parking lots that will be carried out by Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, the teams’ parent company — jump-starting the execution of what one high-ranking KSE executive described to The Denver Post as a long-term plan Kroenke envisioned when he bought the two sports franchises.

Additional reading:  Nearly 18 years after Dick’s Sporting Goods Park was built, it still hasn’t done for Commerce City what Coors Field did for LoDo

When Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, the $71 million home of the Rapids, opened in 2007, there were high hopes in Commerce City that it would become a destination for more people than just soccer fans. They’re still waiting. And wondering.

Part 4: The factors that will drive the what, where and when of Broncos’ stadium decision

The final installment examines the question of whether the Broncos remain at Mile High beyond the next few years remains an open one. The franchise is moving steadily toward an inflection point — the end of its lease with the Metropolitan Stadium Football District, which runs through 2030 — and the decision about whether to stay and renovate, stay and rebuild or move elsewhere in the Denver area is one that takes years to unravel.

They’re still waiting.

And wondering.

“I’m not an anti-KSE guy,” offered Dave Wegner, president of the Centennial 38 supporters club for the Major League Soccer franchise that calls Commerce City home. “I think they do wonderful things. It’s that they run their sports business like a business. And other (owners) run their sports business like a sports business.”

The Rapids are owned by Kroenke Sports & Entertainment — billionaire Stan Kroenke’s global company that also owns the Los Angeles Rams, London’s Arsenal soccer club, and the Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche and Colorado Mammoth. KSE signed a 25-year lease with Commerce City for $1 per year in exchange for financing, building and managing the stadium and soccer fields around it.

There were plans for housing, shops, restaurants and bars, and office space. But Victory Crossing, the proposed 600,000-square-foot development around the stadium, has never crossed over from mock-ups to reality.

“It����ap a shame that (Kroenke) has not done anything with it,” at-large Commerce City councilman Craig Kim said. “It����ap a shame to me that the city is at his mercy.”

The inactivity around Dick’s Sporting Goods Park is especially notable when contrasted against the other sports properties under the KSE umbrella. SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., the $4.963 billion home of the Rams, opened in September 2020. Bloomberg reported in November that . And the company recently announced a 25-year redevelopment “super project” that would create a new commercial and housing district around Ball Arena, home of KSE’s Nuggets, Avalanche and Mammoth.

Add it all up, and Rapids fans feel as if their favorite club is a Kroenke afterthought.

“He’s done a lot of good for other cities,” Kim said, “but my god, when are we going to see something here in Commerce City that we were promised 20 years ago?”

“Missed opportunity”

In 2023, a KSE representative told the City Council in Commerce City that mixed-use development was still the vision for the property. He showed them a PowerPoint presentation with pictures of the company’s other sports and entertainment complexes in the United States and said the same intentions exist for DSGP.

Given the acreage owned by the Kroenkes within the city limits — 269 total, a Denver Post public records review found — the family has plenty of motivation for that to be the case.

“KSE continues to make progress on our development strategy in Commerce City,” Mike Neary, KSE executive vice president for business operations and real estate, told The Post via a written statement. “We are having meaningful conversations with the city’s development team and productive dialogue about various options for the land around Dick’s Sporting Goods Park and along 56th Street. These types of developments take time to get right, but we are committed, and we look forward to sharing details about our progress when appropriate.”

As of late December, no new proposals were on the table, and the Council is waiting on Kroenke to make the next move, said Travis Huntington, a Commerce City spokesman.

“There’s conversations continuing and we expect another proposal,” Huntington said, “but we don’t know when.”

DSGP was born out of a $183 million public-private partnership, as local voters approved a $64 million bond sale in 2004 that offset part of a $93 million investment in infrastructure improvements. KSE put up $45 million in debt and $20 million in cash toward the stadium complex.

The intent was to do for the east side of Commerce City what Coors Field did for Lower Downtown — bring a “destination vibe” and spur tourism dollars to the area, generating revenue for KSE, the Rapids and the stadium itself.

Instead, the nearest restaurants reside roughly a mile west of the stadium, along Quebec Street, and a 15-minute walk for fans. Centennial 38 has regularly bused fans from Denver while organizing tailgate parties before matches to make up for the lack of food and entertainment options nearby.

“If it were developed, it may put what we like most about our game days at risk,” Wegner admitted, adding that it’s a risk he wishes KSE were willing to take.

“We’ve got 100 parking spaces. We’ve got the West VIP (lot). At the end of the day, it’s such a missed opportunity.”

Frustration over delayed development around Dick’s Sporting Goods Park flared up in that 2023 meeting when KSE executives went before the City Council to propose a land swap.

The company wanted the city to give it 88.2 acres. In exchange, KSE would give 9.7 acres to the South Adams County Water and Sanitation District and the water district would hand over 6 acres to Commerce City.

But council members objected to the deal while lambasting KSE for failing to live up to promises about developing the soccer stadium into a Front Range destination.

“You could have shown good faith to everybody involved that this is something your organization is committed to do,” former Commerce City Mayor Benjamin Huseman said during a May 2023 meeting, “but nothing has happened.”

Huseman declined to comment last month when reached by The Post.

Kim said there is no indication that Kroenke will present a new development plan in 2025.

“Crickets,” he answered when asked if he had heard from KSE since the infamous 2023 council meeting.

“Not up to the standard”

As is often the case with land targeted for stadium construction in metro areas, the site around Dick’s Sporting Goods Park has a history that made it easier to acquire but harder to develop.

The land once housed a chemical weapons arsenal, which means it has land-use restrictions set by the Environmental Protection Agency. Kroenke would need clearance from the EPA before building houses there, which could take years. Retail and other commercial properties would have fewer restrictions.

In 2032, the company will also have the option to buy the land where the stadium sits for $1 and the option to buy the surrounding soccer fields at a price set by an appraiser.

None of that, however, guarantees anything will ever come of the land around Dick’s.

J.C. Bradbury, an economics professor at Kennesaw State University in Georgia and past president of the North American Association of Sports Economists, said the future of Commerce City’s development around the soccer stadium comes down to dollars.

And it is unlikely that Dick’s Sporting Goods Park can anchor a development boom for the city.

“There’s this sort of myth of, ‘Oh, if you build it, they will come,'” Bradbury said. “It doesn’t happen.”

When a successful neighborhood or commercial district emerges around a stadium, it is usually because key pieces, such as a young, emerging bar scene or reliable public transit, already were in place, Bradbury said.

“The thing that����ap going to work around a stadium is restaurants and bars. That����ap it. People don’t want to grocery shop near stadiums, and they really don’t want to live near stadiums,” he said.

Developers like Kroenke are going to focus on projects where they can make the biggest profit — the SoFi Stadium project in Inglewood or the Ball Arena project in downtown Denver.

“There’s just not a lot of money to be made in terms of developing around an MLS stadium,” Bradbury said.

Geoffrey Propheter, an associate professor at the University of Colorado Denver who studies property taxes and land development around sports facilities, said one way to predict what will happen is to look at the overall economy.

KSE had a window before the 2020 pandemic to develop the land when interest rates and building costs were lower, but the company did not move. Now interest rates are higher, so financing for projects is more expensive.

Propheter speculated that the hold-up could be the land-use restrictions imposed by the EPA. But that can be overcome. After all, developers on the Denver side of the soccer complex have built a subdivision since the stadium deal was inked.

Propheter agreed with City Council’s decision in 2023 to reject the land swap proposal, saying it is bad public policy to give away land in exchange for hope.

“Back in 2004 they approved a hope,” he said. “They approved a development agreement that gave KSE exclusive rights to develop. At that point, the city wrote themselves out of any future development.”

Still waiting

Since the 2023 blow-up, Commerce City has continued to wait on a new proposal from Kroenke, and the prairie dog fields surrounding the soccer stadium remain undeveloped.

Centennial 38 has criticized Kroenke for poor upkeep at the stadium, stating in a 2023 letter to KSE that it was, “not up to the standard of a modern professional sports venue.”

The missive cited “a scoreboard that has more non-functioning pixels than not; an electrical system that barely functions and often leaves fans to find their cars in darkness after games; a (public address) system that is inaudible in large portions of the stands and concourse; and signage that is shabby and faded.”

Rapids owner and alternate governor Josh Kroenke, Stan Kroenke’s son, .

In it, he vowed to produce a feasibility study and a master plan for Victory Crossing in “early 2024,” although neither city officials nor KSE would address the status of either as of late December.

Wegner said that, as of late December, neither he nor C38 had seen a master plan from KSE of any kind.

Kroenke’s rebuttal “(was) not what we were looking for,” Wegner noted. “He addressed the elephant in the room. It was just the wrong room.”

Rockies owner Dick Monfort envisions Coors as a “grand old ballpark” that could last for 100 years, but that requires upkeep.

Denver-area residents own Coors Field and the Denver Metropolitan Major League Baseball Stadium District oversees the Rockies’ lease obligations at the ballpark. But over the first 30 years, the Rockies paid for the significant upgrades and construction projects at Coors while the stadium district helped fund more minor maintenance projects and upgrades.

In 2017, the Rockies finalized a new 30-year lease agreement at Coors, keeping the club at the LoDo ballpark until at least 2047. The Rockies will pay for the bulk of the capital improvements, which are projected to be $200 million over the length of the lease.

The Rockies contributed $125 million to fund maintenance and improvements while boosting their annual payments to $2.5 million from the previous $1 million. In trade, the Rockies were allowed to lease and develop a valuable plot of land directly south of the stadium for 99 years. That former parking lot was transformed into McGregor’s Square — an 818,000-square-foot residential, retail and entertainment complex.

District spokesman Matt Sugar said that much of the work at Coors over the next few years will be standard maintenance.

“We’re not talking about a lot of bells and whistles,” he says. “We’re talking about expansion joists, plumbing fixtures and upgrading bathrooms.”

Following are the major Coors Field renovations and improvements over the ballpark’s first 30 years:

• 2005: Scoreboard replacement (Cost: $3.75 million) — The project included a new video scoreboard in left field and upgrades to the “ribbon boards” that run below the second deck.

• 2013: Press Club Suites ($1.5 million) — The project converted more than 60% of the old press box into a bar, restaurant and seating area behind home plate at a level between the club level and main concourse. It’s now called the “PNC Press Club.”

• 2014: The Rooftop ($10 million) — A 38,000 square-foot, multi-level, primarily standing-room-only bar that turned 3,500 right-field seats in upper right field into a party deck that Monfort said would add “another dimension” to Coors Field.

• 2016: The “Bridich Barrier” ($117,000) — To reduce home runs, higher fencing was installed in right-center field and the left field corner. The increased height — from 8 feet, 9 inches to 16 feet, 6 inches in front of bullpens that run from right-center to close to center, and from 8 feet to 13 in the left field corner — was the brainchild of former general manager Jeff Bridich.

• 2018: New scoreboard ($15 million) — A massive new scoreboard/videoboard measuring 8,369 square feet was installed in left field. It was 258% larger than the board it replaced. It has the shape of a mountain cutout, reminiscent of the club’s Rocky Mountain logo. The display is equivalent to 784 60-inch televisions.

• 2018-19: Home clubhouse renovation ($3.9 million) — Completed in two phases, the players’ home away from home includes a new locker room, workout facility, training room, hot tubs/cold tubs, a dining room/lounge and various other upgrades.

• 2017-19: Speaker installation ($1.3 million) — Completed in two phases, the new speakers enhanced the sound system within the ballpark.

• 2019: Club-level concession renovations ($5.5 million) — Updated and enhanced the food and drink concessions at the club level.

• 2020: Field replacement ($2.7 million) — During the 2019-20 offseason, a new boiler system was installed. In conjunction, a new hydronic heating system was installed underneath the playing field. That required the entire field to be dug up, rebuilt and resodded.

• 2020: Protective netting extension ($421,000) — All major league teams installed netting down the baselines and to the foul poles to protect fans from getting hit by baseballs.

• 2023: Upgrades and remodeling of suites. ($16.5 million) — The Rockies renovated the team’s infield suites, modifying the interior decor for spaces accommodating 12 to 60 fans.

Sources: Kevin Hahn, Rockies vice president of ballpark operations, and Matt Sugar, director of the Denver Metropolitan Major League Baseball Stadium District

The building’s changed, but the Broncos have played at the same dot on the map since joining the AFL in 1960.

The question of whether the Broncos remain at Empower Field at Mile High beyond the next few years remains an open one. The franchise is moving steadily toward an inflection point — the end of its lease with the Metropolitan Football Stadium District, which runs through 2030 — and the decision of whether to stay and renovate, stay and rebuild or move elsewhere in the Denver area is one that takes years to unravel.

The Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group has been actively exploring that question and taking steps toward answering it since purchasing the franchise in August 2022. They’ve toured numerous stadiums and entertainment districts around the country, put about $100 million in upgrades into Empower Field, studied the renovation possibilities and solicited considerable fan feedback. They’ve paused any forward movement on a development plan with the MFSD.

They’ve undoubtedly considered where else in and around the metro might work as a future home.

����aphief Communications Officer Patrick Smyth told The Denver Post that no decision has been made on the future of the stadium and that “our organization is continuing to carefully evaluate all options as part of a comprehensive and long-term process.”

Given a deadline is looming on the horizon — even one as far out as six years — some form of action is assured. And when modern-era ownership groups enter that phase in the proceedings, the questions almost always center on both the venue and what goes around it.

“When you’re making this decision, if you’re choosing between this set of options that includes your existing venue, then real estate becomes a factor in that decision,” said Erin Talkington, the managing director of RCLCo, a real estate advisory firm whose work includes consulting for sports ownership groups and municipalities on major development projects. “But I don’t think I’ve ever seen it be the only factor or the driving factor. The core business is the driving factor, and then real estate is one of those things that when you get it down to two or three options, then you’re like, ‘Well, how do we really want to think through this? What is the real opportunity?’”

Around the NFL, recent stadium builds and announced projects typically include adjacent real estate development, as do other professional venues held up widely as models like the Braves’ The Battery in the Atlanta suburbs. Some, like SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, are entirely privately funded. Most, including NFL clubs moving forward with stadium builds in Buffalo, N.Y., and Tennessee and a proposal in Cleveland, have differing forms of public-private partnerships.

Nearly all of them landed on developing a district, a block or an entire neighborhood.

“The reality is these ownership groups have become more sophisticated, and team ownership is that much more expensive,” Edwin Draughan, a director and partner at Park Lane, a sports-focused investment bank, told The Post. “In order to really get that return, you’re going to have to have some additional, ancillary real estate component to really make it pencil out. That’s where you’re seeing, I’m not saying a huge shift, but a change in business-minded ownership groups.”

The Broncos ownership group is certainly business-minded. CEO and controlling owner Greg Penner is the chairman of Walmart����ap board of directors, and the retail giant is the family business of Carrie Walton Penner and her father, Rob Walton.

They’ve toured stadiums and arenas around the country and they’ve also seen districts like The Battery.

Some districts have been built around existing venues while others, like The Battery and the Chase Center in San Francisco, have been part of new builds.

So the question in Denver is less about whether a real estate play is part of the Broncos’ future and more about where that future will be: Mile High? Or somewhere else?

More than a stadium

The Broncos say they are happy with Empower Field.

The updates over the past two years, fan survey results say, have been popular.

The stadium itself opened a little more than 23 years ago.

A major facelift to modernize it and make it a forward-thinking, revenue-generating machine for decades to come, though, would likely be a difficult task. In fact, sometimes the option is explored and deemed to be impossible.

First, there are the actual guts of the building.

A modern HVAC system or plumbing overhaul can quickly turn into an expensive, head-spinning endeavor worthy of a home renovation show.

Then, there’s the reality that stadiums don’t just host events. They’re designed, ever more optimally, to generate revenue and to do so even when the team isn’t playing.

“How do we set these venues up to be useful, especially in the NFL, more than eight or 10 game days a year,” Talkington said. “It’s a much more detailed decision than, ‘We want a new, fancy, shiny thing.'”

A development vision is in place for the area surrounding Empower Field the Stadium District Master Plan but the Broncos have paused any forward movement on it.

That lack of action doesn’t make it impossible for the Broncos to ultimately stay on site. They could try to buy the land and stadium outright from the MFSD at or near the end of the lease term or reimagine the partnership for the long-term future.

The pull to own the parcel outright and have a major say in what happens around it is common in modern pro sports ownership.

“Most of the deals that we’ve worked on, incoming owners, their primary question is around venue and the potential upside around the surrounding area,” Draughan said. “… There’s only so much additional revenue you can get from the team. But there’s a layer of influence and there’s also a level of just real estate ownership.”

If not here, then where?

A wide variety of people contacted for this series agreed on two general principles when it comes to picking a spot for a stadium and adjoining development.

First: If done right, this type of project can work in several different demographic environments, from urban cores to fast-growing suburbs to more peripheral parts of a metropolitan area.

Second: If possible, a parcel already in a central location provides the most compelling opportunity.

“SoFi is kind of a unique situation because it is in a city, but there just happened to be a lot of land and the Kroenkes have a lot of money,” Draughan said. “You’re starting to see other folks say, ‘Hey, let����ap go out to the suburbs where we can get some public funding and use their space and have people come out to us.’

“Or, and this is more of an interesting one: going to an area that isn’t very developed.”

Those kinds of parcels are typically industrial or formerly industrial areas. They have all the benefits of being in the urban core: transit access, proximity to potential customers, and theoretical desirability for businesses, partners, tenants and developers.

Of course, those same factors make some such parcels — particularly smaller or divvied-up ones — attractive to residential developers.

Andrew Goetz, a  University of Denver professor in the department of geography and the environment who specializes in transportation and urban planning and studies, cited River North as an example of an area that once might have fit the bill for a venue-anchored district but has been filled in by other development.

“If there are places that are possible, those should be investigated pretty carefully as well as, I think, the prime choice, which is the existing location,” he said. “…Really give that a thorough examination to see how you could do what you want to do at the current site. And if you can, I think that����ap option No. 1.”

Another industrial location is about to go up for sale not far south: Burnham Yard. The 58-acre parcel is bounded by 13th Avenue and 6th Avenue to the north and south and by Osage Street and Seminole Road to the east and west.

The State of Colorado purchased the plot for $50 million in 2021 with the possibility in mind that Interstate 25 would need to be expanded, rebuilt or rerouted. Instead, the state revealed in a that it has decided to sell the property by May 2026.

“It should be explored because there is a considerable amount of land that is there,” Goetz said. “It would just require taking a look at the amount of what would need to be done in terms of converting that land area into something that would be functional from a stadium perspective.”

Multiple experts told The Post that Burnham Yard checks all or most of the boxes pro sports teams generally look for, except that it’s slightly small and oddly shaped and thus might require the acquisition of other surrounding land.

These types of sites can be daunting and alluring at the same time.

“When you’re talking about a $2 billion venue, land cost does become a drop in the bucket unless you’re really acquiring a prime site,” Talkington said. “It is one of the reasons why you often see new venues go to areas that have always been somewhat underutilized or in need of reinvestment.”

But also, Draughan said, “If you know that you’re going to revitalize the area, then that can yield an incredible return if you’re able to acquire it.”

A model to emulate?

Though the Braves moved out of downtown Atlanta to Cobb County, The Battery featured several challenges typical of these types of projects.

Major gas lines ran through the site, which had hindered previously considered development.

Often large parcels of land in metro areas sit because the hurdles to development are too big and too expensive for one developer or government entity to tackle on their own.

When the Braves got involved, though, suddenly moving a gas pipeline became a possibility.

When the Warriors decided they wanted to move to San Francisco, an entire section of the waterfront — and the shoreline itself was transformed.

“Those sites have always needed some kind of infrastructure funding, and the venue is the umbrella to be able to make that kind of work at the site make sense,” Talkington said.

Her firm, RCLCo, has studied more than and categorized them into eras with distinct hallmarks. A generation ago came a wave of standalone projects — think Patriots Place around New England’s stadium. Then city-led developments took over.

“Capitol Riverfront around the Nationals’ ballpark (in Washington) is a really good example. We even called out the early development in LoDo around Coors Field,” Talkington said.

Then sports ownership groups started to want to be more directly involved in the development and ownership of projects because of the revenue potential and political cache that comes with the territory.

It’s led to the most recent trend in public financing for private stadiums: using development district sales and occupancy taxes to serve as a funding mechanism to repay bonds and provide long-term maintenance for venues.

The Battery features hotels, a 4,000-seat concert venue, office space, restaurants, a Top Golf and more.

“You can go there on non-baseball days and have a great time,” Draughan said. “Or you can go there on baseball days and not even watch a game and still have a great time. In order for the Atlanta Braves to pull that off, they had to create a destination. If they just had the ballpark out there and really nothing else around it, it would have been more difficult.”

Cobb County that an estimated 10.3 million people visited The Battery in 2023 and that the district hosted 367 events — 86 of which were Braves home baseball games.

What that translates to: juiced returns for ownership. The was up 5% in the second quarter of 2024 over the previous year, and revenue related to The Battery was up 11% year-over-year to $16.9 million for the quarter.

“You need to have a destination,” Draughan said. “It has to be, ‘Hey, we’re taking the family and we’re going out to whatever and having a good time there.’ As opposed to, ‘OK, I’m going to the game.’ So you have to have that kind of destination type of feeling to the establishment.”

Decision time coming

The Broncos have been diligent in considering their options.

Their standard answer to stadium questions hasn’t wavered much in the past two-plus years.

“I’ve been getting the stadium questions since day one about two years ago,” Broncos president Damani Leech said in late August when the club broke ground on a new $175 million training facility and team headquarters. “I think the answer is the same one: It����ap a pretty long process. We’re still evaluating everything. Everything’s on the table. We’ll continue to explore it and make a decision at a time that makes sense for us.”

That time is coming.

The Bills and Titans’ stadium projects each are set to take about four years from the time they were first publicly announced — essentially when the sites and finances had been finalized — to when they are set to open. Those are deals that so far have had only the garden-variety issues like weather and budget overruns.

The Chicago Bears purchased a massive tract of land in the suburbs in early 2023 and have since gone through multiple variations of plans in different places and now are hoping, though not guaranteed, to start work on a lakefront stadium next year.

The bottom line: The decision-making process is a long one, and so is the completion of the actual project. The Broncos do hold a pair of five-year options at Empower Field beyond 2030, so they’ve got flexibility if they need it.

In the meantime, Kroenke Sports & Entertainment has announced a major development plan around Ball Arena. Whether the Broncos remain neighbors on the other side of I-25 or move elsewhere in the coming years, there is sure to be major action in the future.

And real estate will likely play a big role.

“If you’re a team owner and a land owner, you’re that much more politically influential in what things get done in your municipality and how you’re viewed by residents there,” Draughan said.